From the annals of Brodie

LONDON, OCTOBER 1, 1996. I stepped out of the hotel only to remember that I had left some papers behind in the room. When I ran up to the room the telephone was ringing. Could it be Christies calling so soon? The lady at the catalogue counter had promised to look for those two exhibition catalogues and get back. Yes, the Christies lady had found the two catalogues I wanted - one for the recently held sale of Daniell Oils by the P&O Company and the second, relating to an earlier sale, the "Visions of India" exhibition of the Paul Walter collection. Moreover, she had found a copy of the 1995 Paul Walter sale catalogue as well.

I managed to pick up "Madame Blavatsky's Baboon", a book I had been looking for, for over a year. It is the story of the Theosophical Society at Adyar, a short walk from my permanent home in Kalakshetra Colony, Chennai. Back at base in Dubai, I looked through the catalogues at leisure. For many years now, I have been interested in collecting prints and watercolours of British artists in India during the time of the Raj, my special interest being in landscape and topographical prints of South India. Item No. 173 in the 1995 catalogue had me sitting up. It was a water colour titled "Brodie Castle from Mr. Hudleston's Garden", drawn by Justinian Gantz in 1852. I could not put this picture out of my mind and contacted Christies who spoke to the original successful bidder. Yes, the painting was for sale. I made a bid and awaited developments. My bid was promptly repulsed, the asking price being well over twice the bid! This was disappointing but I decided to wait and see, for, though the picture had strong local interest for me, hardly anyone else was likely to buy it in a hurry.

Brodie Castle from Hudleston's Garden ! I have enjoyed this beautiful view on many Sunday mornings during my last spell in Chennai, from the beginning of 1989 to 1991 end. Nothing much has changed from Gantz's watercolour. Looking across the river, Brodie Castle is the first landmark to the left followed by the Iyyappa Temple, the Chettinad Palace, the Quibble Island Cemetery and so on, with the Foreshore Estate to the distant right. It is an elegant 18th Century structure with its twin turrets visible just above the roof-line. According to Henry Davison Love's "Vestiges of Old Madras" the freehold changed hands in 1796 when James Brodie, a civil servant of the East India Company, was given a grant by the Company of the 11 acre riverside property at St. Thome. It must have been built shortly thereafter because the house built on the site is shown in a survey of 1798. It is a handsome colonial mansion with a fine colonnaded portico and a quaint medieval touch. The Madras Tercentenary Commemoration Volume (1939) provides a biography of Brodie, who is described as "rather tall and slender; with a calm, placid countenance...... wore powdered hair with a queue (plait?) behind, a sky blue coat, with two or three large buttons..... in the fashion of the close of 1790-odd". From Loves' book we learn that Brodie was a Civil servant of 1784, married Miss Ann Storey the following year and drowned in Adyar, in 1802, near Brodie Castle. He also, it seems, got into trouble with the Company authorities in regard to his private trading activities.

Following a reversal in his fortunes he is believed to have let the house to a succession of senior Civil Servants, but also seems to have occupied it himself, between tenancies. Apparently, his wife had a dream and cautioned him against going to the river. But he did not heed the warning and was drowned. I have with me another fine view of Brodie Castle, a contemporary (1988) hand-coloured etching by one Bruce Peck. This is a fine picture - a frontal view of the house and surrounds, with fine delineation of light and shade. This print shows off the building and the turrets to advantage, a picture which got me interested in the building in the first place. Brodie Castle is now the home of the Music College, the property having passed into Government hands many years ago.

Well, the glorious days of Brodie Castle were by no means over with the death in 1802 of its eponymous owner. For most of the next 150 years it housed the senior civil servants of Madras. "Brodie Castle, the most imaginative of the merchants' palaces, with its long drawing-room jutting out over the Adyar river and catching every breeze, was occupied in 1930 by Charles Cotton, then Chief Secretary to the Madras Government, who had furnished it with a fine collection of 18th Century furniture and China made in or for South India, and the Daniell brothers' paintings and prints of local scenes. Ramakrishna Mutt Road (leading from Luz to Brodie Castle) was originally Brodies Road until it was renamed in the Sixties. But it is nice to be able to report that one small spur at the Southern end of the road - in fact the home stretch, as it were, leading to the Castle -still bears the name of Brodies Castle Street and there is even a road sign to prove it! The Castle itself, whilst apparently in reasonably sound structural condition, has seen better days. The State Public Works Department has been active and its handiwork evident all over the grounds of the Castle like so many blots on the landscape. Curiously enough, a Ganesh idol has been installed in the long drawing room (making authentic restoration difficult) and there is no trace of splendour in the drawing room but it still catches every nuance of the breeze from the Adyar.

And Justinian Gantz, the artist? The Gantz family were Austrians who lived in Madras for three quarters of a century from about 1802 when John Gantz, the artist's father, moved to Madras as draughtsman to the East India Company. He must have been an especially skilled draughtsman for he drew the plans for St. Andrews Church - the Kirk - as well as many fine drawings of the interior of the building. John Gantz and his sons, Justinian Walter and Julius Walter also drew many watercolour drawings of Madras houses (including Bentinck's building, pulled down in 1990, St. George's Cathedral and the Kirk itself) which were issued into prints at a Lithographic Press they ran at Broadway (then Popham's Broadway). Justinian Walter Gantz (1802 to 1862) seems to have been the most prolific artist in the family, judging from the number of watercolours and prints he produced. Brodie Castle is probably one of a very few watercolours of this family to have survived and is inscribed "Just Gantz - '52", the '52 being 1852 of course. And, we do not know who commissioned Gantz to paint the Brodie Castle view. The year 1852 is well after Hudleston's time and it remains to be found out who owned Hudleston's Garden at about this time.

There was a John Hudleston, a senior Civil Servant of Madras of about the same period as Brodie. Perhaps they knew each other.

Hudleston's house still stands in the Theosophical Gardens and seems to be in regular use.

The Gantz watercolour was put up in the Christies auction of October 1999. I got to know of the auction on October 1, 1999, exactly three years to the day I first learnt about the picture, mine was the only bid and the hammer fell at a price well under my original 1996 bid...

The picture is now mine. Does it have artistic merit? I don't know anything about artistic merit I only know what I like. It is an attractive, true to life picture of the view as it can be seen today and is beautifully executed.

V. NARAYAN SWAMI

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