D’OYLY, Sir Charles (1781–1845), artist; WILLIAMSON, Captain Thomas (1758/59–1817)
The Costume and Customs of Modern India
Publisher: Edward Orme, Bond Street, Corner of Brook Street
Place: Calcutta
Year: [c. 1824]
Edition: First edition.
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First edition of this important early nineteenth-century illustrated record of British and Indian social life, based on drawings by Sir Charles D’Oyly, with descriptive text by Captain Thomas Williamson.
The work presents a series of scenes depicting the domestic routines, occupations, entertainments and encounters that characterised European life in British India. Subjects include European gentlemen with their Indian language tutors, household servants bringing dinner, snake charmers, dancing women and other figures encountered in everyday colonial society.
D’Oyly, an East India Company civil servant and accomplished amateur artist, spent much of his life in India and became one of the most prolific visual chroniclers of Anglo-Indian society during the early nineteenth century. His drawings were translated into aquatint by John Heaviside Clark and Charles Dubourg, whose finely coloured plates combine detailed figure studies with interiors and settings illustrating the material culture of the period.
The plates had originally appeared in Edward Orme’s The European in India in 1813. They were subsequently reissued with Williamson’s descriptive text under the present title, The Costume and Customs of Modern India. Bibliographical evidence from surviving paper watermarks places this undated issue at approximately 1824.
ref. Abbey, Travel in Aquatint and Lithography 1770–1860, no. 440; Tooley, English Books with Coloured Plates, no. 184; Colas 888; Lipperheide 1486.
Collation: Folio. xxiii pp., followed by descriptive letterpress. Complete with all 20 plates as issued.
Description: Complete with 20 hand-coloured aquatint plates, engraved by J. H. Clark and C. Dubourg after drawings by Sir Charles D’Oyly, each accompanied by descriptive letterpress. The plates are printed in aquatint and finished by hand in colour, with decorative ruled borders washed in grey and pink. Subjects include An European Gentleman with his Moonshee, or Native Professor of Languages, A Gentleman’s Khidmutgars, or Table Servants, Bringing in Dinner, A Saumpareeah, or Snake-Catcher, Exhibiting Snakes before Europeans, and A Dancing Woman of Bengal, Exhibiting before an European Family.
Binding: Full burgundy straight-grain morocco, boards elaborately bordered in gilt and blind with broad foliate ornament; spine divided into compartments by raised bands, richly gilt with floral tooling and titled Costume of Modern India in gilt. Decorative gilt turn-ins and all edges gilt.
Condition: Binding rubbed and scuffed with some surface wear and minor loss, particularly at the extremities and spine; gilt decoration remains strong. Internally generally clean with scattered light spotting, soiling and age-toning. Hand-coloured aquatints remain attractive with good colour. Complete with all 20 plates as issued.
This item is non-exportable.
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