Two men smoking cocoa nut hookahs, Calcutta, West Bengal. Coloured etching by François Balthazar Solvyns, 1799.

[Calcutta] : [François Balthazar Solvyns], [1799]

1 print : etching, with watercolour.

A narial hooka, 2

François Balthazar Solvyns, a Belgian artist, spent many years in Calcutta, producing drawings of the local people and their customs, showing different castes and street sellers. Solvyns employed local Indian artists to apply watercolour to his series "Manners, customs, and dresses of the Hindoos"

Travel in aquatint and lithography 1770-1860 from the library of J.R. Abbey, San Francisco 1991, vol. 2, 421.184

Wellcome Collection 30679i