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British artist and suffrage campaigner Christiana Herringham helped bring Ajanta’s hard-to-reach, deteriorating cave paintings before modern audiences by making painted copies, exhibiting them in 1912 and publishing reproductions in 1915. Working with Dorothy Larcher and Indian artists, she turned images tied to fragile cave walls into pictures people could encounter, study and discuss elsewhere.
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The Ajanta Caves: Ancient Buddhist Paintings of India | $31.45 | Buy on Amazon |
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The Geeta and the Art of Successful Management | $11.99 | Buy on Amazon |
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Ajanta: Regional Feasts of India | $14.99 | Buy on Amazon |
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An Introduction to the Ajanta Caves: With Examples of Six Caves | $65.22 | Buy on Amazon |
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From Ajanta to Ellora | $13.65 | Buy on Amazon |
Who was Christiana Herringham?
Christiana Jane Herringham (1852–1929), later Lady Herringham, was an artist, professional copyist and art patron as well as a supporter of women’s suffrage. She campaigned alongside Millicent Fawcett and supported women’s education, including through money for scholarships and housing. Her work at Ajanta joined that public life to a demanding artistic project: recording Indian paintings through close, skilled copying.
How her Ajanta work unfolded
- Winter 1906–07: Herringham made an initial journey to India. Encouraged by British Museum scholar Laurence Binyon, she returned with a rough sketch of a large Buddha.
- Winter 1909–10: She returned to Ajanta for six weeks to begin a fuller record.
- Winter 1910–11: She made another visit, lasting more than three months, and continued the copying project with assistant Dorothy Larcher and students from the Calcutta School of Art.
- 1912: Copies were displayed at the Festival of Empire exhibition at the Crystal Palace, Sydenham.
- 1915: Ajanta Frescoes brought the images to print in colour and monochrome reproductions after copies taken in 1909–1911.
What the copying involved
The caves were difficult and sometimes dangerous to reach, and the paintings were deteriorating. Herringham and her team made painted copies in tempera, creating records that could be seen away from the cave walls. They did not present every damaged area as an untouched original. In her 1911 “Notes on the History and Character of the Paintings,” Herringham explained: “We have thought it advisable, for the sake of the beauty of the composition and of intelligibility, to fill up the smaller holes.”
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That choice makes the copies both records and interpretations. Filling small losses helped a viewer follow a composition, but it also means the copies should not be mistaken for a literal image of every surviving mark on the wall. Herringham described the work and its collaborators plainly: “These copies from the Ajantā frescoes were made by myself and one English and several Indian painters during the winter seasons of 1909–10 and 1910–11.”
What the paintings depicted
Herringham dated the paintings she copied broadly to 450–650. She described their subjects as episodes from the Buddha’s life and previous incarnations, alongside scenes of social life. In her words, “they illustrate the court life and popular life of the time, as told in the romances and plays.” The murals therefore offered more than religious imagery: they also represented people, settings and activities associated with court and popular life.
How copies brought Ajanta beyond the caves
Herringham’s project created a sequence of access: a field record made at Ajanta, an exhibition in Britain, then printed reproductions. Each stage changed who could encounter the paintings and where. The 1912 exhibition placed copies before visitors at the Crystal Palace; the 1915 book made reproductions available to readers beyond the cave site and the exhibition itself.
This mattered because the originals were remote, fragile and challenging to see in their setting. A copy could be carried, displayed and studied without requiring a viewer to reach the caves. The work also made copying visible as skilled professional practice with a preservation-minded purpose, while bringing Ajanta into contemporary discussions of Indian art and the revival of tempera.
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Why her suffrage work belongs in the story
Herringham was not simply a British traveller recording an unfamiliar site. Her support for women’s education and suffrage formed part of her public identity, while her Ajanta work depended on artistic collaboration with Indian painters and students. The project’s importance lies both in making the murals more accessible and in recognizing that the copies were made by a team, not by Herringham alone.
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