PBA Galleries

With 28 albumen photographs, mounted in both sides of thin cardboard leaves. Each with typed caption (in English) affixed to mount below image, and with inked caption in Arabic script on mount above the image. The last mount is signed in ink by Dayal, dated 1893. Images approx. 8x10½ or a bit smaller. Album is 11x15½, full morocco lettered in gilt.

Captivating pictorial record of the visit to the Nizam of Hyderabad by the Austrian Archduke, who was to gain immortality by being assassinated in 1914 by Serbian nationalists at Sarajevo, thus sparking the First World War. Present are photographs of the Archduke and Nizam seated together, grouped with their courtiers, reviewing troops, hunting with Cheetahs, etc. The photographer, Lala Deen Dayal, is of great interest and some note himself, being among the most respected of the small group of native Indian photographers if the 19th century. Born in Meerut in northern India in 1844, Dayal attended the Thomason Civil Engineering College in Roorkee, where he first learned photography. Dayal continued this hobby during twenty years in the Indian Civil Service. In 1885 he left the service to become the court photographer to Mir Hahbub Ali Pasha, the sixth Nizam of Hyderabad. He went on to open studios in Bombay and Indore, manned by his sons, and the photographic legacy of his descendents continues to this day. Among the more interesting of the photographs are "Elephant procession starting from Chowmahilia palace"; "Imperial Review at Secunderabad. At the saluting point"; "Cheeta Hunt at Saroonager"; "Cheetas on Country Carts at the Shikar"; "Tiger Cubs at Saroonagar"; "H.H. the Nizam taking a shot at a Rupee in Mid air"; "In search of a Tiger"; and more. At the end of the album is mounted a photograph of a monkey or chimpanzee, apparently from a different series.