Samuel Davis (1760-1819) started his Indian career as a soldier in the employ of the East India Company, and went on to transition into a civil servant of considerable importance, serving in Bengal as well as in different parts of northern India. He was also a major amateur artist working in the Indian subcontinent in the eighteenth century, and a pioneer in the field of Himalayan landscape painting - goading the uncle and nephew pair of Thomas and William Daniell to explore the beauties of this mountain range.
Along with the Yale Center for British Art/Paul Mellon Collection in New Haven, United States, and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the Victoria Memorial Hall is a major repository of Davis' work. It has eighty-eight of his watercolour paintings and drawings, all of them acquired between 1905 and 1932.
