

Living Out Loud: Great Indian Palaces
Roll back the years with vintage photographs of Indian palaces from Sarmaya’s collection
Roll back the years with vintage photographs of Indian palaces from Sarmaya’s collection
A special edition of Saturdays at Sarmaya with INTACH Mumbai saw founder Paul Abraham take our guests on a short journey through our collection on 6 October, 2018. Highlights of the walkthrough included: iconic 19th-century photographs by Felice Beato and Samuel Bourne, a sprawling Phad painting from Bhilwara, vibrant Gond art from Patangarh, two stunning Mata-Ni-Pachedi canvases from Ahmedabad and luminous Tholu Bommalaata puppets from Dharmavaram.… Read more »
The leaders, battles and victories of the Uprising of 1857, aka India’s First War of Independence. Accompanied by rare archival material from the Sarmaya collection
Photographs that form a compelling narrative about India in the 19th century
Samuel Bourne was a banker with itchy feet. Paintings of India so enamoured him that he quit his job in Nottingham and arrived in Calcutta in 1863. Now regarded as one of the earliest travel photographers in the world, Bourne started exploring Indian landscapes in the hills of Shimla and spent months in Kashmir, returning… Read more »
Samuel Bourne’s Himalayan expedition was an arduous one as he pursued photography and documented the untouvhed landscapes and sights in India. This photograph from the 1860s shows the giant or King fern, flora typical to this region.
This photograph of the Wanga Valley by Samuel Bourne captured in 1863 showing the Himlayan glaciers. During his three Himalayan expeditions, Bourne photo documented landscapes in compoistions and artistic styles that appealed to the Victorian notions of the ‘picturesque’ and unusual landscapes such as this image formed a category in itself.
Photograph of a glacier in Kashmir taken by Samuel Bourne in 1863. During his three Himalayan expeditions, Bourne photo documented landscapes in compoistions and artistic styles that appealed to the Victorian notions of the ‘picturesque’ and unusual landscapes such as this image formed a category in itself.
This is a photograph of the bull pavilion at the Brihadeshwara Temple in Tanjore, taken by Samuel Bourne in 1869. The pavilion stands to the east of the main temple shrine housing the 13 feet high monotlithic structure of Nandi – the white bull associated with Shiva (to whom the temple is dedicated).
This photograph was taken by Samuel Bourne of the distinctive huts of a Toda Mund (village) at Ootacamund in the Nilgiri Hills of Tamil Nadu. Traditionally pastoralist, the Todas in the past lived in thatched houses spread over the slopes of the Nilgiris. This picture is one of many examples of ethnographic photographs captured at… Read more »
This engraving after an original photograph by Bourne and Shepherd shows the mausoleum of Tipu Sultan and Haider Ali in Seringapatam (now Srirangapatna), erstwhile capital of the Kingdom of Mysore.The domed mausoleum is seen situated on a raised platform in the middle of a landscaped garden. The tomb was first built by Tipu to hold… Read more »
Located in the delightful mountainous region of present-day Uttarakhand, Landour in the early 19th century was a place where a long-term care facility (infirmary) was constructed for the British Indian Army. The area ultimately evolved into an important British cantonment. Thomas Rust first appears credited as a photographer in 1869 as an assistant to FW… Read more »