This hand-coloured etching depicts the city of Calcutta (Kolkata) from across the River Hooghly (Bhāgirathi-Hooghly). On the left, behind a high wall, are the Orphan House Gardens in Howrah on the river’s eastern bank. Several sailing ships are travelling along the river and two smaller boats are leaving the beach in the centre of the image. The title, ‘View of part of Calcutta from the Orphan House Gardens’, is inscribed beneath in the image, along with the artist’s signature and the date.

Baillie arrived in India as a cadet in the Bengal Infantry in 1777. The following year, he transferred to the Bengal Engineers and participated in surveys along the Hooghly River. He went on leave without pay in 1785 and started a weekly newspaper, the Calcutta Chronicle. He resigned from the army in 1788 to become an artist, though he later took up a post as secretary of the Free School Society in Calcutta to supplement his income from artistic work. His career powerfully exemplifies the interconnections between military activity, education, culture and art in colonial India. He is best known for Twelve Views of Calcutta, a series of aquatints which he published in 1794, but, although it depicts Calcutta, this rare print is not part of that series.

Captain (later Major-General) William Kirkpatrick established the Orphan House in 1782 to provide education for the children of officers and soldiers from the East India Company. It was based in a former rum distillery, known as Levett’s Gardens, at Howrah. Many of the children had British fathers and Indian mothers. These children were taken from their mothers at an early age and sent to the orphanage to be raised in the Christian faith and prepared for careers in service of the East India Company. Boys were trained to be clerks or soldiers and girls to be wives or domestic servants. There were originally two residential schools on the site: the Upper Military Orphanage for officers’ children and the Lower Military Orphanage for children of the lower ranks. The Upper school moved to a different location in 1790, while the Lower school, the gardens of which are depicted in this print, remained at Howrah until 1815.