1866
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
Shimla. The Church Through the Trees, from Jakko is a 1866 by Samuel Bourne, a Impressionism work, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.
You see a quiet hillside: tall pines frame a small stone church perched above Shimla. Sunlight filters through the branches, dappling the path and the church walls. Bourne lugged heavy camera gear up these Himalayan trails in the 1860s. His photos—like this one—were sold as souvenirs to British travelers, showing India as a picturesque, familiar place rather than a foreign land. Look up other photos in the series *Views in India* at The Cleveland Museum of Art.
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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