- Artist
- Thomas Daniell 1749–1840
- Medium
- Oil paint on canvas
- Dimensions
- Support: 972 × 1359 mm
frame: 1110 × 1500 × 75 mm - Collection
- Tate
- Acquisition
- Purchased 1971
- Reference
- T01403
Catalogue entry
Thomas Daniell 1749–1840
T01403 Sher Shah’s Mausoleum, Sasaram 1810
Inscribed ‘T-DANIELL 1810’ on a tomb b.l.
Canvas, 38¼ x 53½ (97 x 136).
Purchased from Dr Maurice Shellim through Mr W.G.Archer (Grant-in- Aid) 1971.
Coll: acquired from the artist by Charles Hampden Turner (1771–1856) and sold by his great-grandson in January 1928; ...; Dr Maurice Shellim.
Exh: R.A. 1810 (143, as ‘The mausoleum of the Emperor Shere Shaw, at Sas- saram, in the province of Bahar, East Indies’).
Lit: Thomas Sutton, The Daniells, 1954, PP64, 97.
Thomas Daniell and his nephew William were in India between 1786 and 1793. They made a long sketching tour of upper India from 1788 to 1791, visiting the 16th-century mausoleum of the Afghan ruler Sher Shah at Sasaram, Bihar, in February 1790. As well as this painting of the subject (made after his return to England) there is a watercolour by Thomas Daniell of the same view in the collection of the Pacific & Orient Steam Navigation Company (Mildred Archer, The Daniells in India, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, 1962, no. 37, repr.) and a pencil and wash drawing by him of the Western Gate of the mausoleum in the India Office Library (Mildred Archer, British Drawings in the India Office Library, 1969, II, p.585, no.W.D.201). A drawing by Daniell of the mausoleum was engraved by F.J. Havell for The Oriental Annual, 1834, facing p.123, and was accompanied by a description of the site by the Rev. Hobart Caunter.
Published in The Tate Gallery Report 1970–1972, London 1972.