The Victoria Memorial of Kolkata was constructed between 1906 and 1921. Note the fine juxtaposition of the cow grazing and the statue of the horse being ridden by Edward VII above the gateway.
Nirad Chaudhuri describes, in his youth, how the Memorial appeared to Kolkata's inhabitants at the times: "So, ultimately, one had to work one’s way back towards the Chowringhee front in search of repose and order. As long as I lived in Calcutta, I kept up the habit of walking down to the Maidan as far as the Victoria Memorial, or to the Eden Gardens and the riverside between Outram and Prinsep’s Ghat. But my yearning for fine architecture was never destined to be satisfied. Domestic architecture was, of course, inconceivable, but even the public buildings I scrutinized in vain. Some of them were presentable, some even imposing and handsome to my unformed taste in architecture. But I soon learned that they were all imitations. The High Court was a copy of the Cloth Hall of Ypres, the Government House of Kedleston Hall; Writers’ Buildings and the Revenue Office were passable imitations of the style of the French Renaissance; certain other buildings were pseudo- Greek—Doric, Ionic, or Corinthian. The Cathedral, which had a western window of stained glass after designs by Burne-Jones, was in very pinchbeck Gothic. The Military Secretariat built for Kitchener, although ambitious, was so devoid of true character that in the medal lions on its facade the heads of Venus could hardly be distinguished from those of Mars. Nowhere was there anything authentic or original. Only in 1921 did Calcutta get a genuine specimen of architecture in the Victoria Memorial. It has faults of design, but still it is the only thing to redeem the City of Palaces architecturally. Yet it is extraordinary to relate that the Bengali citizens of Calcutta, who are totally unconscious how many of their pre-existent public buildings are imitations, regard the Victoria Memorial as such. They think that it is an unsuccessful imitation of the Taj Mahal. Let alone Emerson, the designer of the memorial, even if Brunelleschi, Bramante, Michelangelo and Wren had appeared in person and sworn otherwise, they would not have convinced these scoffers." (Autobiography of an Unknown Indian, 1951, Addison-Wesley edition, pp. 275.)