John Martin (1789–1854), View of the Temple of Suryah & Fountain of Maha Dao, with a Distant View of North Side of Mansion House
, Bequest of Gordon N. Ray, 1987
, PML 143240
The artist Thomas Daniell (1749–1840) introduced architectural elements from India into the English garden on the basis of scenery and monuments he had sketched in the course of a ten-year tour of the Subcontinent. When Sir Charles Cockerell, a "nabob" made wealthy by three decades with the East India Company, built a new house at Sezincote in a fusion of Hindu and Mogul styles, Daniell transformed a part of the garden into a dream of India in the Cotswolds, with a shrine to the Hindu sun god beside a lotus-shaped pool with sacral fountain. The temple housed a figure of Surya cast in Coade & Seeley's Patent Imitation Stone.