Lot n° 6
Estimation :
1200 - 1500
EUR
Robert ORR (1804 - 1842) - Lot 6
Robert ORR (1804 - 1842)
Constantia Palace, Lucknow (East India)...
Watercolour on paper, 165 x 246 mm.
Presented on an album leaf, decorated with a cut paper frame, attributed lower right, titled lower center.
The title continues: "...built by General Martin (of Lyon), who was buried there in the year 1828."
Robert Orr was an esquire (esquire), presumably from a family of prominent indigo traders, based at Fort Gloster, on the outskirts of Calcutta, where he died on 16 October 1842, aged 37, as stated in the Asiatic Journal and Monthly Register for British and Foreign India, China and Australasia (Vol. XXXIX, September-December 1842, p.431).
A few years earlier, a homonym, probably his father, was cited as a complainant in a case of indigo theft, committed in Sasni (Uttar-Pradesh) by a certain Raja Pahup Singh. Having requested the intervention of Almas Ali Khan, a local lord based in Lucknow, and unhappy to be dismissed, he called upon the French general Pierre Cuillier-Perron (1755-1834).
The "General Martin (of Lyon)" is Claude Martin (1735-1800), a famous adventurer, soldier of the French East India Company, then of the English East India Company. He knew the Orr family, and in his published correspondence, he quotes Robert (the father) and complains about the large debt of 40,000 rupees which he is in no hurry to repay.
Martin, after having climbed all the hierarchical levels of the English East India Company constitutes the most important fortune amassed by a European in India. Discouraged from returning to France because of the Revolution, he built himself a palace, Constantia, named after his motto Labore et Constantia. The palace, although largely completed in 1795, was not fully finished when he died. It still exists and houses La Martiniere College, now one of the most prestigious educational institutions in India. It houses Martin's mausoleum, the largest European burial monument in India, which historian William Dalrymple describes as "the East India Company's answer to the Taj Mahal". Martin's will informed of his wish to found, with the rest of his property, five schools, all of which were established and still exist: two in Lucknow, two in Calcutta and one in Lyon.
Constantia was used as headquarters for the Cipayan rebels in 1857 (called the Indian Rebellion of 1857).
Our drawing is one of the earliest views of this Palace, a true gem of colonial architecture in India.
Provenance: from the album amicorum of Anna de Beauchesne (1803-1876).
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