Photo studios flourished in India’s urban centers like
Bombay and Calcutta from the 1850s. By the early 20th century even smaller
towns boasted such businesses, and most studios employed painters who could
tint the photographs produced. The Wilson Studio in Bombay printed photographic
images on matte paper as a backdrop, embellished with stencils, airbrushed ink,
and paint. These studio portraits of a maharaja and his second wife show the
couple in a cusped arch and the maharani in a picturesque landscape. Photography
and painting were not seen as rival mediums but as complementary modes of creating
a greater illusion or fantasy.