Painting - Buddhist vihara cave, Ajanta

Object: Painting

Place of origin: Ajanta (made)

Date: January 1862 (made)

Artist/Maker: Simpson, William R.I. F.R.G.S., born 1823 - died 1899 (artist)

Materials and Techniques: Pencil, watercolour

Museum number: 1128-1869

Gallery location: In Storage

Public access description

William Simpson was born on 28 October 1823 in Glasgow. Following a seven-year apprenticeship with a specialist lithographic firm, he
moved to London in February 1851 and found employment with Day and Sons. In 1859 the firm commissioned Simpson to visit India and
make drawings for a book illustrating well-known places associated with the 1857-58 uprising. Thus began Simpson's long association with
India, and the first of his four visits to the subcontinent over the next twenty-five years. During these journeys he made numerous rapid pencil
drawings in sketchbooks, often heightened with colour washes. Many formed preparatory studies for his finished watercolours, most of which
he worked up after returning to London. The plan was for Day and Son to select 250 of these finished watercolours to be lithographed as
illustrations in the projected volume. While Simpson was away in India, however, Day and Son had been drifting into debt. In 1867, before it
finally went into liquidation at the end of the year, he was made a company shareholder as part payment. But, as he expressed it, 'the great
work on India, on which I bestowed so much time and labour, never came into existence'. Two years later, Simpson's collection of 250
watercolours was sold off as bankrupt stock: 'This was the big disaster of my life', as he ruefully remarked. This painting by Simpson depicts
fellow artist Major Robert Gill (1804-79) copying wall-paintings inside the Buddhist Vihara cave at Ajanta. In 1846 the Royal Asiatic Society
had commissioned Gill to make a pictorial record of the caves, and despite ill-health and the hostility of the local inhabitants he continued to
live there, even after his wife had returned to England and he had taken an Indian mistress. Sadly, twenty-five of Gill’s copies were destroyed
by fire in 1866.
Descriptive line
Painting of Robert Gill at the caves of Ajanta, by William Simpson, watercolour on paper, India, 1862
Physical description
This image shows the artist Robert Gill seated with his painting easel in front of one of the cave entrances at Ajanta. He is copying the
wall-paintings inside the cave.
Dimensions
Height: 31.5 cm, Width: 47.7 cm
Museum number
1128-1869
Object history note
Historical significance: William Simpson (1823 - 1899)

William Simpson was commissioned to go to India by his employers, Day and Sons, the London lithography firm. Having established his
reputation by documenting the Crimean war in 1854, he was instructed to sketch well-known sites in and around Delhi associated with the
heavy fighting of 1857.

Simpson arrived in Calcutta (Kolkata) in 1859 and travelled widely. His rapid pencil drawings formed the preparatory studies for his finished
watercolours which were done after his return to London in 1862. His fond memories of India, as noted in his journal, resulted in these highly
coloured, evocative and romantic interpretations of the Indian landscape.

Simpson, a largely self-taught artist from a poor family in Scotland, had hoped to achieve fame on the publication of his paintings in a lavishly
illustrated volume. Unfortunately, financial problems led to the poorly printed India Ancient and Modern containing only fifty images. Simpson
called it the ‘big disaster’ of his life.

The V&A has the single most important collection of watercolours made during Simpson's first expedition to India.
URL
http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O108360/buddhist-vihara-cave-ajanta-painting-simpson-william-ri/