Lithograph

A rare lithograph from 1907 or beyond. Note the British policeman in side profile, the local constable saluting him. They are nearly the same height. The background reveals itself to be a cutout of the city, the policeman's terrain.

A curious case of an Italian word finding itself stamped upon a postcard of a characteristic type in India (the fakir, in this case a mendacious one). Mountebank is an old word for a charlatan, or salesman of quack medicines.

Possibly the earliest postcard of Hyderabad, by the Austrian artist Josef Hoffman who painted this scene during a visit to India in 1893-94 when he was in his sixties.

A interesting very early lithographic card from Bombay by the little-known city artist/publisher W. Cooper, who seems to have specialized in the risque postcard (the same woman seems to be the model for A Trysting Place).

A magnificent early lithographic postcard of Bombay, show Marine Drive before the Art Deco buildings became a dominant feature in the 1930s.

This unusual, sepia-ish lithographic postcard is probably by Paul Gerhardt at the Ravi Varma Press even though it is not signed by him with the Press imprint.

Nautch dancers inspired stories like Hassan Shah’s The Nautch Girl, “the first known modern Indian novel” in the 1790s, as well as the first Urdu novel, the story of the Lucknow courtesan Umrao Jaan Ada in 1899.

One of the earliest, if not the earliest postcard to the Taj Mahal. It can be rather firmly dated to 1899 when it was part of a series produced by the Ravi Varma Press for Babajee Sakharam, a Bombay-based retailer of photographic supplies, who…

[Original German] Das Oberste Thor Vom Fort Gwalior [end]

This image is from a painting by Josef Hoffmann, an Austrian painter and early postcard artist who traveled to India in the mid-1890s.

One of the earliest roughly dateable postcards of India, made by a German firm that soon seems to have vanished from history. It probably dates to 1896, when a similar card of Haiti was made (see Haiti's First Postcard by Peter.