1866
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
The City of Benares, on the Ganges, View of the Great Mosque of A (?) and Adjoining Landing Places is a 1866 by Samuel Bourne, a Impressionism work, depicting Allahabad, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.
You see a busy riverbank in Benares (now Varanasi): wooden boats, stone steps, and a big mosque with tall minarets. This photo was taken in the 1860s, before modern restorations. The mosque looks different today. Bourne lugged heavy cameras up mountains and down rivers to make pictures like this—no easy feat back then. For more early photos of India, look up the subject england.
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 pageYour cart is empty
Explore artworks →
