Queen Victoria maintained a keen interest in India throughout her life. In the late 1850s, she corresponded with the wife of the Viceroy of India, Lady Canning, formerly the Queen's Lady of the Bedchamber and an accomplished watercolourist. Lady Canning sent the Queen examples of work from India to the Queen, including a set of eleven views from the Andaman Islands.

Text adapted from Victoria & Albert: Art & Love, London, 2010

Oscar Mallitte was part of a British survey party to the Andaman Islands (off the east coast of India) which was tasked with establishing a penal colony for Indian convicts. The party, led by Frederic John Mouat, a British surgeon, landed at Port Cornwallis on 11 December 1857. In one of the photographs, members of the party are shown visiting the ruins of an earlier penal site, which had been set up at Port Cornwallis in 1793 and abandoned in 1796.