FERGUSSON, James (1808–1886)

A finely detailed nineteenth-century architectural view of the celebrated Shore Temple at Mahavellipore, now Mamallapuram, on India’s Coromandel Coast. Fergusson places the temple dramatically against the open sea, its two principal towers rising from an otherwise sparse coastal landscape. Broken architectural fragments occupy the foreground, while a small boat and distant birds emphasise the temple’s exposed maritime setting.

The restrained tonal treatment is characteristic of the tinted lithographic process: fine drawn lines articulate the elaborate masonry of the temple, while broad areas of tone establish the sky, sea and foreground.

The plate was drawn from James Fergusson’s observations of Indian architecture and transferred to lithographic stone by Thomas Colman Dibdin, a British watercolourist and lithographer who worked on Fergusson’s important architectural publications.

Reference: The surviving historical-image record identifies the composition as “Pagoda Mahavellipore,” by Thomas Dibdin, from a drawing by James Fergusson, 1847.