1 - ‘Remember Cawnpore!’

Summary

Focusing on Sir Joseph Noel Paton’s commemorative painting, In Memoriam, this chapter traces British responses to the uprising over the course of the conflict itself. Painted at the height of the insurrection, In Memoriam originally depicted the Cawnpore Massacre and was therefore part of a broader discourse which had dramatic material implications for British counter-insurgency by legitimising the ruthless acts of violence used to suppress the rebellion. A continued focus on this artwork reveals, however, the extent to which this depiction of the conflict quickly became unacceptable in its aftermath. With the spectre of armed rebellion haunting the colonial psyche, popular sentiment convinced Paton to make a number of significant alterations to his commemorative composition which transferred the imagined space of the painting from Cawnpore to Lucknow. Employing a range of methods including the use of X-ray and ultraviolent light, this chapter uncovers what the original painting would have looked like at the same time as analysing what the final composition can tell us about the prevalence of colonial anxiety in the years that followed the uprising.