The Upper Himmalayahs. View on the New Road between India and China. Mt. Pangi with the Snowy Peaks of China in the Distance (1863 or 1866): Art, History and Details

The Upper Himmalayahs. View on the New Road between India and China. Mt. Pangi with the Snowy Peaks of China in the Distance (1863 or 1866) 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 alpine landscape of Pahari India fascinated British collectors of photographic albums in the 1800s, who enjoyed observational travel and gaining knowledge through images of distant places. This album contains 50 photographs of Indian monuments and landscapes, which became part of the British Empire less than a decade before Samuel Bourne photographed this scene. Two men on the road reveal the immense scale of the mountains and narrowness of the road, thereby satisfying British tastes for the sublime and wondrous. They probably served local guides and porters who carried Bourne’s glass plates, chemicals, and other photographic equipment.

Object facts

• Title: The Upper Himmalayahs. View on the New Road between India and China. Mt. Pangi with the Snowy Peaks of China in the Distance
• Date: 1863 or 1866
• Creator attribution: Samuel Bourne (British, 1834–1912)
• Culture: England
• Type: Photograph
• Technique: albumen print
• Collection: PH - British 19th Century
• Department: Photography
• Accession number: 2024.5.19

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.