obert Home was born in Hull, the son of an army surgeon
from Greenlaw in Berwickshire. A professional artist, he
had trained under Angelica Kauffman, and worked in Italy
(1773-78) and Dublin (1783-89) before leaving for India
in 1790 as official war artist to Lord Cornwallis in the
Third Mysore War. He arrived in Madras
in January 1791, at the same time as Cornwallis, the successor
to General Medows as Governal General. On 5th February,
the Grand Army moved towards Bangalore,
and Home was permitted to follow them. One of the most memorable
records of the campaign is Home's painting (March 1791)
'The Death of Colonel Moorhouse at Bangalore,' a composition
closely based on West's 'Death of General Wolfe on the Heights
of Quebec,' and a strong reminder of the contemporary impact
of the American War(1776) and its ideals. After the Treaty
of 1792, Home painted 'The Hostage Princes leaving home
with the Vakil, Ghulam Ali' as well as the splendid 'Lord
Cornwallis Receiving Tipu Sahib's Sons as Hostages at
Seringapatam, 1793-94, which has remained one of the icons
of the Mysore Wars.
British artists in India were not slow to recognise the
commercial potential of any images of the Third Mysore War
- a campaign in which Tipu had so nearly out-manoeuvred
the British. Thomas Daniell and his nephew, William, who
had been travelling in upper India for two years, came south
to Madras in March 1792 as the third Mysore War ended. In
November, after re-tracing the Grand Army's routes, the
Daniells returned to Madras, eager to meet Home, who had
actually been in the field. They copied Home's drawings
of Tipu's soldiers in their 'tyger'
jackets and inspired Home to renew his interest in landscape
painting. Two views of Mahaballipuram, which Home visited
with the Daniells in January/February 1793, are now in the
Asiatic Society of Bengal, Calcutta.
In August/September 1793, Arther Devis arrived to make sketches
of the hostage princes, and in May 1795, by now a artist
of some standing, Home moved to the capital, Calcutta,
and finally, in 1814, to the employ of the Nawab of Oudh,
where he remained until 1827.
Home's plan of Oootradroog, one of Tipu's grimly inaccessible hill
forts, is meticulously drawn. The work of military draughtsmen
was to document topography, and Home has carefully recorded and combined
a variety of viewpoints. However, this is also an unusually striking
and artistic drawing. It was worked up into a finished drawing for
publication in Home's 'Select Views in Mysore, the Country of Tippoo
Sultan,' published in London and Madras 1794. The detailed
descriptions accompanying the beautifully drawn plates have the
immediacy and interest of records made in the field, but, as Home clearly
states in his Preface, the full historical narrative was left to a
fellow Scotsman: 'Asia holds in its bosom natives of Britain who feel
more gratification from an increase of knowledge than from an increase
of wealth….It is our province to stimulate curiosity, not to gratify
it. This we leave to abler pens: and we do it with more staisfaction,
as the speedily promised work of Major Dirom will undoubtedly afford
a rich banquet to everyone who thirsts after science.'
