The Taj Mahal by moonlight, by Sita Ram, commissioned by the Marquess and Marchioness of Hastings, I

chalk and watercolour on paper watermarked ‘John Dickinson & Co 1810’, inscribed in brown ink in lower border: “Taj Garden at Agra//Taj at Agra & part of the Garden at Moonlight from the East”, pencil inscriptions in upper border 'MB' and '2' (or possibly a Kaithi notation by Sita Ram)

painted surface: 40.9 by 62cm. (16⅛by 24⅜in.)

original backing paper: 48 by 66.6cm. (18⅞by 26¼in.)

Provenance

The Earl of Moira, later The Marquess of Hastings (1754-1826), Governor-General of Bengal, and Lady Hastings (1780-1840), India and England

By descent in 1840 to their daughter Sophia Frederica Christina Rawdon-Hastings (1809-59), who married in 1845 John Crichton-Stuart, 2^nd Marquess of Bute, Mount Stuart House, Isle of Bute, Scotland

By descent in the family of the Marquess of Bute at Mount Stuart House, Isle of Bute, Scotland, 1845-1974

Sotheby’s, London, Fine Oriental Miniatures and Manuscripts, 9 July 1974, lot 263, no.10

Maggs Bros., London, Oriental Miniatures and Illumination, Bulletin no.25, vol.VIII, May 1976

Literature

P. Pal, J. Leoskho, J. Dye and S. Markel, Romance of the Taj Mahal, Los Angeles and London, 1989, no.248, p.230

M. Fraser, Selected Works from the Stuart Cary Welch Collection of Indian and Islamic Art, London, 2015, cat.37, pp.126-9

J. Losty, Sita Ram’s Painted Views of India, Lord Hastings’s Journey from Calcutta to the Punjab, 1814-15, London, 2015, pl.147, pp.222-3

Exhibited

On loan at the Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, 1983

Romance of the Taj Mahal, Los Angeles County Museum of Art; The Toledo Museum of Art; Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, 1989-91

Taj Mahal: The Building of a Legend, Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA, 2005-06

Catalogue note

This superb watercolour of the Taj Mahal bathed in moonlight was painted by the Bengali artist Sita Ram in 1815. It is from a set of highly important albums prepared for the Marquess and Marchioness of Hastings between 1814 and 1817.

The Marquess of Hastings, who until 1816 was known as the Earl of Moira, arrived in India with his wife the Countess of Moira, in 1813 to take up his post of governor-general of Bengal. Within a year he embarked on a long tour from Barrackpore near Calcutta to the foothills of the Himalayas north of Delhi, and back again via Agra to Calcutta. He was accompanied by his wife and children. The purpose of the tour was to inspect British possessions and to meet the Indian rulers and viziers of the cities and states along the way. The whole tour lasted fifteen months and took the party past many famous architectural sites along the way.

Lord Hastings employed the artist Sita Ram to accompany them during the whole journey in order to record the scenes, landscapes and architecture they encountered during their tour, resulting in an extraordinary pictorial record of northeast India in 1814-15. Lord Hastings also kept a detailed journal throughout the tour, providing a written record that aligns with the watercolours.

Lord Hastings’ journal entry for 27 February 1815 describes the night-time visit to the Taj Mahal that was illustrated by Sita Ram in the present watercolour:

“At night we went to view the Taj by moonlight. It was well worth the trouble. The night was cloudless, and the moon shed a brilliancy on the pure white of the building that was uncommonly striking. The silence, the chastened light, the solemnity of the scene, all contributed to enhance the real beauty of the appearance. We lingered long at the spot, contemplating the objects from various points, and when we departed, it was with a deep impression of gratification.” (Lord Hasting’s Journal, quoted in Losty 2015, p.223).

Sita Ram almost certainly made his preparatory drawings for the present painting during this same night-time visit, since the governor and his entourage departed from Agra the next day. During the return journey to Barrackpore the party halted in Fatehgarh near Farrukhabad, where they stayed for four months from April to August 1815 during the hot season and beginning of the monsoon. During this sojourn Sita Ram worked up many of his paintings into the finished works and pasted them onto the backing papers prior to binding them into albums (Losty 2015, p.23). The party arrived back in Barrackpore on 9 October 1815. The paintings were completed and the albums were assembled by early 1817 (Losty 2015, p.23). In all there were 229 finished watercolours, all completed in approximately two and a half years, half of which was spent travelling – an astonishing achievement of the artist’s skill and productivity.

The 229 paintings were mounted into ten albums, each containing 23 pictures, except for the tenth album, which contained 22 (Losty 2015, pp.247-9). The present watercolour is from volume IX, 'Views from Secundra to Agra', which contained several views of the Taj Mahal and its grounds and pavilions from different viewpoints and at different times of day.

The albums were brought back to Britain by the Marquess and Marchioness of Hastings in 1823, but disappeared from sight for a hundred and fifty years. In 1974 two albums from the set of ten were sold at Sotheby’s in London (Sotheby’s, Fine Oriental Miniatures and Manuscripts, 9 July 1974, lots 263 and 264). Volume IX was lot 263 in the sale and the present painting was no.10 in the album. In 1995 the British Library acquired the remaining eight albums containing 183 paintings. This acquisition and the information gained from the 1974 auction allowed the history of the albums and the provenance of the intervening 150 years to be fully understood. Individual works from the albums have appeared in various publications and exhibitions since 1974 and in 2015 Jeremiah Losty produced a detailed study of the albums along with a transcription of Lord Hastings’ journal and copious notes (Losty 2015; see also Losty 2019).

The ten albums and Lord Hasting’s journal were bequeathed to their daughter Sophia Frederica Christina Rawdon-Hastings (1809-59). She was only six years old during the tour of 1814-15 and Lord Hastings recorded his purpose in keeping the journal: “This journal is undertaken for the sake of the Dear Little Companions of my expedition, It will be both gratifying and useful to them in a future day to have their recollection of circumstances revived, and to have many matters explained which they will be likely to have comprehended but imperfectly.” (Losty 2015, p.9)

In 1845 Sophia married John Crichton-Stuart, 2^nd Marquess of Bute, whose family seat was Mount Stuart House on the Isle of Bute in Scotland. The albums stayed together at Mount Stuart House with the Bute family until 1974, when two albums were consigned to auction. The other eight albums remained at Mount Stuart House until 1995, when they were acquired by the British Library. Examples from the two dispersed albums are now in the following museums: San Diego Museum of Art; Harvard University Art Museums; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA. For a full listing of the dispersed paintings see Losty 2015, p.247, Album 1, and p.249, Album 9.

Sita Ram is known chiefly from the large number of paintings he produced for Lord and Lady Hastings between 1814 and 1823. He probably trained at Murshidabad in the late 18^th century at a time when artists were adapting from traditional methods of Indian miniature painting to western styles favoured by their new European patrons.