Six Villagers in a Landscape

ca. 1815-1820

One of the most important sets of Company paintings was commissioned between 1815 and 1820 by the Scottish brothers William and James Fraser from painters still to be definitively identified. The figures portrayed belonged to the brothers’ retinue and their names are often given. In this case, simple and dignified villagers are superbly depicted with the realism of a master of portraiture and present an empathic image of the Indian population of the 19th century. To a certain extent, these works were a foretaste of the photographic portraits of half a century later, which finally marked the end of this pictorial genre.