Sir James Braithwaite Peile Walls of Mhowa, Kathiawar, Gujarat, India

An original 1864 watercolour painting, Sir James Braithwaite Peile, Walls of Mhowa, Kathiawar, Gujarat, India.

A delicate watercolour painted in 1864 by Sir James Braithwaite Peile (1833–1906), showing a view at Mhowa on the Kathiawar peninsula in Gujarat, on the far north of India's west coast.

In brown wash with graphite on cream wove paper.

This painting is one of a small group of views painted by Peile that we have for sale depicting landscapes in Maharashtra and Gujarat. Sir James Braithwaite Peile was one of the most significant and instrumental figures in this region during the British Raj. In 1885 he served as the acting Governor of Bombay, a jurisdiction that covered territories of the modern states of Gujarat and Maharashtra, amongst other areas. Throughout his career Peile found recreation in sketching, capturing the beauty of the landscape in a style that combines topographical observation and a picturesque sensibility. Some of his paintings won prizes at exhibitions in India.

Born in Liverpool in 1833, James Peile was educated at Repton School in Derbyshire, where his father was headmaster, before studying at Oriel College, Oxford. In 1855 he was appointed to the Bombay civil service, and he arrived in India by paddlesteamer the following year. Over the next three decades he held numerous important administrative roles, including municipal commissioner of Bombay, political agent in Kathiawar, and vice-chancellor of Bombay University.

Peile was by all accounts one of the more sympathetic colonial administrators, who sought to understand the needs of the local Indian communities. During his tenure, he advocated for the property rights of ruling chiefs in the Bhavnagar region, and he asserted local claims to revenue from salt and opium against the government of Bombay. In the region of Kathiawar, an area of 23,000 square miles, he facilitated peaceful reconciliation between the Gaekwar of Baroda and 193 other ruling chiefs. He also laid the foundations of primary education in Bombay and assisted in stabilising the finances of the city, as well as supporting the establishment of a college at Rajkote for the sons and relatives of the ruling chiefs. The Peile bridge opened at Jetpur in 1877 and in 1878 construction of the railway commenced in Bhavnagar. When in 1877 the province was threatened by famine and Sir Richard Temple denied Peile's requests for financial help, Peile at once organised self-help by local co-operation to avert disaster. Sir Richard Temple subsequently declared that 'the condition of Kathiawar was a credit to British rule.'

Peile retired to England in 1887 and was appointed to the Council of India, a position he held for a further fifteen years. In this role, he was one of the first to argue for the need for enlarging provincial councils and increasing their powers, and he advocated a progressive increase in the number of Indians admitted to the higher branches of the civil service. He opposed the use of India's revenues for purposes such as paying for sending troops to Sudan in 1896 as 'not being a direct interest of India'.

On his return to England Peile lived at Phillimore Gardens, Kensington. He had three children, one of whom, James Hamilton Francis Peile, became a clergyman, later Archdeacon of Warwick and Archdeacon of Worcester.