Gandhi ’42 photos get £2,880 at UK auction
Miss World contestants Alexandra Tipacti of Peru
AN ALBUM of very early photographs of important ancient cultural sites in Karnataka by the celebrated British pioneer photographer Andrew Neill was sold for £33,600 at an auction by Bonhams in London on Tuesday afternoon.
The lot of 15 photographs, including a three-part panorama of the temples at Hampi, taken between 1854 and 1855, had been estimated to sell for £4,000-6,000. The final price realised for these photographs was more than five times the estimate.
The collection of 21 photographs of Mahatma Gandhi, taken in Bombay on August 7, 1942, was sold for £2,880, almost double the estimated price of £1,000-1,500, during the India and Beyond sale at Knightsbridge by the auction house.
The photographs by Jayant Lalan show Mahatma Gandhi at an informal indoor gathering and taking an early morning walk at Juhu Beach. This collection of photographs has a great historical significance for India as they were taken on the day Mahatma Gandhi launched his call for the Quit India Movement in his speech to the All-India Congress Committee at Gowalia Tank Maidan in Mumbai.
The unique album of over 70 photographs taken in Tibet during the controversial British Mission to Tibet in 1903-04, led by British Army officer and explorer Major Francis Younghusband, was sold for £38,400. The photographs were taken by John Claude White, a British political officer in Sikkim who was co-leader of the mission.
The controversial mission led to the massacre of Tibetan monks, forcing the Tibetan government to sign the Lhasa Convention which effectively turned the country that had been closed to the West, into a British protectorate. The album includes photographs of Tibetan nuns, Dalai Lama’s regent and envoys and the invasion route of the British Army.
Post new comment