William Hodges R.A. 1744-1797

In October 1781 Hodges was sent, at the command of Warren Hastings, to complete drawings of Latifur and Bijaigarh.  He was at Bijaigarh during the siege of the fort by Major Popham, which marked the final stage of the campaign against the rebel chief, Raja Chait Singh, in the first Anglo-Maratha War.  Hodges painted a number of works from the same viewpoint, sometimes incorporating the detail of  soldiers on the hill to the upper left of the composition.  In the present work the outline of a canon is visible on the hill from which the British troops bombarded the fort.  A smaller version of the present composition in in the Paul Mellon Collection.

Although Hodges was of the view that war had a negative impact on the practive of art, he acknowledged that military campaigns offered artists the opportunity to access remote areas of the country.  As he wrote in the letterpress to the engraving for Select Views, "these places before that time, were very little known, and that of Bidjegur only by name, no European having been in its neighbourhood".

Some years later Thomas and William Daniell also travelled to Bijaigarh.  They painted the dramatic view with similar enthusiasm.