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SOPHIE CHARLOTTE BELNOS, Twenty-four Plates Illustrative of Hindoo and European Manners in Bengal: Drawn on the stone by A. Colin from sketches by Mrs Belnos, London: Smith & Elder Cornhill, 1832

Lithographed hand-coloured title page, 21 of 24 (3 missing) hand-coloured lithographs after Mrs Belnos by A Colin and J J Belnos. Leaf of descriptive text to each plate, recto in French, verso in English.
Descriptive text in French and English missing for plates 1,2,3 and 9. Descriptive text in French missing for plates 4, 19, 20 and 22
Original pictorial boards
47.5 x 30.5 x 2 cm

The present lot is likely a volume of lithographic plates by the French painter Alexandre-Marie Colin based on drawings by Sophie Charlotte Belnos, an amateur artist who became a professional lithographer later. Belnos was the wife of French miniature artist Jean-Jacques Belnos, who is credited with introducing lithographic printing in India in 1822. She had set up a studio in Calcutta in 1847, and many of her illustrations depict the daily life and customs of Indians, many of which were depicted in the present lot and The Sundhya, 1851.

In the foreword, Belnos writes: Every plate is executed from sketches after nature, which I made chiefly during my pedestrian excursions in the interior of the country, on the banks of the Ganges, where the restraints which confine respectable Europeans to the Palkee are laid aside, and they can enjoy in uninterrupted freedom the contemplation of the various scenes presented by the country, and its inhabitants to their view.


LIST OF PLATES

1. A Hindoo Returning from Callee-Ghaut
2. A Hindoo Woman Serving her Husband Dinner
3. A Hindoo Woman Exposing the Body of her Infant on the Borders of the Ganges
4. A Dying Hindoo brought to the Ganges
5. Offering to the Ganges
6-7. Feast of the Churruck Poojah
8. Ablutions of a Young Hindoo woman of Rank on the Banks of the Ganges
9. A Hindoo Woman Exposing her Infant Supposed to be Under the Influence of a Malignant Spirit
10. The Village Gooroo Receiving the Homage of Travellers
11. The Hoolly Festival
12. The Village Gossips
13. Silk and Cloth Merchant
14. Interior of a Native Hut
15. Bayees or dancing boys [MISSING]
16. Three Dancing Girls of Hindoostan.
17-18. A Nautch
19. The Corpse of a Native Woman Floating on the Ganges
20. A Bunderwallah
21. Pykars or Pedlars
22. Jogees / Voiragee / Mendiant Musulman / Mussulman Beggar
23. A Civilian Going Out [MISSING]
24. Men of Low Cast Skinning a Dead Bull [MISSING]

Reference: J R Abbey, Travel in Aquatint and Lithography 1770-1860, 458