British photographer Linnaeus Tripe’s photographs of architectural and landscape views of Mysore in 1854 are being auctioned in London November for an estimated price of up to £200,000.
The photographs of Mysore are 56 albumen prints, including one 2-part folding panorama, individually mounted on card and nearly all signed by Tripe in ink. The set comprises of architectural and landscape views at or near Hullabede, Belloor and Stranan-i-Billikul in Mysore. The images were made by Tripe during a private expedition from Bangalore in December 1854, in which he was joined by fellow amateur photographer Dr A.C.B. Neill. The only other set of Tripe’s Mysore views, containing 22 photographs, are in the J. Paul Getty Museum in California.
Tripe, who died in 1902, had presented the photographs to the then Governor-General of India, the 1st Marquess of Dalhousie.
The auction of Tripe photographs includes 220 newly-discovered photographs of India and Burma in the mid-1850s, including 42 images of which no other prints are recorded, and five previously unknown photographs.
The auction will be held by Sotheby’s in London on November 15.
The photographs have not been seen by scholars for 150 years and are being offered for sale for the first time by the present owner, who got the photo collection by descent.
“This is a ground-breaking discovery and represents the largest group of photographs by Linnaeus Tripe ever to be offered for sale. These rare and beautiful images, printed by Tripe from waxed paper negatives, will rewrite the scholarship on his work. The images are among the first photographs taken of Mysore and Rangoon,” Sotheby’s specialist Richard Fattorini said.
The first printed depiction of the Taj Mahal will be auctioned by Bonhams in London on October 4. The print is part of an album, which is expected to sell for £30,000-35,000, by William Hodges who travelled through India in the 1780s executing drawings on the spot.
Interestingly, a letter written just four days before the British Army stormed Delhi during the First War of Indian Independence by Mughal emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar’s close aide Jat Nahar Singh, Raja of Ballabhgarh, will be sold at the auction in October.
The letter, expected to sell for £1,000-1,500, dictated in English to a secretary, was written on 10 September 1857. In the letter, Nahar Singh seeks the protection of Governor General of India, Lord Elllenborough, whom he had met as a young man. However, Nahar Singh was taken prisoner and hanged by the British in 1858.