Detail of the India Office façade (from inside main quadrangle), Whitehall. Sculpture by Farmer and Brindley. Architects: Sir George Gilbert Scott and Sir Matthew Digby Wyatt. 1861-68. (another view) The three representative figures on the India Office façade shown here are (from left to right) an Arab, a Mogul and a Hindu. The sculptors for the many figures on the façade were Hugues Protat, John Birnie Philip, and Henry Hugh Armstead, but I have not been able to deteremine which sculptors created which statues.

The three portrait reliefs below the Indian figures are (left to right): Horace Hayman Wilson (1786-1860), the first Sanskrit Professor at Oxford and for 24 years the Librarian of the India Office; James Mackintosh (1765-1832), Commissioner for Indian Affairs in the 1830s; and Bishop Reginald Heber (1783-1826), Bishop of Calcutta from 1823. Heber was one of our greatest hymn-writers, responsible for such famous hymns as "Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty," "From Greenland's icy mountains," "Brightest and best of the sons of the morning" and "Lord of mercy and of might."

Photograph and text 2006 by Jacqueline Banerjee. You may use this image without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you (1) credit the photographer and (2) link your document to this URL in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in a print one.

References

Cannon, John, ed. The Oxford Dictionary of British History. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2001.

Dixon, Roger, and Stefan Muthesius. Victorian Architecture. London: Thames and Hudsonm, 1978.pp, 160-63.


Last modified 26 October 2006