LITERATURE:
Giles Tillotson, The Artificial Empire: The Indian Landscapes of William Hodges, 2000, p.62, plate II, illustrated.

One of the few British artists to have spent almost the whole of a long career in India, Robert Home is well known primarily as a portrait painter of both British and Indian political dignitaries. He is also known as a painter of historical scenes, through such major works as Lord Cornwallis receiving the sons of Tipu Sultan as Hostages (National Army Museum, London), and his views of battlefields associated with the Mysore wars. In addition, he painted some southern landscapes, including the two views of Mahabalipuram in the collection of the Asiatic Society ,Calcutta.The present picture is the only known oil by Home of a topographical subject in the north of the subcontinent. It is also exceptionally rare as an eighteenth century British painting of a site now in Bangladesh.

Born in Hull 1752, Home was the son of an army surgeon. He arrived in Madras early in 1791. Much of his work in south India was connected with the wars against Tipu Sultan then being pursued by Lord Cornwallis, and this was compiled m two published collections; Select Views in Mysore (1794) and Views of Seringapatam (1796). In the spring of 1795 he moved to Calcutta, and established a practice as a portrait painter which flourished for nearly twenty years. In 1814, perhaps in response to increasing competition from other artists, he moved to Lucknow. The Nawabs had long been significant patrons of British portrait painters, and Home served the court there for a further period of thirteen years. Upon the death of Nawab Ghazi-ud-din Haidar in 1827, he retired to Kanpur, where he eventually died in September 1834.