Early 1853 Soltykoff had 42 of his portraits of the Indian people, both of the nobility and of the deprived, published by the Parisian company of H. Gache in folio format under the title “Habitants de l’Inde”. In 1859 Smith, Elder & Co. from London, under the title of “Indian Scenes and Characters”, published the third and last of the folio editions (the first one being “Voyages dans l’Inde in 1849) with plates after Soltykoff, consisting of a lithographed title page and fifteen other lithographs, of which nine were never published before. However, six were (partly) newly engraved plates from portraits published before in “Habitants de l’Inde”.
They can be compared here below with on the left the plates from “Habitants de l’Inde” and on the right the plates as published by Smith, Elder & Co. The plates on the right have been taken from lot no. 211 of Bonhams’ London sales of 22 October 2019.
The captions in red under the plates are the captions as printed in the respective books.
