Kasauli, the wife of a senior British officer awarding prizes to The Queens, late 19th century.

A naive watercolour of life in Kasauli, late 19th century.

The watercolour, 9½ x  6¾ins with some loss along the top edge and corners, is pasted to a piece of an old thin card album sheet. It is titled in ink on the card Mother giving away prizes. The sketch shows the lady behind a table, labelled The Queens with a small girl holding a parasol watching the scene. The military figures, who have a crude representation of the Queen’s Royal West Surrey Regiment on their helmets, are looking on as one salutes [with the left hand] as he receives a prize. Mother is labelled M.A.C. and the senior officer by her side is identified as J.S.C. . It is quite possible that these initials help us to identify the latter figure as John Stratford Collins who appears in Hart’s Army List 1895 as the senior major in the regiment. The verso has a rather better executed detached house, identified as Kynaston, Kasauli with rooms identified as Drawing Room, Dining Room, Nursery, Pantry. Girls Room, along with Front Door. Although easily overlooked as naive these are charming, decorative efforts which provide a vital window into a far distant world. Kasauli, as will eb seen in the map illustration, was a small hill station with a cantonment, a little to the south west of Simla.    jan6/1