View of Trincomallee (Ceylon) – Camp in the foreground by Lieut Thomas Castle, 4th Ceylon Regt
Artist: Castle, Thomas (d.1811)
Medium: Watercolour
Date: 1795
Watercolour painting of Trincomalee in Sri Lanka, by Thomas Castle (d.1811), c. 1795-1796.
Trincomalee is situated on the north east coast of Sri Lanka and boasts one of the finest natural harbours in the world. Fort Frederick was constructed by the Portuguese in 1624 using rocks from the famous temple the ‘Pagoda of a thousand pillars’ built by Tamil settlers from South India. Trincomalee was strategically important as it was a key to domination over the Coromandel Coast of India and it attracted the attention of European colonial powers in the 17th and 18th centuries, changing hands repeatedly among the Portuguese, Dutch, French and British before finally falling to the British fleet in 1795. This painting shows the rock with the fort at Trincomalee with an army camp in the foreground.