ABSTRACT
A number of paintings exhibited at the Royal Academy in London in the summer of 1858 took as their subject the recently suppressed Indian ‘mutiny’/ uprising. This unrest had broken out in Central and Northern India and lasted from May 1857 to June 1858.1 The inclusion of such paintings at the Royal Academy-together with daily newspaper accounts and Parliamentary debates-reflected the unprecedented level of public attention in Britain being paid to events in India. One focus of attention was the position of British women in India, with sensationalist accounts of their deaths and barely veiled (but unsupported) hints at their violation resulting in particularly bloodthirsty cries for vengeance.2 Popular interest about the place of British women in India was also reflected in the Royal Academy exhibition, with paintings by Edward Armitage, Edgar George Papworth, Joseph Noel Paton and Abraham Solomon all depicting British women in the ‘mutiny’ (Harrington 1993). One of these paintings, The Flight from Lucknow by Abraham Solomon (Figure 1), provides the title and subject of this chapter.
