Anon. Buckingham Palace from the India Office Upper Window, Sunset, London

An original late 19th-century watercolour painting – Buckingham Palace from the India Office Upper Window, Sunset, London.

This beautiful, ethereal watercolour—relatively large in scale—shows a view looking west at sunset from an upper window at the India Office (now the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office) on King Charles Street in Westminster.

The shimmering skyline hints at some of London's iconic buildings, most notably Buckingham Palace, but the expansive view captures the abundance of green in the heart of London: St James's Park, the oldest of the Royal Parks, which was redesigned by John Nash in 1827, reducing its formality by converting the canal into a serpentine lake with islands and rerouting formal avenues to romantic winding pathways.

The painting's composition is anchored by the central sun and its spreading rays, bathing the city in soft evening light. The 19th-century artist filters the view through a Romantic gaze—the awe-inspiring sunset elevating the subject from topographical record to spiritual encounter.

The artist is anonymous but was evidently someone with access to the India Office building, which at that time was not open to the public. As a government office tasked with overseeing the administration of crown rule in India, it employed Secretaries of State for India, members of the Council of India, and a wider administrative team.

In watercolour with gum arabic to intensify the colour. One of a pair of London views that we have for sale (see KD-800).