Carl Laubin studied architecture at Cornell University. In the 1980s, Laubin turned his attention to architectural paintings and prepared a series on the redevelopment of the Royal Opera House in London and would continue painting in this genre throughout his career.

Carl Laubin’s hyper-real painting of the interior of the British Library was based on the architectural drawings by Colin St John Wilson and his team. Almost photographic in detail, Laubin illustrated a view of the Library’s café and the imposing King’s Library, a glass tower, on the right. As an homage to the architect, Laubin cleverly added the architect with his distinctive grey hair and dressed in a suit in the painting’s foreground where he speaks to researcher holding a stack of leather bound books. In the café, it is thought that Laubin inserted a number of historical authors including T.S. Eliot and Fyodor Dostoyevsky. A second version of Laubin’s interior view of the Library is held in the RIBA collections, where Wilson and his partner M. J. Long stand peering over the plants.

Sir William Beechey (1753-1839) was a leading portraitist in the ‘golden age’ of British painting. He studied under Johan Zoffany at the RA Schools and developed a restrained style which suited the conventional taste of George III and Queen Charlotte, so that by 1793 he was officially named portrait painter to Queen Charlotte and received many more royal commissions. His 1798 painting George III and the Prince of Wales Reviewing the Troops so delighted the king that Beechey was knighted. This was the only painting to be destroyed in the 1992 Windsor Castle fire, but a smaller version exists in the National Army Museum. This also spawned several reduced studio versions showing just the figures of George III and horse. Equestrian portraits for monarchs have been common in British art since van Dyck’s portraits of Charles I, as they confer status on the sitter and set them within the chivalric tradition.

Johann Sebastien Bach (1685-1750) was a leading German composer of the late Baroque period. A revival of his work in the 19th century cemented his reputation as one of the greatest composers in the history of Western music (and likely prompted this copy of his portrait).

This 19th-century copy (probably 1830) of a 1748 original portrait of the composer J.S. Bach is by Elias Gottlob Haussman (1695-1774). The original is thought to be the best contemporary likeness of Bach, and is in the Museum of City History, Leipzig. It is Haussmann’s best known work, and shows the composer holding the sheet music for his ‘riddle canon’, a complex composition for six voices that loops back on itself perpetually.

Western artists travelling to the Indian subcontinent in the 18th century, needed permission from the British East India Company to travel inland to cities such as Lucknow, located in the northern province of Oudh. John Smart, Ozias Humphrey and Johann Zoffany are some of the key artists that were successful in travelling to the flourishing metropolis and obtaining commissions from either British officers or local Indian noblemen.

The provincial governor of Oudh, Asaf al-Daula (ruled 1775-97), commissioned Zoffany to paint portraits of himself as well as his chief minister Hasan Reza Khan. In this work, the governor is featured in a white floor length muslin garment and adorned with necklaces and armlets of pearls and precious gems. He wears the distinctive Lucknow style of turban with a crescent band.

According to a contemporary inscription on the back of the painting, the governor presented the painting as a gift to British surgeon Francis Baladon Thomas, who was stationed at the Lucknow Residency, in 1784. The ornate frame surrounding the oversized painting is adorned with the symbol of the province of Oudh, including a trophy of swords, flag and a fish.

The Russian artist Horace van Ruith (1839-1923) regularly exhibited his portraits, genre scenes and landscapes in Germany, Austria and Italy before setting up a studio in western India. Between 1879 and 1884, van Ruith showed his new works at exhibitions through the Poona Fine Arts Society in Poona (Pune) and at societies in Bombay (Mumbai). As an accomplished artists working in both watercolours and oils, this rather small striking genre scene features the iridescent skyline and the shore of Bombay in the far distance with Parsis (Zoroastrians) praying in the foreground.