The Salt Water Lake east of Calcutta crowded with boats with the city in the distance by Thomas Prinsep

"The Salt Water Lake, east of Calcutta, crowded with boats, with the city in the distance," watercolour, circa 1827-1828, by the Anglo-Indian artist Thomas Prinsep. Inscribed on album page: "Salt Water Lake. c.1827-8, Hollowed date trees as canoes, The Sunderbund wood boats, Calcutta in extreme distance." Thomas Prinsep was in charge of the surveying of the Sunderbunds, a large area of fresh and salt water mangrove swamps in Bengal. In December 1828 Thomas Prinsep published a survey of his work entitled 'A Survey of the Salt Lake or Marshes Adjoining Calcutta." Prinsep died in 1830 of a riding accident. Image courtesy of the British Library, London.