Emily Eden, a gifted artist and writer from one of Britain's most influential political families, travelled across northern India in the 1830s while accompanying her brother, George Eden, first Earl of Auckland, the governor‑general of India. She sketched princes, generals, courtiers, servants, travellers, fakirs, Afghan and Sikh nobles, hill communities and animals that accompanied imperial journeys. Her remarkably broad gaze set her apart from many contemporaries.

More than two dozen of her sketches were published in 1844 as *Portraits of the Princes and People of India*. They now form the heart of *Princes & People*, an exhibition at DAG in Delhi curated by art historian Mary Ann Prior, bringing together the complete published series of hand‑coloured lithographs made from Eden's original sketches. Eden arrived in Calcutta (now Kolkata) in March 1836 and, after an initial period of homesickness, began to draw prolifically, capturing the court of Maharaja Ranjit Singh at the twilight of his reign.

Between 1836 and 1842 her curiosity took her across a region on the cusp of profound political change. Her journals brim with humour and observation, and her paintings sold briskly at charity fairs in Shimla, winning admiration from the British in India and being copied by Indian artists. Prior ranks Eden's Indian sketches among the finest produced by any British woman artist of the Regency and Victorian eras, rivalled only by Charlotte Canning and later Marianne North.

Eden viewed her years in India as "an unwelcome ordeal to be endured for a higher purpose", framing colonial rule as an obligation to "civilise" the country. She left India in 1842, returning to Britain where she continued to paint and write. Her later works turned to familiar English scenes, but her Indian experience reached a wider audience through *Up the Country* (1866) and *Letters from India* (1872). Emily Eden died in 1869, leaving a legacy as both writer and artist.