Pictures -- 1890s India, painted by Alice Papprill

These watercolours were painted over a period of sixteen years by Mrs Alice Papprill, wife of Canon Frederick Papprill. The couple set out for India as missionaries in the early 1890s, and their first eight years in the subcontinent were spent working for the India Service.

	Alice Papprill’s paintings encapsulate the impressions of a young Victorian with an eye for detail and colour. One wonders to what extent the young missionary resembled her painting companion sitting opposite her in Hallelujah Hall, or whether this might even have been a self-portrait.
	Was Elysium Cottage her own home or the home of friends where she could spend a few quiet hours painting?
	And how much time did she spend in the rose-tinted Cambay Palace, which had been converted into a place where Indian women could practice traditional crafts?
	The Papprills seem initially to have been based in the plains at Dera Ismael Khan where their second son, Frank, was born in the C.M.S. Mission House, which Mrs Papprill painted in January 1900.
	Soon after this event they moved to Simla, a popular retreat in the hills, where many well-known figures of the British Raj spent their summers. Simla offered a lively social life, which is colourfully described by the writer, M.M. Kaye, in the first volume of her autobiography, The Sun in the Morning.
	One of Alice Papprill’s most attractive paintings is of Hartington House, described by Mrs Kaye as a pleasant guest house which took in young ladies during their parents’ absence. Alice, evidently, was acquainted with some of the guests. In the eight years that the Papprill family spent in Simla their growing family increased to six, the last child being Charles Norman Papprill (b.1902), grandfather of Julian Littlewood.