Page:Calcutta, Past and Present.djvu/204

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.

THE CHURCHES

St. George's Chapel, Windsor, it displaced one that had occupied the same place at the time of the Great Rebellion. This latter picture, a "Representation of the Last Supper," had been brought back to the altar in 1702, and remained there until superseded by West's picture, when it was given to Windsor parish church, where it is at the present time. West's picture, superseded in its turn in 1863, is now in the east aisle of St. George's Chapel.

It was at the time that the future President of the Royal Academy was painting the altar-piece for St. George's Chapel, that another Royal Academician, Zoffany, painted, in Calcutta, a picture, "The Last Supper," which he, in 1787, presented for an altar-piece to St. John's Church, then approaching completion.

John Zoffany was one of the earliest Royal Academicians. He was obliged to leave England, owing, it is said, to the ill feeling he had roused against himself through his injudicious indulgence in the habit of introducing the portraits of his friends and acquaintances into his pictures without the permission of the original, and often in unflattering guise. He arrived in India about the year 1781, and spent some years in Lucknow, where he amassed a considerable fortune by painting the portraits of members of the native

141