A Study of a Head of a Koonbie
Khandala, India
Date: ca. 1869
Artist/Maker: Griffiths, John, born 1837 - died 1918
Watercolour, tinted paper

John Griffiths was born in 1837. He studied at the Royal College of Art and then worked under Godfrey Sykes on the decorative work for the South Kensington Museum. One of his fellow assistants was John Lockwood Kipling, who became a life-long friend, and he was godfather to Kipling's son, Rudyard. The two of them were persuaded to go out to India on a three-year assignment, and in 1865 they sailed for Bombay, where they worked together for ten years at the Bombay School of Art. Griffiths undertook many commissions, including work on the Victoria Terminus and the High Court. After his decade in Bombay, Griffiths was appointed Principal of the Mayo School of Art and Curator of the Museum in Lahore, now in Pakistan. After his retirement in 1895, Griffiths lived firstly in Wales and then near Sherbourne in Dorset. He died in 1918. This painting depicts a kunbi (spelt 'koonbie' by the artist), the name of the cultivator class in Gujarat and the Konkan region (the equivalent of kurmi in north India).

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