An Artist’s Quest to Paint the Mighty Kanchenjunga for His Patron, the Viceroy of India

It is January 1874.

A large man, asleep on a small four-poster bed, finds himself unable to breathe under the weight of three enormous woollen blankets. Two loud gongs ring out in the darkness as the chill of January runs like a bolt of electric current through his arms and legs. 

 ‘I am in Kurseong,’ the six-foot-tall man murmurs, drawing up his legs that are sticking out from under the pile. A long-drawn sigh breaks the stillness of the room as a faint shimmer of shadows appears on its walls. 

It had taken nearly four weeks, mostly by train, to travel from Bombay to Calcutta. Traversing the belly of India, diagonally, so  to speak, and stopping in quaint towns before arriving in Banaras, where he swore he saw bloated corpses floating down the Ganges. In Calcutta, he had stepped out of the train onto a smoke-filled and noisy station to be ferried by liveried servants across the river to the Government House. It was the very epitome of opulence, in fact, the stolid nerve centre of the Empire, where perfectly manicured lawns competed with the sheen of tightly stretched silk sheets across the immense four-poster bed.

‘Mal de barquement’, was the phrase Lord Northbrook, his host, had used to explain why – even after four weeks – Lear still felt that he had not left the boat. Surprisingly, however, that feeling dissipated almost as soon as the horse cart departed from the gate of the dak bungalow in the foothills of Pankhabari and made its way up a steep, curving road, depositing him, his eleven items of luggage and manservant eight hours later outside a dimly lit cottage in Kurseong.  

The stiffness around his ankles and thighs reminds him of the seemingly unending ride up the hills the day before. Trundling all day long through narrow, winding roads lined with pine and bamboo, the pony cart had left him under the crumbling porch of a thatched stone house. This was the dak bungalow on Kurseong’s Weathercock Point. After clambering up the steps in the dark to the front gallery, he was cheered by the sight of two oil lamps sitting on top of a broken mantelpiece. The air was icy cold. The spluttering fire in the fireplace, visible at the far end of the room, presented a scene that he had only encountered in books read long, long ago. The Castle of Otranto – yes, that was it. The shadows swaying almost imperceptibly behind the heavy curtains  that reeked of damp and decay were straight out of the pages of a gothic masterpiece. The perfect abode of unquiet spirits, geckos and bats, not to speak of strange housekeepers with wizened, pale  faces and dressed in dark, flowing gowns. As he passed through the narrow corridor beyond the gallery door, he noticed the passing draught lifting the covers on the mantelpiece. The doors trembled intermittently. Giorgi, his manservant, went about his business unperturbed, lifting the bags and carrying them to the room before vanishing into the darkness. 

After lying still for a few minutes, Lear strains his eyes at the small window to catch any sign of light, but the darkness outside hangs like an impenetrable black curtain. No one had warned him that his destination in the Himalayas – the dak bungalow for which he had travelled thousands of miles, all the way from the port of Genoa through the heart of India – would be a forbidding three room thatched cottage with plaster crumbling from large portions of the lime-washed walls. There was not a shred of viceregality visible anywhere! The three-day journey from Calcutta to Kurseong reminded him of the time when his little fingers felt a loosely coiled and knotted skein that he had once found in an old attic chest. The exhaustion of being on slow Indian trains, clanking along, and on even slower pony carts could only be matched by the many sensations that surged through his heavy eyes and ears. The unexpected transitions from suffocating heat to numbing cold; the gaggle of early-morning workers on the streets outside train stations girding themselves for work; the long-drawn half understood conversations with colonial officials and interminable verbal exchanges with native Indians about directions or monetary payments; the pungent odours rising from broths served on frail pale blue china. 

Were his travels worth the pain and tedium that he now feels throbbing in his bones? Would Kurseong offer a view of the mighty Kanchenjunga that he can capture on just an ordinary sheet of paper by merely using a graphite pencil bought from an old shop in Genoa? Had he perhaps been too ambitious in hoping to turn a simple pencil sketch into an oil painting that was worthy of being hung on the walls of viceregal rooms? Would the painting ever be able to match the splendour of floors covered with the most expensive sumac rugs. Had the handsome commission promised by the Viceroy of India been the lure that had brought him, in the midst of winter, to these remote mountains? He knew that the offer had come after years of quiet anticipation as he saw the years slipping by and arthritis beginning to trouble his knees. All along, he had known that his decision had been driven by an unnameable need to escape. But escape from what?

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This excerpt from the book The Viceroy’s Artist by Anindyo Roy is republished with permission from Hachette India. 

Anindyo Roy is an Associate Professor at Colby College.