by William Hooker after James Forbes⠀
original hand coloured aquatint
Captioned ‘The Cobra de Capello, or Hooded Snake of Hindostan’
Forbes arrived in Bombay in 1766 as a Writer in the East India Company and spent his first five years in Bombay, living in the Fort area. At that time Bombay was developing as the premier port and commercial centre on the west coast and there were many oppoIntunities for young Company servants stationed there. The marshland between the seven islands was being filled up and eventually the islands were joined to form the Bombay peninsula. Forbes was adventurous and independent. He was an amateur artist, who sketched the Indian environment with no other training, as he himself stated, except encouragement from his friends. Forbes lived in India for 17 years after which he produced his Oriental Memoirs. Its narrative was based on a series of his letters from India and the contents of about 150 notebooks, which returned to England with him. William Hooker was a botanist and executed the superb natural history plates for James Forbes monumental work on Western India, ‘Oriental Memoirs’, in 1812.
Size (cms): 30 (H) x 23.5 (L)
Size (inches): 12 (H) x 9.5 (L)
