Posted on: 28 July 2012

William Fraser (1784-1835)

When the wife of the new British commander in chief in India visited Delhi in 1810, she was horrified by what she saw there. It was not just the British Resident at the Mughal court, Sir David Ochterlony, who had “gone native,” she reported; his two assistants were even worse: “They both wear immense whiskers, and neither will eat beef or pork, being as much Hindoos as Christians.”

One of these men, William Fraser, a Persian scholar from Inverness who went on himself to become Resident at the Mughal court and lived in Delhi for three decades, made perhaps the most interesting journey of any British figure of the period, transforming himself from a self-exiled Scottish landowner to a White Mughal with an Indian family, a private army, and close relationships with some the most interesting artistic, theological, and political figures of the period.

Fraser became a crucial figure in Delhi’s artistic development: the Fraser Album, which he commissioned, was the landmark masterpiece of the period and its portraits of soldiers, noblemen, holy men, dancing girls, and villagers, as well as his staff and his bodyguards, are unparalleled in Indian art. Particularly remarkable are the images the Fraser Album contains of the village of Rania, some of which are on view here. Rania was home to Fraser’s mistress, Amiban, and his two Anglo-Indian sons, and daughter. Fraser’s connection to the village means that there is an intimacy here quite unlike the usual colonial commissions. The wild-looking and handsome villagers, superbly painted with a realist flourish by a master portraitist, were intimately known by Fraser, and formed part of his circle of acquaintances — as he wrote himself, the images recorded “recollections that never can leave my heart.”

© Asia Society, New York


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she's quite attractive. william fraser's album is pretty amazing, worth a deco. thank you for sharing

"They both wear immense whiskers, and neither will eat beef or pork, being as much Hindoos as Christians.” Indeed the mainstay of Hindu culture has been to accommodate even the invaders into its manifold plurality. With respect to the British, my regret is that Brits went back home after India's freedom. It would have been so much fun if many had stayed behind. I am sure, many would have contributed to the building of post independence India. The Brits are as much to blame for this alienation as the Indians.

Amazing painting....!!!

so lifelike...

painting...wow!!

Hello, I cannot help wondering if Ochterlony and Fraser were not just being pragmatically sensible when "neither will eat beef or pork," because it would presumably have been quite difficult to have acquired either meat safely in Delhi, quite apart from having given great offence to the Indian's surrounding them on every side. I myself found that I had much less tummy trouble if I only ate what the locals ate as I travelled, and I expect that these highly experienced long term travellers had made much the same discovery themselves in the days long before refrigerators. There was a very wide spread adoption of Indian dress by the Brits when they were off duty in India before the late 1820's. I have found several orders issued in the 1820's by the authorities trying at first with little effect to get the EIC officials and officers to wear uniforms or European costume at all times. This must have been immensely expensive for many junior officials and officers, who got very little pay compared to their expenses. The expensively tailored and inappropriate fabrics of these costumes would have taken a real beating (in both senses of the word) from the dhobi wallah's who must have been employed every few days to wash the clothes. In my own experience in the Gulf in the early 1980's clothes get worn out very quickly, and even a dozen sets of clothes would be rags after 6 months of washing. The expense of buying European type clothes in the Gulf was 3 or 4 times what the same clothes would have cost at home. I expect that the same sorts of ratios applied in India in the early 1800's, and they didn't have the luxury of a flight home once or twice a year. There can have been few, if any European tailors with many hundreds of miles of Delhi at that time. Living in daily contact with Indian's and often in the company of their own Sleeping Dictionaries they must have been well aware of how much more logical India dress was for the conditions they found around them. Nick Balmer

Ah. Occam's razor at work (or not at work given the whiskers and beards)!

Re: " My regret is that the Brits went back home after India's Independence." Not all of them did Shekhar - especially members of the business community - many of whom 'stayed on' well into the 1960s and 1970s. But - as you have alluded to above - not many of the British who lived and worked in India during the colonial period ever considered the country to be their real ' home' - in the 'spiritual ' sense that is, if not in the strictly geographic. Even those Brits who had been born on the sub-continent and/ or spent most of their adult lives there, and there were many, many of those - pined all along for the greenery and cool air of 'home' - however trite that might sound. The proliferation of hill-stations in India, adorned with mock-tudor cottages and sleepy little churches is testamont to this 'homesickness' (even if the distant home that they were dreaming of was really only a figment of their nostalgic imaginations) ... Civil servants who spent decades toiling away under whirling roof-fans from Rawalpindi to Rangoon were kept at their task by the thought that one day they might be able to retire (and the ICS were given very good pensions - one of the perks) to a 'bungalow' in Cheltenham or Eastborne.... this was the same for military officers. One should also always keep in mind that throughout the colonial period there was only ever a very small number of Brits in India - even at the height of the 'Raj' circa 1900, there were only about 100,000 of them scattered all over the country.... even if a quarter of this population had decided to remain in India post-1947 (and I'm sure that the numbers involved were much less than that) they would have represented a very small 'minority'.

Furthermore : India was never seen as a ' destination ' colony - ie. somewhere one might go and settle and put down permanent roots, as was the case with say Australia or Canada - both of which were huge and thinly populated countries where land was cheap to buy and where the prevailing culture, certainly during the 19th century, was as yet undefined, but as far as it had been, was modelled along Anglo-Saxon lines.... India remained forever ' exotic ' and ' alien ' to most Englishmen - even those who spent many years there - isolated in their little introverted, segregated communities.

I agree chutney and curry not enough to grow roots.

Nick Balmer - something of the same dynamic was still at work in Malaya in the 1960s. It was quite normal (even if it annoyed the PMC) for officers who were stationed there to wear sarongs around the mess, and the mess food was predominantly Malay with the hang-over from British Indian mess life: curried spatchcock chicken for Sunday lunch.

>...India remained forever ' exotic ' and ' alien ' to most Englishmen< Yes, true but I tend to think that some people such as Sir William Jones loved the country and considered it to be their second home.

Re: Sir William Jones .... No doubt - but Jones (who in point of fact spent less than ten years in ' Bengal ') was of a much earlier generation - I was really referring to the British population from the mid-19th century onwards. Having said that, you could find Brits in India who thought of India as 'home' right up until 1947 (and beyond), and who never thought for a moment of returning to Europe - but - they were few and far between.

I heard (the source was a relative) that C.F. Andrews was looked down in his own country for opting to work in India.

Hindus eat Pork. Muslims don't. The lady did not know that obviously.

Re: C.F. Andrews No, I don't think that Andrews would have been ' looked down on in his own country for opting to work in India ' ~ but rather for the nature of his activities once he had disembarked there. It wasn't really the 'done thing' for a clergyman to go and get himself mixed up in political matters - certainly not in the eyes of the British establishment in India.

I believe back then that pork was not considered a "safe" meat during hot weather even in Britain, and was considered risky out East.

What I heard was that he was criticized by his own family members.

>They both wear immense whiskers, and neither will eat beef or pork, being as much Hindoos as Christians.< I liked that.

How good of you to remind folks in the U.S. of things we can find in our LIBRARIES! Meanwhile, in the Americas south of the border.... How are things in .... ?

Fascinating

Great Stuff...I am happy and quite pleased that my ancestor was one of those Brits who decided not to go back home and settled in his little village in nw India.

Both story and painting impressive ...!

Amazing moments of History !

On another thread RBSI has posted Dalrymple's short video talk on Fraser where he presents 4 portraits of Fraser of which this one is said to be the first when Faser was 16. It is difficult to believe as there is no apparent similarity and Fraser seems to have transformed himself completely in each of those! The person in this portrait is feminine beyond belief, especially the eyes, hair, jacket and tunic.

True! He looks more sulky than sneering !