An aquatint by English landscape painter Thomas Daniell depicts the Taj Mahal. Daniell traveled India with his nephew William Daniell, drawing scenes from across the country and later publishing them in a multivolume collection, Oriental Scenery, 1795 and 1808.
"... Artist Sita Ram’s 1815 chalk-and-watercolor-on-paper piece is as exquisite as its magnificent subject: the world’s most famous Islamic mausoleum. Visible are a tender gray-white sky and a swaying garden of lush mango trees. Between these layers of gray and green, like a creamy floating cloud, stands the Taj Mahal. 'The Taj Mahal by moonlight' is one of more than 200 surviving works that the Indian painter created on a yearlong trip with his employer, Warren Hastings, an official with the British East India Company, which at the time was the equivalent of the world’s biggest trading corporation. The inspiration for the art that has transcended time corresponds to Hastings’ nightly visit to the Taj Mahal in 1815, which he describes as a once-in-a-lifetime experience, adding an epithet to the monument as 'uncommonly striking.' He also confessed how the visit left an 'impression of gratification' for him. ..."
“Reminiscences of Imperial Delhi” consists of 89 folios containing approximately 130 paintings of Mughal and pre-Mughal monuments of Delhi, as well as other contemporary material, and accompanying text written by Sir Thomas Theophilus Metcalfe, the governor-general’s agent at the imperial court (1795-1853).
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