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Fishing Boats in the Monsoon, Northern part of Bombay Harbour
This hand-coloured aquatint, after a drawing by the marine painter Clarkson Stanfield, depicts native fishing boats labouring in a heavy monsoon sea off the northern part of Bombay harbour. In the foreground, a fisherman astride a catamaran of lashed logs rides the breaking swell. Beyond him, a larger lateen-rigged boat crests a great wave, its crew clinging to the deck and rigging as it plunges through the storm. In the distance, the rocky hills of the mainland loom through the weather.
Stanfield, the foremost English marine painter of his day, brought to the sketch a dramatic command of sea and sky, and the plate is among the most striking of the series, conveying the force of the south-west monsoon on the western coast.
In the characteristic manner of Picturesque landscape practice, Fishing Boats in the Monsoon set Bombay's low, sandy coastline against a range of towering peaks that find no correlate in the actual geography of the harbour. The device, borrowed from the European Romantic landscape tradition in which both Westall and Stanfield had trained, lent the western Indian coast a drama that met home audiences' expectations of "picturesque" foreign scenery, valuing atmosphere over topographical accuracy.
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