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Engravings of Madras

A visit during Madras Week to a couple of exhibitions featuring old engravings of Madras proved to be a learning experience. I discovered that the oldest known view of Madras was by George Lambert and Samuel Scott. This view of Madras from the sea wa s done in 1731-32. But, like the other five views of ‘The Company’s Settlements’, it was not based on personal visual experience; rather, all of them were based on aural experiences, the descriptions of those who had visited them.

The next view of Madras was done in the same manner, the artist being a Dutchman, Jan van Ryne, who was working in London. Again, in the drawing he did in 1754, he sees Madras from the sea. The van Ryne engraving was followed by several artists from England coming out to India to earn a living from ‘views of the country’ that many in England thirsted for or from doing local portraiture of both the ‘Nabobs’ and the Nawabs.

The first of them to arrive in Madras was William Hodges in 1780. Then came the Daniells, uncle Thomas and nephew William, in 1792 and Henry Salt in 1803. Among the resident artists whose work is better known was Francis Swain Ward, an Army officer whose work was done between the 1770s and his death in 1794. A magnificent view of Government House and Banqueting Hall by John Goldingham, the engineer who built the latter, was engraved in 1807. And among the military artists was Capt. Charles Gold, whose 50 views of the Tamil country and the Tamil people were done between 1791 and 1798 and published in London in 1802. The Gantz family, father John and sons Justinian and Julius, were three others who did many drawings between the l820s and the 1860s, several of them of Madras. John Gantz established a lithographic press in Madras in 1827 and Gantz and Sons is believed to have been the first such privately owned press established in India. It later became Gantz Brothers.

Prints of many of these engravings are in the collection of V. Narayan Swami, an international financial analyst. They are also to be found, beautifully presented, in a special gallery in the Fort Museum, which is one of the best things that has happened to any museum in the city. The whole museum is being renovated, hall by hall, and it won’t be long before it emerges as a museum of international class.

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