Catalogue description Grindlay, Robert Melville, 1786-1877, Lieutenant, artist

Four watercolours (all mounted, one framed) by Lieut R M Grindlay, plus secondary background information.

Lieut Grindley (7th Bombay Native Infantry, 1804-20) accompanied Lord Elphinstone on his expedition of 1809 to Peshawar (then, winter capital of the Kabul Kingdom) and produced a number of watercolours of local tribesmen, subsequently reproduced in Mountstuart Elphinstone, An Account of the Kingdom of Caubul (1815).

Of the illustrations to the volume as a whole, Elphinstone notes, in the Preface to the second edition (1819, pp. x-xi): "The engravings are all portraits, except numbers III. XIII. and XIV., which, though accurate representations of the dresses and equipments they are designed for, are not likenesses of individuals. They are all done by Indian artists, except numbers V. VI. VII. and VIII., which are sufficiently distinguished by the superiority of their execution: for them I am indebted to Lieutenant R M Grindlay of the Bombay establishment, who drew them from Afghauns just arrived from their own country."