SWOBODA, Rudolph Der G. - b. 1859 Wien, d. 1914 Wien

Austrian painter. He studied under Leopold Carl Müller (1834-1892), and voyaged with him to Egypt in 1880. He was a well-known Orientalist.

Swoboda was recommended to Queen Victoria by the portrait painter Heinrich von Angeli. She commissioned a large series of portraits of Indians, several of whom were the queen’s personal servants forming part of her Household from the late 1880s. Victoria liked the resulting paintings so much that she paid Swoboda’s way to India to paint more of her Indian subjects.[

Most of these Indian paintings hang at Osborne House, once Victoria’s residence on the Isle of Wight.

A Peep at the Train

This composition by the Orientalist painter Swoboda shows a group of children in the company of an old man, positioned by the barrier near a railway line. A village is in the background. The foreground of the picture is dominated by the strong pool of shadow cast by the figures and the barrier.

This painting - like Swoboda’s other paintings of Indian subjects - can be compared with contemporary late nineteenth-century photographs of Indians.