NON-EXPORTABLE

TITLE: Mosque at Lucknow
ARTIST: Henry Salt
ENGRAVER: Daniel Havell
PUBLISHER: William Miller
PLACE: London
YEAR: 1809
MEDIUM: Colour Aquatint
SURFACE: Paper
IMAGE SIZE: 45.5 x 62.5 cm
WITH MOUNT: 61.5x 78 cm

Plate 6 from Salt's folio views of India, Egypt, Ceylon, Abyssinia, the Cape of Good Hope, and St. Helena.

The present lot is an aquatint from Henry Salt's 'Twenty Four Views in St. Helena, the Cape, India, Ceylon, the Red Sea, Abyssinia and Egypt'. It depicts the Grand Mosque in the Bada Imambara complex of Lucknow built by the Nawab of Awadh, Asaf-ud-Daula in the eighteenth century. Viscount Valentia (George Annesley) wrote that it was "built of brick but is completelycovered with so brilliant a chunam, that it is impossible to bear the lustre when the sun shine full upon it. The tops of the minarets and of the domes are gilt. It forms one side of a square. The other sides are composed of a palace, celebrated fora deep and wide well, the Imaunbarah....and three light, fantastic gateways, with arches similar to those in the Mosque. In the centre is an Asiatic garden, divided into regular beds, by large walks of stone." (British Library Board)

Henry Salt made a wash drawing in 1803, on which this print is based, and it currently resides in India Office Collection, British Library (WD1300).