Author: drmazharnaqvi

Kanpur-Last Resting Place of Robert Home

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Robert Home who lies buried at Kutchery Cemetary of Kanpur

Dr. Mazhar Naqvi

Robert Home is well known as a painter of historical scenes, through world famous works such as icon of Mysore Wars “Lord Cornwallis receiving the Sons of Tipu Sultan as Hostages”. But Kanpur happens to be his last resting place remains unknown by and large. An important recorder of British India in the late 18th and early 19th century, he can easily be described as Thomas Hope of India for his breathtaking  portraits, history paintings, landscapes and scenes of native life. Some of his paintings are on display at Victoria Memorial, Kolkata while his portraits of the Governor-General of India, Marquis Wellesley and his brother Major-General, Sir Arthur Wellesley (the future Duke of Wellington) can be seen at Rashtrapati Bhawan in New Delhi.

One of the few British artists to have spent almost the whole of a long career in India, Home painted portraits of both British and Indian political dignitaries. A professional artist, Home came from a medical family. His father was ‘an eminent surgeon’ and brother was the first president of the Royal College of Surgeons. His sister married the great anatomist James Hunter. Preferring the brush to the scalpel, Robert Home studied painting under Angelica Kauffman. He began to exhibit at the Royal Academy by 1780 and worked in both Italy and Ireland before sailing to India in 1790.

He joined as official war artist to Lord Cornwallis in the Third Mysore War. Home accompanied the campaign, making sketches of the forts and engagements. Home’s painting (March 1791) ‘The Death of Colonel Moorhouse at Bangalore, happens to be one of the most memorable records of the campaign. His another historical (1792-95) depicts Tipu’s sons Abdul Khaliq and Maizuddin, the hostage princes with Ghulam Ali Khan, the Vakil of Tipu who is shown seated in a carrying chair and in the background an Englishman, most probably, Captain Kennaway the personal secretary to Lord Cornwallis is shown as having a discussion with Ali Raza Khan, another counsel of Tipu, holding a treaty document.

Influenced by Thomas and William Daniell, who visited Madras in 1792, Home produced a number of landscapes which show exquisite attention to architecture and Indian life. His evocative and coolly atmospheric portraits afford us a rare glimpse of daily life for the British in India, at a time when Britain’s position in the subcontinent was undergoing a dramatic change.

In 1795 Home moved to Calcutta. By June 1795 Home has established a successful studio in Calcutta. In October it was reported that he ‘was much employed, and has handsome prices, I hear’. This is confirmed by his sitters’ book, which is preserved in the National Portrait Gallery, London. His standard charge was 500 sicca rupees (£60) for a head, and 2,000 rupees (£240) for a full-length portrait. In addition to his commissions from wealthy East India Company civilians, Home painted several portraits of Marquis Wellesley, of Lord Minto (who succeeded him as Governor-General), and of the Marquis’s brother Arthur, later Duke of Wellington; he also portrayed a number of military commanders and high court judges. Among his patrons was the diarist William Hickey, who observed that in 1804 Home was ‘then deemed to be the best artist in Asia’. He was also an able draughtsman: his ”Select Views in Mysore, the Country of Tipu

Sultan” were published in London and Madras in 1794, and in Calcutta he made 215 water colors of Indian mammals, birds and reptiles, some of which were also worked up as oils.

He made a happy second marriage and his children joined him in India, all four sons becoming members of the East India Company’s army. Home, a punctual, amiable and hardworking man, became the chief portrait painter in Calcutta. He made a short visit to Dacca in 1799 to paint the Nawab Nasrat Jang. When Thomas Hickey and eccentric George Chinnery arrived in Calcutta in 1807 and 1811 respectively, Home’s successful portrait practice was threatened. In 1814, Home became Court Painter to the Nawab of Oudh at Lucknow. He worked for the Anglophile Nawab Ghazi-ud-din Haidar for thirteen years, painting portraits and court life. Home also designed Ghazi’s crown when he was declared as King of Oudh in 1819, as well as carriages, boats, furniture, even an elephant god. His interesting work for the ruler includes a lengthy barge in the form of a grinning crocodile. On its scaly back sat a howdah-like pavilion so the monarch of Oudh and one or more of his wives could relax in the shade as rowers propelled them along the  waters of the Gomti. This image was included in the exhibition of Lucknow portraiture at the Musee Guimet in Paris in 2011.

The artist also prepared the regalia for the coronation of Ghazi al-Din Haidar (1814-27). His creations include a gem-studded golden throne based on Mughal precedents. He received an annual salary of £2,000 and also designed crowns, robes, commemorative medals, and a coat-of-arms that were European in inspiration. Similar coronation garb was worn by the King Nasir al-Din Haidar (1827-37). The visual emblems of the coronation were liberally employed by later rulers until the last king of Awadh, Wajid Ali Shah (1847-56). In addition, he painted some southern landscapes, including the two views of Mahabalipuram in the collection of the Asiatic Society, Calcutta.

A description of his last-cited painting, published in 1907, states  “The King is dressed in a canary-yellow chapkan; and strings of pearls and other precious stones encircle his neck and bluish-yellow turban.” When he wasn’t busy painting the ruler, his wives, and their children, Home put likenesses of British officials to canvas. He painted Marquess of Wellesley more than a dozen portraits

After Ghazi-ud-din’s death in 1827, Home settled at Cawnpore where his widowed daughter Mrs. Anne Walker took care of him. Emma Roberts has recorded “Home kept up a handsome establishment ….. and had been known to exercise  the most extensive  hospitality to the residents of the station. He breathed his last in 1834 at the age of 82 and lies buried close to his daughter’s grave, near the main entrance of ‘Kutchery Cemetery’ in Civil Lines.

Kanpur Collector’s Bungalow and Fanny Parks

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Grave of Fanny Parks who stayed at Kanpur Collector’s Bungalow

Dr. Mazhar Naqvi

The District Magistrate’s bungalow in Kanpur has a distinction that no other Collector House in India can match. It once served as the residence of Fanny Parkes whose book  “Wanderings of a Pilgrim in Search of the Picturesque” is considered to be a classic work on Indian history, culture and customs. A brass tablet on the wall of bungalow silently reminds her connectivity with Kanpur. It was unveiled by the retiring Collector of Cawnpore Mr. Frank Mudie on April 22, 1836. The Pioneer in its edition dated May 17, 1836 had reported the ceremony under the caption “FANNY PARKES OF CAWNPORE-“A PILGRIM IN SEARCH OF THE PICTURESQUE”  – and reported “On April 22, Mr. Frank Mudie the retiring Collector of Cawnpore, unveiled at the “Collector’s House”, a brass tablet commemorating the residence there of Fanny Parkes, whose husband, during the period April 1830 – Feb. 1831, was acting Collector of Customs at Cawnpore……“ After a lapse of over 100 years, it was only last year that the fact that she lived in the “Collector’s House” was brought to light by a Cawnpore resident, A. Grezo”.

Fanny did not belong to the category of those Britons to whom India was simply a place to amass wealth and live in luxury in spacious bungalows. Rather, she was among those few to whom India was indeed a cozy home away from home. Douglas Dewar talks about the lady in his charming book “Bygone days in India”. “Mrs. Fanny Parkes came out to India in 1822 as the wife of an Indian Civilian…. She resided in the Country for more than 20 years, spending the greater part of that period at Allahabad and Cawnpore. During the whole of her stay in India she kept a journal. Upon this is based her “Wanderings of a Pilgrim in search of the Picturesque…. consisting of two bulky volumes and published in 1850.

Born in 1794 and married to Charles Parks, a writer (clerk) with the East India Company, (EIC) in March 1822, Fanny and her husband lived in India until 1845. She wrote her diary as a record for her mother in England and included her observations about India and its people. In Cawnpore, Deepawali festivities at Sarsaiyaghat  thrilled her so much that she recorded in her journal “”I was greatly pleased: so Eastern, so fairy-like a scene, I had not witnessed, since my arrival in India; nor could I have imagined that the dreary-looking station of Cawnpore contained so much of beauty….On every temple, on every ghat, and on the steps down to the river side, thousands of small lamps were placed from the foundation to the highest pinnacle, tracing the architecture in the lines of light. The evening was very dark, and the whole scene was reflected in the Ganges   “.She also noted some women sending off little paper boats, each containing a lamp, which floating down the river, added to the beauty of the scene.

She had also witnessed with amazement the sight of Oudh’s deposed Prime Minister  Agha Meer, making his way  to Cawnpore across the bridge of boats below the collector’s bungalow. She mentions “His train consisted of 56 elephants, covered with crimson clothing deeply embroidered with gold, and forty ‘garees’( carts) filled with gold Mohurs and rupees. His ‘Zenana’ came over some days ago, consisting of nearly 400 palanquins; how much I should like to pay the visit”. Agha Meer kept two elephants ready caparisoned at his residence and the first time he entered cantonments scattered gold Mohurs .He died in 1837 and lies buried in Gwaltoli Maqbara.

Fanny found India fascinating and delightful immediately on her arrival at Calcutta. She wrote “how I was charmed by the climate; the weather was delicious; and I thought India a most delightful country … could I have gathered around me the dear ones I had left in England, my happiness would have been complete.” She ran away from the stiff officialdom of the Raj and immersed herself in the country. Fanny explored the length and breadth of the country.

In the 24 years she lived in India, the country never ceased to surprise, intrigue and delight her. Her love for India is imprinted on every page of her book. William Dalrymple, world’s best known travel writer and winner of Wolfson prize for History in 2003 remarks “ It was Parkes’s curiosity and enthusiasm that distinguished her approach to India, and her journal traces her journey from prim memsahib, married to a minor civil servant of the Raj, to eccentric sitar-playing Indophile, critical of British rule and passionate in her appreciation of Indian culture.”

The longer she stayed in India, the more Parkes felt possessed by an overpowering urge to pack her bags and set off to explore: “How much there is to delight the eye in this bright, this beautiful world! Roaming about with a good tent and a good Arab [horse], one might be happy for ever in India.” She became slowly Indianized. The professional memsahib who came to India to watch over her colonial administrator husband, gradually transformed into a fluent Urdu speaker, spending more of her time on traveling around to visit her Indian friends. Aesthetically she grew slowly to prefer Indian dress to that of the English.

Fanny who found Indian men “remarkably handsome”, Indian evenings cool and refreshing … The foliage of the trees, luxuriously beautiful and novel, like majority of Brtishers also longed for her return to England. She really was keen on seeing her family. Yet  when she finally set foot on English soil again, her return was a moment not for rejoicing, but for depression and disappointment: “We arrived at 6 am. May flowers and sunshine were in my thoughts. But instead […] it was bitterly cold walking up from the boat – rain, wind and sleet, mingled together, beat on my face. Everything on landing was so wretchedly mean, especially the houses, which are built of slate stone; it was cold and gloomy . . . I felt a little disgusted.” Dalrymple describes her as “ an important writer because she acts as a witness to a forgotten moment of British-Indian hybridity, and shows that colonial travel writing need not be an aggressive act of orientalist appropriation – not “gathering colonial knowledge”, Unfortunately, she remains unknown to most of the Kanpuryityes today,. Can’t we do something to immortalize her beyond the brass tablet? ( Contributor is a Heritage Management Expert with deep interest in fascinating history of Kanpur( Cawnpore)