Maggs Bros. Ltd.

A highly accomplished album of watercolours by Captain Charles Steuart (1825-1859) who served with the 13th Regiment Bombay Native Infantry. The upper board is gilt "C.J. Steuart XIIIth Regiment." Registered in 1825, those troops were active during the Indian Rebellion of 1857 and 1858.

During 1854, the 13th rotated through the garrisons, stations, alongside frontier duties in western India. The dated images here are all from either 1849 or 1854 and reflect these postings with depictions of the Ruined mosque at Champaner and the Hindu Temple in Gujerat, Goa, Seroda (Siridao?) Island, the caves on Elephanta Island (including a stunning interior view), Bombay (Sir Henry Leeke's House), Elphinstone Point in Mahableshwar, and several of Sindh, including the tomb and the "Mahomedan Temple" near Thatta). There is also a lovely portrait of two (possibly) Afghan soldiers.

Steuart must be seen in the tradition of other soldier artists in India such as James Atkinson (1780-1852), Colonel George Strahan (active 1860s-1890), Major Robert Gill (1804-1879), Lieutenant-Colonel Charles Ramus Forrest (d. 1827), Captain Robert Smith (1787-1873), and even the war correspondant, William Simpson (1823-1899). The best of them vividly complement the famous Company School artists who were working at the same time.