William Carpenter

A watercolour artist. who travelled for six or seven years in the 1850s, painted scenes of India, its people and its life. William followed his brother abroad in the early 1850s and painted in India for some years. Carpenter kept no diary, however his large collection of dated watercolour paintings allows his journey to be recreated. He travelled overland through Egypt and arrived in Bombay in June 1850. In 1851, Carpenter met Tara Chand, the court painter to Maharana Sarup Singh of Udaipur and recorded that meeting with a painting of the Indian artist and his two sons. The painting shows Chand drawing, so he may have been drawing Carpenter at the same time. Carpenter painted landscapes and portraits of local rulers. He made three annual trips to Kashmir in 1853, 1854 and 1855. Carpenter painted the Golden Temple of Amritsar in 1854. He travelled through the Punjab, Afghanistan and then to Rajasthan before returning to England in 1857. An important painting he returned with was a portrait of Prince Fakhr-ud Din Mirza, who was the eldest son of Bahadur Shah II