Cathedral, Calcutta

Samuel Bourne no. 1712. A full view of St. Paul's Cathedral in Calcutta. This very stable image is based upon European landscape compositions, with the cathedral sitting in the center of the image, resting upon a shallow foreground and buttressed to either side by leafy trees. Two figures stand to the lower right of the building, creating a sense of scale. The foreground is divided by a wide road that cuts diagonally to either side. The sky fills over two thirds of the composition and is broken only by the towering spire of the cathedral in the top center of the image. Bourne did a number of Calcutta scenes documenting the colonial city, a subject familiar to British patrons since the Daniels prints and paintings of British monuments, created over a half century earlier. The large population of foreigners in Calcutta encouraged Bourne and Shepherd to open a branch of their photo studio in the city in the 1860's.