How two English artists, a century apart, saw the Taj Mahal and what it says about colonial-era art

The English artist and poet Edward Lear went to see the Taj Mahal on 16 February 1874, and wrote in his journal as follows:

Came to the Taj Mahal; descriptions of this wonderfully lovely place are simply silly, as no words can describe it at all. What a garden! What flowers! What gorgeously dressed and be-ringed women; some of them very good-looking too, and all well clothed though apparently poor. Men, mostly in white, some with red shawls, some quite dressed in red, or red-brown; orange, yellow, scarlet, or purple shawls, or white; effects of colour absolutely astonishing, the great centre of the picture being the vast glittering ivory-white Taj Mahal, and the accompaniment and contrast of the dark green cypresses, with the rich yellow green trees of all sorts! And then the effect of the innumerable flights of bright green parrots flitting across like live emeralds; and of the scarlet poincinnias and countless other flowers beaming bright off the dark green! … Poinsettias are in huge crimson masses, and the purple flowered bougainvillea runs up the cypress trees. Aloes also, and some new sort of fern or palm, I don’t know which. The garden is indescribable. Below the Taj Mahal is...

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