Attack on a fort

Paintings for expatriate clients, often British people working for the East India Company, became known as Company school pictures. They were made by Indian artists, who had previously painted for Mughal and Rajput patrons who no longer had need for painting ateliers. Architecture, along with local people, plants and animals, was a popular subject for Company paintings.

Several distinct styles and sub-schools of Company painting developed throughout India. The distinct style that developed in Kutch has been identified as a synthesis of vernacular court painting and the appropriation of subjects and compositional conventions from European prints introduced by British officers in the later half of the 18th century. Due to their popularity, the European prints were widely circulated and known locally as Perspective Views because they were characterised by single point perspective as applied to buildings and landscapes.

Although this scene may relate to a battle in India, for instance a siege of one of the many coastal forts south of Mumbai (then Bombay), it is likely that it is an adaption of a European print depicting a battle from another place and time.