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Lot Essay
Of similar size to the set of panoramic views of Madras presented by Ward to the East India Company in 1773 and now in the British Library.
Francis Swain Ward, whose Indian views predate the work of William Hodges in India by twenty years, had a dual career, as a professional artist and as an officer in the East India Company's Madras Infantry regiment, serving mostly in south India. He served from 1757 until 1764 when he resigned and returned to London, exhibiting paintings at the Chartered Society of Artists between 1770 and 1773. He returned to India in 1773 where he remained until his death at Negapatam in 1794. He offered seventy-six of his paintings to the East India Company in February 1790, with the request that they should be engraved and the plates given to him, but his gift and request was not accepted. For further information about Ward, see M. Archer, British Drawings in the India Office Library, London, 1969, II, p.640, and P. Rohatgi, 'Preface to a lost Collection - The Pioneering Art of Francis Swain Ward' in P. Rohatgi and P. Godrej, Under the Indian sun: British landscape artists, Bombay, 1995.
Francis Swain Ward, whose Indian views predate the work of William Hodges in India by twenty years, had a dual career, as a professional artist and as an officer in the East India Company's Madras Infantry regiment, serving mostly in south India. He served from 1757 until 1764 when he resigned and returned to London, exhibiting paintings at the Chartered Society of Artists between 1770 and 1773. He returned to India in 1773 where he remained until his death at Negapatam in 1794. He offered seventy-six of his paintings to the East India Company in February 1790, with the request that they should be engraved and the plates given to him, but his gift and request was not accepted. For further information about Ward, see M. Archer, British Drawings in the India Office Library, London, 1969, II, p.640, and P. Rohatgi, 'Preface to a lost Collection - The Pioneering Art of Francis Swain Ward' in P. Rohatgi and P. Godrej, Under the Indian sun: British landscape artists, Bombay, 1995.