Sir Charles D’Oyly (1781–1845)
Winter Room in the Artist’s House at Patna
September 11, 1824
Watercolor over graphite
YALE CENTER FOR BRITISH ART, PAUL MELLON COLLECTION
B1986.29.378 (cont…)
Sir Charles D’Oyly (1781–1845)
Summer Room in the Artist’s House at Patna
September 11, 1824
Watercolor over graphite
Charles d’Oyly was born in Murshidabad, India, where his father was the British East India Company’s resident at the court of the Nawab of Bengal. He spent much of his life as an official in the British Empire. In 1820 he became the Opium Agent at Patna, in northeast India on the River Ganges, supervising the profitable (and then legal) trade in narcotics. As befitted a wealthy and cultured man, D’Oyly entertained lavishly, and his home became a center for the arts. D’Oyly himself was a gifted amateur artist, producing many picturesque landscape views and depictions of the figures he encountered both in India and on a trip to South Africa (then Cape Colony). But nothing surpasses the elegant watercolors of the spacious rooms in his own house at Patna, where his collection of paintings and his musical instruments, the harp and the piano, take their place among the furnishings and accoutrements of polite society.
YALE CENTER FOR BRITISH ART, PAUL MELLON COLLECTION
B1986.29.379