1. Major Robert Gill was an army officer, antiquarian, painter and photographer in British India.
18 Facts About Robert Gill
1. 2.
Robert Gill is best known for his paintings copying the frescoes of the Ajanta Caves.
3.
Robert Gill's surviving copies and drawings remain significant in Ajanta studies as the originals have significantly deteriorated since his time.
4.
Robert Gill was born in Hackney, London, the son of a stockbroker.
5.
Robert Gill joined the 44th Madras Native Infantry as a cadet in 1824 and became an ensign on 6 May 1825.
6.
Robert Gill was discharged as an invalid on 1 October 1852.
7.
Robert Gill's first child, a daughter called Frances Eliza Minchin Gill, was born in Madras.
8.
Robert Gill's first son, the soldier, explorer and intelligence officer William John Gill, was born in Bangalore.
9.
Robert Gill was a member of The Royal Asiatic Society, and this association was eventually parlayed into copying the murals that had first been published in a lecture by James Fergusson to the Bombay branch of the Society, and later inclusion and illustration in his book in Indian rock-cut architecture.
10.
From 1844, Robert Gill was taken away from military service to copy the Ajanta murals for the Asiatic Society of Bombay, at an additional salary of 200 rupees a year.
11.
Robert Gill spent thirty years measuring, mapping, cataloguing, photographing, and painting in the caves, despite dangers from wild animals and the local Bhil people.
12.
Robert Gill began to ship completed paintings back to London in 1847, where many were exhibited at the museum of the East India Company.
13.
Robert Gill had copied about 30 of the principal frescoes on canvas at almost full-size by 1863, when the painting phase of his work largely ended; these works were sent to London.
14.
The four surviving Robert Gill copies are in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London; a number of his drawings are in the British Library.
15.
Robert Gill remained based at Ajanta for the rest of his life, making tours to other ancient sites in India.
16.
Robert Gill took up photography, including stereoscopy, in about 1856, and much of his photographic work is published in two books, The Rock-Cut Temples of India, and One Hundred Stereoscopic Illustrations of Architecture and Natural History in Western India, with notes by James Fergusson.
17.
Robert Gill's surviving photographs, drawings, and paintings are constantly cited by scholars of Ajanta and Indian art generally, as they have preserved the memories of original painted surfaces that have undergone significant flaking.
18.
Robert Gill died in 1879 while being transported from Ajanta to Bhusawal in a very ill condition, and was buried at the European Cemetery at Bhusawal.