Secundra Near Agra. The Mausoleum of the Emperor Akbar (1863–70): Art, History and Details

Secundra Near Agra. The Mausoleum of the Emperor Akbar (1863–70) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Samuel Bourne (British, 1834–1912).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

The 50 images in this album, all taken in the 1860s, move from the hill towns of the Himalayas down to cities including Lahore (now in Pakistan), Delhi, Lucknow, Agra, Benares (now Varansi), and Calcutta (now Kolkata). Architectural studies of major monuments offer valuable historical records of what sites such as the Taj Mahal and the imperial mosque of the Mughal emperors in Delhi looked like before 20th-century restorations.

Object facts

• Title: Secundra Near Agra. The Mausoleum of the Emperor Akbar
• Date: 1863–70
• Creator attribution: Samuel Bourne (British, 1834–1912)
• Culture: England
• Type: Photograph
• Technique: albumen print
• Collection: PH - British 19th Century
• Department: Photography
• Accession number: 2024.5.45

A detail from the museum

Samuel Bourne, the author of most the images in this album, was a banker in England before he moved to India to become a professional photographer.

Collection credit

Severance and Greta Millikin Purchase Fund

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.