Monument of Sir Edward Barnes

 Sri Lanka > Western Province > Colombo

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Photograph by Frederick Fiebig from an album of 70 handcoloured salt prints Date: c.1852 Shelfmark: Photo 249/(19) Item number: 24919Little is known of the photographer apart from the fact that of German origin, he was an artist and lithographer in Calcutta, publishing a number of prints in the 1840s. He turned to photography in the late 1840s, using the calotype process and producing prints that were frequently hand-coloured. His photographs include hundreds of views of Calcutta, and views of Madras, Sri Lanka, Mauritius and Cape Town. The East India Company purchased a set of his hand-coloured views in 1856. Sir Edward Barnes, (1776-1838) was a soldier who had served on Wellington's staff and was wounded at Waterloo in 1815. He was the Governor of Ceylon, 1824-1831. Perhaps his greatest achievement was an ambitious policy of road building which opened up the island to large scale economic exploitation and aided in unifying Ceylon.