Lieutenant H B Melville, 54th Bengal Native Infantry, 1842 (colour litho)

Lieutenant H B Melville, 54th Bengal Native Infantry, 1842. Coloured lithograph after Lieutenant Vincent Eyre, Bengal Artillery, 1842 (c). Henry Beresford Melville was appointed an ensign in the 54th Bengal Native Infantry in 1837. Promoted to lieutenant in 1840, he took part in the 1st Afghan War (1839-1842) and was taken hostage by Akbar Khan following the uprising of November 1841. Melville was released in September 1842 when Major-General Sir George Pollock’s Army of Retribution arrived in Kabul. Promoted to captain in 1843, he was invalided back to England in 1851 where he died four years later. From ‘Portraits of the Kabul Prisoners’, a set of pre-publication coloured lithographs later published by John Murray in 1843. The artist’s original drawings were made during his captivity in Afghanistan after the Retreat from Kabul during the 1st Afghan War (1838-1842).