Untitled [Set of 11 Cabinet Cards]

A Group of eleven cabinet cards, each mounted on printed cabinet-card boards with imprints in gilt, sepia or black ink, some with decorative crests, scalloped mounts or monograms, by prominent Indian Studios, Including S. Hormusjee, Eos Photographic Co., The Bombay Photographic Co., Bourne & Shepherd and D. F. Pinheiro (Belgaum), sizes approx. 16.5 × 10.8 cm, Circa 1880–1910

Comprising:
• 4 cabinet cards by S. Hormusji / The Bombay Photographic Co., Kalbadevi Road, Bombay (including individual male and female portraits).
• 2 cabinet cards by EOS Photographic Co., 12 Kalbadevi Road, Bombay (male sitters).
• 1 cabinet card by Bourne & Shepherd, Simla–Calcutta–Bombay (vignetted female sitter).
• 1 cabinet card by D. F. Pinheiro, Camp Belgaum (portrait of a couple).
• 1 cabinet card by P. Gomes & Co., Kalbadevi Road, Bombay (three-woman group portrait).
• 1 cabinet card from unattributed Bombay studios (likely Kalbadevi corridor, individual male).
• 1 cabinet card from Cliffton & Co., Bombay (a colonial officer and his tea attendant).

KALBADEVI TO CALCUTTA AND BELGAUM: TEN CABINET PORTRAITS OF A GLOBAL STUDIO CULTURE, 1880–1910

This carefully assembled group of fourteen cabinet portraits spans the late-Victorian to Edwardian decades, illustrating both the cosmopolitan breadth of studio photography in colonial India and the transnational networks that linked Indian portraiture with metropolitan practice in Britain. Together, these photographs chart the emergence of Bombay as a photographic capital, the extension of the medium to cantonments and provincial towns, the dominance of Calcutta- and Darjeeling-based ateliers, and the stylistic influence of Britain’s provincial studios.

Bombay and the Kalbadevi Corridor
At the heart of the collection are five portraits by S. Hormusji and two by EOS Photographic Co., both located on Kalbadevi Road, the city’s busiest photographic thoroughfare by the 1880s. Hormusji—also listed as Shapurji or Shapoorji Hormusji—operated The Bombay Photographic Co. from the Elephant (Hathi) Building, advertising with gilt cartouches and decorative mounts that positioned the studio as both respectable and modern. EOS Photographic Co., situated at 12 Kalbadevi Road, similarly employed crowned devices and refined typography to align their portraits with metropolitan standards. The sitters, Parsi and Gujarati mercantile elites as well as members of an emerging middle class, consciously negotiated between Western coats and fezzes, richly bordered saris, and Indian jewellery, revealing photography’s role as a marker of aspiration, identity, and modernity in Bombay society.

Provincial and Regional Studios
Beyond Bombay, the group includes a rare cabinet card from D. F. Pinheiro, Camp Belgaum, exemplifying the spread of photographic studios into cantonment towns that catered to soldiers, administrators, and local elites. Its garden-set composition reflects a hybrid idiom between vernacular and Europeanised portraiture. From eastern India, portraits by Bourne & Shepherd—India’smost celebrated 19th-century firm, founded in 1863 with branches in Calcutta, Simla, and Bombay—attest to the pan-Indian reach of professional studios. Their images combined elegance with accessibility, reinforcing the cabinet card as the dominant domestic photographic format of the 1880s and 1890s.

Cabinet Cards and Photographic Progress
All fourteen examples are albumen prints, the standard process of the era. Produced by binding silver salts with egg white, albumen prints yielded lustrous surfaces, though they were often prone to fading and foxing. The cabinet card format (approx. 16.5 × 10.8 cm) had by the 1870s superseded the smaller carte-de-visite, allowing for larger and more detailed likenesses. The elaborately printed and gilt mounts of these cards functioned not only as advertisements but also as emblems of professional pride, cementing the cabinet card’s centrality in photographic practice across India.

Collectively, this group offers more than likenesses of individual sitters. It provides an invaluable record of how men, women, and families in colonial India consciously staged identity, status, and cultural hybridity within the studio frame. From Bombay’s bustling Kalbadevi Road to cantonment ateliers in Belgaum and from Calcutta’s elite ateliers, these portraits illuminate the entwined histories of colonial modernity, studio culture, and the evolving technologies of the photographic image.

NON-EXPORTABLE

This lot is offered at RESERVE

This lot will be shipped in "as is" condition. For further details, please refer to the images of individual lots as reference for the condition of each lot.

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