Anon. Album Frontispiece 'Love or Folly' Placard

Muston Young Family Collection

This picture forms part of a fascinating and poignant collection of works that belonged to Mary Jane Duncan Muston (1825–1850) and her husband Thomas Young (1810–1846), who both died tragically young in Calcutta, West Bengal, India.

Mary Muston was born in Calcutta, daughter of Dr William Pitt Muston. In 1844 she married Thomas Young, at Dacca, Bengal (now Bangladesh). Thomas served with the Bengal Civil Service and was son of Sir William Young, 1st Baronet of Bailieborough Castle (1724/5–1788)—an influential figure who was a politician, diarist and illustrator, and Governor of Dominica. The couple had two children: Lucy, born in 1845, and William (later Sir William Muston Need Young, 3rd Bt) who was born in 1847 after his father's death. On Mary's death in 1850 the children became wards of the Bengal Civil Orphan Fund, before in 1851 passing into the care of Mary's sister, Jessy Muston. William went on to serve with the Indian Civil Service like his father, and he later fought in the Afghan Campaign and the Burma Expedition in the 1870s and 1880s.

The pictures in this collection are a testament to the couple's short lives in India and their enduring connection with the country. They include works by Thomas Young and Mary Jane Duncan Muston themselves, as well as by their son William, along with a number of outstanding Indian Company paintings and Indian landscape subjects. As a whole, they represent something of the hybrid culture that was evolving in British India: traditional Victorian 'friendship' pictures sit alongside exquisite Company paintings by local artists.

Indian subjects of particular interest include works by Captain James Manson, an assistant on the geological survey of the Garhwal region of the Himalayas, and General Frederick Charles Maisey—son of renowned artist Thomas Maisey PNWS—who was an ensign in the Bengal Native Infantry and became an ardent antiquarian, passionate about the vestiges of ancient India.

There are also a number of stunning Indian Company paintings of bird subjects, which document 'exotic' native species in exquisite and vibrant detail.