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Gavin Hamilton, Calcutta, to [Ozias Humphry]

RA Collection: Archive

Reference code

HU/4/18

Title

Gavin Hamilton, Calcutta, to [Ozias Humphry]

Date

15 Feb 1789

Level

Item

Extent & medium

2 pieces

Content Description

Thanking Humphry for his anecdotes on painting and the aquatinta, which Mr. Baillie will also try. He thinks his drawings not worth the praises Humphry has bestowed on them. Mr. Longcroft, an artist who lived with Mr. Zoffany has sent home ten highly finished drawings, views of India, to be engraved. Zoffany is to superintend and has sailed for England, by a dangerous route, on a French ship called the Grande Duchesse. His friends worry for his safety.

Painting is decaying in India for want of encouragement. Devis and Renaldi are the last artists in Calcutta. Poor Farington died lately in Murishdabad. Hickey is going to Madras and Daniell, who has now finished his views of Calcutta, has gone "up the country landscape painting". Mrs Hill has dropped the miniature brush for "stiffer things" and married Lieut. Harriot.

He describes the impact of Zoffany's altarpiece of the Last Supper in [St. John's in Calcutta] and supplies his own criticism, the work was completed in six weeks. Lord Cornwallis has yet to sit to his portrait and probably never will. He is glad Humphry looks likely to settle amicably with Macpherson. Renaldi sends home to Mr. Hastings a portrait of Padre Parthemo, which he hopes to exhibit. Alefounder is still painting miniatures in Calcutta, but there is little encouragement.