1866
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
Calcutta. Old Court House Street is a 1866 by Samuel Bourne, a Impressionism work, depicting Kolkata, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.
You see a busy street in Calcutta, packed with horse-drawn carriages, pedestrians, and tall colonial buildings. The photo is sharp, almost like a postcard from the 1860s. This isn’t just a pretty picture—it’s a time capsule. Bourne took this shot before modern restorations changed landmarks like the Taj Mahal. His photos are some of the earliest records of India’s cities and monuments, showing them exactly as they were. If you like this, look up *The Cleveland Museum of Art*—they have more of Bourne’s work from his travels.
The 50 images in this album, all taken in the 1860s, move from the hill towns of the Himalayas down to cities including Lahore (now in Pakistan), Delhi, Lucknow, Agra, Benares (now Varansi), and Calcutta (now Kolkata). Architectural studies of major monuments offer valuable historical records of what sites such as the Taj Mahal and the imperial mosque of the Mughal emperors in Delhi looked like before 20th-century restorations.
Samuel Bourne, the author of most the images in this album, was a banker in England before he moved to India to become a professional photographer.
Read the full account in the museum source.
Samuel Bourne was a British photographer known for his prolific seven years' work in India, from 1863 to 1870.
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