A drawing of a Maltese woman: her shoulders turned to the left; her head turned three quarters to the leftl; looking out at the viewer. Inscribed on the mount below: Lady at Malta.

Having studied at the Royal Swedish Academy, Egron Sellif Lundgren (1815-75) moved to Paris in 1839 and through the 1840s travelled widely in Europe. In 1858 he spent a year in India, where he made many drawings and watercolours recording the conflict and unrest following the Indian Rebellion against British colonnial rule. In October 1861 he embarked on a tour of Egypt with fellow artists, George Price Boyce and Frank Dillon.  

This is a drawing from the Indian Sketches album comprising watercolours and drawings by Egron Lundgren, Nicholas Chevalier, Count Gotz Burkhard Seckendorff and Robert Gosset Woodthorpe. Most of Lundgren's works within the album are set against a backdrop of the Indian Rebellion of 1857, and were presented to Queen Victoria. Chevalier's watercolours represent high-ranking Sikh and Ceylonese [Sri Lankan] people who would have sat to the artist during his visits to India and Ceylon while journeying with Prince Alfred, the Duke of Edinburgh, on the homeward voyage aboard HMS Galatea in 1870.