Lt Col Thomas Ditmas Original Early 19th Century Antique Watercolour Painting on Rice Paper Indian Fruit, C1838

Type of artwork: Original Rice Paper Painting – Indian Fruit

Surface: Rice paper

Artist and Signature: Attributed to Lt-Col Thomas Ditmas (1806–1885)

Inscribed to mount as by Ditmas senior, c.1838

Subject: A delicate botanical study of a Indian fruit, painted on rice paper during Ditmas’s service in India around 1838. Such works, often fragile, were popular among British officers and Company School artists of the early Victorian period.

Approximate age of artwork: Circa 1830s–1840s

Is the artwork Framed or Mounted: Mounted on green card with gilt edging, as shown.

Condition Report: The painting shows age-typical wear with creases, handling marks and minor tears to the delicate rice paper. Please study photographs for details. Despite these signs of age, the colours remain vibrant and the botanical detail is finely preserved.

Size of painting 12 x 19 cm (backing mount 20 x 22 cm)

Artist Biography: Lieutenant-Colonel Thomas Ditmas (1806–1885) was a career officer in the Honourable East India Company’s Bengal Artillery, later serving under the British Indian Army. Commissioned in the 1820s, he rose to senior rank and spent many years stationed in India, where he recorded landscapes, architecture and floral studies in watercolour and on rice paper. His works from the 1830s–40s are rare survivals of the period, bridging Company School traditions with a personal officer’s eye. Ditmas retired to York, where his descendants, including Colonel Harold Percy Ditmas (1853–1937), continued the family’s military and artistic traditions.

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