Two Watercolours, Coolies and Bullock Hackeries Collecting Materials, and Bengalee Brickmaking

Painting, watercolour on paper showing brickmaking for the East Indian Railway, by G W Archer, 1852. The painting depicts ‘coolies and bullock hackeries collecting materials / a peepul tree on the right.’
It depicts three Bihari labourers with two bullock carts at the edge of a wood. One has a pile of bricks balanced on his head, another sits on a cart, and a third appears to be wrapping something in a cloth. The painting is signed at bottom left "GWA
This watercolour depicts Bihari labourers collecting construction materials. In India, the term ‘coolie’ usually refers to a porter, a person who carries cargo for others. In some other areas of the world, the term refers generally to a low-wage labourer and can be now considered offensive. However, in modern Indian popular culture, ‘coolies’ have been portrayed as working-class heroes, such as in the film Coolie No. 1 (1991) and in its many subsequent remakes.
A bullock hackery is a two-wheeled coach pulled by a cow that was a popular method of transporting goods and people in nineteenth century India and continues to be used today. The peepul tree or bodhi tree (ficus religiosa) holds religious significance in three religions. Hindus and Jains consider it a sacred tree and meditate beneath it, and it was under a bodhi tree that Buddha attained enlightenment.
Scottish engineer George Turnbull (1809-1889) oversaw the creation of one of the first railways in India, the East Indian Railway (EIR). Scottish engineer George Turnbull (1809-1889) oversaw the creation of one of the first railways in India, the East Indian Railway (EIR). The EIR initially ran from Calcutta (now Kolkata) to Benares (now Varanasi), but the line quickly was extended to New Delhi. Turnbull collected artworks during his time in India, many of which were produced by EIR engineers. These watercolours and drawings provide a rare view of nineteenth-century India from the perspective of the British engineers designing and building the country’s first railways. The collection includes landscape scenes and portraits. While many of the landscapes show the construction of the railway, others focus entirely on India’s local architecture or its rural spaces. The portraits are of people Turnbull encountered while in India. While the portraits of British people are inscribed with their names, most of the Indian people depicted remain anonymous or identified only by their job.
The British introduced railways in India to satisfy the mounting economic and military needs of their colonial administration. They hoped that the new technology would foster an increased sense of collective identity by making it easier to travel quickly between distant regions. They also hoped the railways would socially ‘improve India’ by instilling a sense of punctuality among Indians, a quality British colonialists believed Indians lacked. The racist stereotypes underpinning these intentions, and the interconnected idea that technology could trigger social change, were common beliefs in nineteenth-century British society.