Twenty-four Plates Illustrative of Hindoo and European Manners in Bengal. Sophie Charlotte Belnos. London: Smith & Elder Cornhill, 1832. Drawn on the stone by A. Colin from sketches by Mrs Belnos, hand coloured. Leaf of descriptive text to each plate, recto in French, verso in English. Descriptive text in French and English 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 book. 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. I am fond of this book for its details. One plate has a housewife busy cooking and at the back you can see a Kalighat Pat hanging in the wall. For long, I had a feeling that she was an Indian married to an European as she had aces to the inner life of many a character. Her other book ‘Sandhya’ is a delight as it pictorially describes the ritual of Hindu Puja.
Twenty-four Plates Illustrative of Hindoo and European Manners in Bengal
