1866
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
Dominant colour
Shimla. The Mall near Rabq Lodge is a 1866 by Samuel Bourne, a Impressionism work, depicting Road, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.
You see a quiet street in Shimla, India, lined with British-style buildings and a few people walking under tall trees. This painting is actually a photograph—one of the first taken in the Himalayas. Bourne lugged heavy cameras up steep trails to capture places most Europeans had never seen. The soft light and careful framing make the scene feel still, like a moment frozen in time. If you like this, look up more work by Samuel Bourne (British, 1834–1912).
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.
See the richer artist page
