Red, Blue, and White Lotus, of Hindostan.

Code: 51477

Author: Forbes, James

Date published: 1813

Aquatint with original hand colouring by W. Hooker after a watercolour by James Forbes Chandode 1781 (bottom left and right of engraving). Overall size in hinged, off white fully conservation grade mount and back with decorative v groove: 37.8cms x 46.4cms, image size: 202mm x 282mm including titles. Forbes wrote, 'These water lilies were drawn and coloured from Nature...they almost cover the Indian Lakes. When gently agitated by the breeze, they give them a beauty and freshness not easily conceived by the inhabitants of a colder climate.' (British Library) Toning at edge of sheet under mount and one speck to left of title, little dusing in bottom right and left blanks but barely worth mentioning and otherwise very good condition. James Forbes was born in London to a Scotch Protestant family. In 1765, he first traveled to Bombay for the East India Company, and spent most of the years until 1784 in residence there. He filled 52,000 manuscript pages with notes on all aspects of Indian life and culture, including descriptions of wildlife and personal encounters with the people. After returning to England, he married and thereafter travelled extensively on the European continent. His life in India later formed the basis of the four-volume Oriental Memoirs, described in its subtitle as "selected and abridged from a series of familiar letters written during seventeen years residence in India: including observations on parts of Africa and South America