Caroline Simpson Collection

Front of the Cutcherry at Batticaloa. Here the Collector resides. 1819 / artist unknown

1819

1 watercolour drawing : 23.5 x 32 cm.

Titled and dated on image: Front of the Cutcherry at Batticaloa. Here the Collector resides.1819.

Batticaloa (Sri Lanka)
bungalows
verandahs
carriage loops
colonial settlements
fences

Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society

Cutcherry is a word derived from the Hindi kachahri and is defined in Hobson-Jobson's glossary of colloquial Anglo-Indian words and phrases as an office of administration or a court-house. The Collector was the chief administrative and revenue officer during British colonial rule in the Indian sub-continent and Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) and in 1819 the Collector at Batticaloa was Henry Pennell Esq, an English civil servant. [ref: "Schedule of Officers of the Civil Government of the Island of Ceylon ... during the year 1819" in (Parliamentary) Estimates, Accounts and Papers, 1819-1820.]
This watercolour was included in a bundle of papers sent to the London head office of the Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society from one of their missionaries stationed in what was then Ceylon and may even have been drawn by one of their number. Pennell's name occurs in their reports in 1819.

The Methodist Church, Overseas Division (Methodist Missionary Society); Christie's (London) Topographical Pictures 16 July 1993, lot 208; Caroline Simpson Collection, Clyde Bank, The Rocks, Sydney, 2001-2004.

Caroline Simpson Library & Research Collection ; L2007/118-1

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Picture

43143