Maria, Lady Nugent carried in a palanquin, accompanied by twenty-four bearers and attendants

Company School, Calcutta, April 1812

Footnotes

Provenance
General Sir George Nugent, 1st Bt. (1757-1849), Commander-in-Chief, India, 1811-13, & Maria, Lady Nugent.
Thence by descent via the Nugents to the current owners.

Published
A. L. Cohen (ed.), Lady Nugent's East India Journal, Oxford 2014, pl. 6 and cover.

This large painting can be seen as emblematic of British female life in India in the 18th Century, and (in company with what she wrote about it) of the British becoming used to the strangeness of daily life in India. In its composition (the wide landscape format, the low horizon with few or no features) and its palette, it might be regarded as a precursor to the sort of paintings depicting the servants of the British produced in Calcutta around thirty years later by Shaykh Muhammad Amir of Karraya. Remarkably, it is almost certainly the one referred to by Lady Nugent in her journal entry for 24th April 1812:

Went out in the evening, in a tonjon, for the first time - the cavalcade was very curious - twenty-four men attended me - I mean to have a drawing of this procession, so I will not describe it. A tonjon is a small curricle body, carried on the shoulders of four men, and I could not help thinking I looked like a successful candidate at an election [...] Very unwell in the evening. (Cohen, op. cit. p. 59).

She seems to refer to the same episode in a section of a letter dated 25th April, to Lady Temple (Cohen, p. 364):
You would have laughed if you could have seen me going out yesterday. I have a little carriage called a Tonjon. It is a sort of Curricle Body fixed upon Poles and carried upon men's Shoulders and I had no less than 23 men attending me - 8 to carry the Tonjon, a Surdar Bearer and his mate to direct them, four men carrying silver sticks before me and calling out my Titles and condescension in treating the World with my appearance [...] Then a man carrying a Chatta, a large umbrella with Fringe and silver ornaments. Another man with a sabre in his sash called a Jemendar and 7 Hircarhas or Messengers. The use of these last I can't understand.

The servants and their dress are also referred to directly in another passage, recording a visit to General Hewett's house in Calcutta, in January 1812:
The footmen are called Kitmatgars - we dress ours in white, with scarlet sashes, or rather white and scarlet mixed or twisted together - scarlet bands to their turbans - and silver crescents in front - this dress is really very pretty.