Indian Company School Bangle Making

An original c.1840s gouache painting – Indian Company School, Bangle Making.

A fantastically vivid Indian Company School painting showing a male bangle maker and his shop, with three customers.

In opaque pigment on cream wove paper.

Provenance: from an album of works belonging to Alice (1838–1860) and Mina Morton (1829–1880), daughters of the Irish missionary in India, William Morton, who was at Cossipore and Chinsura, West Bengal, in the 1830s and 1840s. In 1826 he is mentioned as Professor and Chaplain of Calcutta Grammar-School. At Chinsura he worked for the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. He was proficient in Bengali and published significant works, including A Dictionary of the Bengali Language (1828), A Collection of Proverbs, Bengali and Sanscrit, with their Translation and Application in English (1832), and The Life of Daniel in Bengali (1837).