Inside of a tent at Bareilly camp, North West Province, India, 1891

Oil on board, signed at lower left 'F.A.G.', by Lieutenant (later Lieutenant-Colonel) Francis Ambrose D'Oyly Goddard (1868-1962), Royal Munster Fusiliers, 1891.

A level plain of fertile land, Bareilly district lies just below the foothills of the Himalayas in the North-Western Provinces of India. In this painting the open-fronted tent reveals a typical array of military equipment, folding camp furniture and accoutrements which an officer might take on campaign.

In 1928 the artist wrote some notes on the back of the painting, 'This battered relic was my first (untrained and untaught) attempt at painting in oils. I painted it at Chaubuttia, N.W.P.,India, in 1891 from Water-colour studies made in camp at Bareilly the preceding Winter, and sent it to the Simla Art Exhibition the same year. The "Pioneer", in a Press Notice, aid it was painted with "marvellous truth & fidelity, but that everything was on the same plane"! - which was quite just...'.

It remains, however, engaging as an informal glimpse of military life in India.