Blandteknik på papper, 19,2 x 30 cm, inklusive ram 42 x 51 cm. Betitlad "The staff" i blyerts.

PROVENIENS
Thomas Agnew’s & Sons, Manchester;
Sam Mendel (1811-1884), Manley Hall, Whalley Range, Manchester;.1
his sale, Christie’s, London, The Magnificent Collection of Drawings and sketches made in India at the Period of the Mutiny in 1858, by Mr. E. Lundgren, Member of the Society of Painters in Water-Colours was purchased by Mr Mendel in its entirety. Mr. Lundgren accompanied the army of Lord Clyde in the campaign of Oudh, immediately following the relief of the garrison of Lucknow. The collection will first be offered as a whole, 16 April 1875, lot 141 "Lord Clyde and his staff”;
The cotton magnate and conservative politician Edvard Hermon (1822-1888), Wyfold Court, Reading, Berkshire, whom acquired the collection as a whole (363 lots);
his daughter, Lady Francis, married to Sir Robert T. Hermon-Hodge (1851-1937), 1st Baron Wyfold, the same place;
the collection as a whole purchased from their heirs by Bukowskis Konsthandel Stockholm in 1929

LITTERATUR
K. Asplund, Egron Lundgren, Vol. II, 1915, p. 186, p. 162, appendix F, p. 186, No. 141
K. Asplund, Med Egron Lundgren i Indien. Ett urval av konstnärens akvareller och teckningar 1858-1859, 1931, illustrated pl. 34
S. Nilson & N. Gupta, The Painters Eye, Egron Lundgren and India, 1992, illustrated p. 111

UTSTÄLLNINGAR
Manchester, Trafford Park, The Royal Jubilee Exhibition, 3 May-10 November 1887, no. 1206 ”Lord Clyde and his Staff"

In 1857 an uprising broke out in India, known as ”The Mutiny". As far as British relations with India were concerned, the event represented a watershed. The East India Company was abolished while India was granted Crown Colony status. Formidable political and economic interests were at stake and the British public knew almost nothing about the conditions in the country where the events were unfolding. The Times had sent one of their reporters, William Howard Russel, who had made a name for himself as a special correspondent during the Crimean War, and the photographer Felice A. Beato to report. The art dealers Thomas Agnews’s & Sons in Manchester who previously had published a richly illustrated volume on the Crimean War, now planned a similar publication on India and contracted Egron Lundgren. The contract guaranteed Lundgren compensation for the period during which he would be out of touch with his normal patrons, and copyright to any works produced on the outward or homeward voyages. Everything he produced in India was the property of Thomas Agnews’s & Sons..5 From the Queen herself, who often evinced a particularly warm interest in India, Lundgren received a commission for watercolors which he later dispatched to her at regular intervals (now in the library at Windsor Castle). Lundgren had previously been working for Queen Victoria and was one of her favorite artists. She also supplied him with introductory letters.

Lundgren departed from Southhampton 4th February on the frigate ”Pera”, bound for Alexandria. From Alexandria he took the train to Kairo. Following a ten days long stay in Egypt during which he explored the vicinity of Kairo, Lundgren boarded the ”Bengal” at Suez bound for Calcutta via Ceylon. It arrived in Calcutta on 20th March. Lundgren spent about three months in Calcutta before he ventured inland to the war zones. Through his introductory letters he received an invitation from Field Master Sir Colin Campbell, Lord Clyde, Commander-in-Chief of the British army in India, to accompany him on the battlefields. On 24 November Lundgren experienced his first battle during the campaign in Oudh. In his diary Lundgren writes about a dangerous night march during which the enemy at any moment could have used the darkness to attack. When morning breaks he describes how Lord Clyde and his staff just passes in front of him (S. Nilson & N. Gupta, op. cit., p. 111):

”Lord Clyde and the staff road past me at full gallop; they all looked grim in the morning light, their boots dripping wet as if they had just forded a river and their attic thick with dust and dirt. At their heels rode carrabineers and Sikh cavalry with red turbans and lances.”

During the military campaigns Lundgren came to know William Howard Russel. In 1860 Russell published his experience of the war, My Diary in India, in the Year 1858-9, I-II, with eleven lithographs after works by Lundgren.

Lundgren spent about a year in India returning to England in April 1859. Thomas Agnews’s & Sons at once organized a few exhibitions of his large body of work counting Queen Victoria amongst its visitors. Agnews in the end never published a book on the war in India. They got involved in litigation and meanwhile interest in Indian affairs considerably cooled. Instead they sold the large collection of Lundgren’s work from India to the local textile merchant Sam Mendel, the so-called "Merchant Prince” whom had made a fortune by providing the fastest export routes round the Cape of Good Hope to India and Australia. His home, Manley Hall completed in 1857 housed an impressive collection of art, much of it acquired with the aid of Thomas Agnew’s & Sons. When the Suez Canal opened in 1869 he lost his commercial advantage and in 1875 was forced to sell Manley Hall and its contents.

In September 1859, when the Royal Family moved to Scotland, Lundgren was extended an invitation to accompany them. A studio was arranged for him in one of the wings of the rebuilt Balmoral, and the Queen made almost daily visits to observe the progress of his work. Lundgren’s body of works from Scotland are today at Windsor Castle.