Digital Rare Book:
The Diaries of three surgeons of Patna, 1763
By Walter Kelly Firminger
Published by The Calcutta Historical Society - 1909

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Image:
An East India Company official is shown seated, leaning against a bolster and smoking a huqqa. Probably a portrait of Dr. William Fullerton of Rosemount, a Scottish surgeon.

Murshidabad, India

ca. 1760 - ca. 1764

Artist: Dip Chand

Opaque watercolour on paper

Marks and inscriptions:
dastkare dip chand musawwir - The work of Dip Chand the painter

Dr. Fullerton was a patron of the local Murshidabad painters. Paintings by Dip Chand and other painters in his school differed from other Murshidabad court work of the period in the choice of subject matter: it was unusual to depict a European in paintings like this.

Indigenous habits such as 'huqqa'-smoking and eating 'pan' (betel) had been adopted by many British residents in India. However the surgeon William Fullerton mixed unusually freely with Indians and set up house in the native quarter of Patna. Thanks to his friendship with Nawab Mir Qasim he alone survived the massacre of Europeans there in 1763. Fullerton was a collector of paintings and it is likely that the Murshidabad artist Dip Chand painted a number of pictures for him when visiting Patna with the Nawab's court.

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