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John Goldingham was one of the extraordinary figures of the age of British colonial expansion. A polymath, despite only having been given a ‘regular mathematical education’, he worked as an engineer, surveyor, architect and an astronomer.[1] 

Born in London, Goldingham arrived in Madras – then under the control of the East India Company – in 1788, where he entered into the service of amateur astronomer, William Petrie. He progressed quickly, however, and soon began work as an assistant to the astronomer-in-chief to the East India Company, Michael Topping. Under Topping, Goldingham was principally employed as a surveyor, making detailed investigations of the coastal regions around Madras. The work was not easy; Company surveyors were required to struggle through thick jungle and inhospitable terrain. Topping himself said of the work that it required ‘a constitution capable of enduring the greatest fatigues, in the most trying and destructive climate’.[2]

It is no wonder, then, that in 1805 Goldingham was granted leave to return to England, suffering from a liver complaint. By this point, Topping had died and Goldingham had taken his place as the “Company’s Astronomer and Marine Surveyor on the Coast”. These years were perhaps the most productive of his career. Taking over from Topping at the new British astronomy in Madras, he undertook to calculate the Madras meridian. A by-product of this was his devising of a time-zone for Madras known as “Madras time”, his calculations for which were so accurate that they were not to be superceded for a century, when they were used as the basis for the formulation of the Indian standard time. If this were not enough, Goldingham also occupied himself in the early 1800s with the design – in his guise as Chief Engineer, a post he held from 1801 –of the Banqueting Hall, Madras, built in a handsome neoclassical style. But his efforts in this domain were not well received by the East India authorities, who were suspicious of the funds that were lavished on the project; when he returned to Madras in 1810, to continue his astronomical researches, he was specifically denied a post as Civil Engineer. The Royal Society archives holds a drawing showing Goldingham at work during his second spell in India (Madras Observatory interior, artist unknown, 1821. From The Royal Society, PT/73/9/12).[3]

The present work was painted in 1808, when both artist and sitter were in London following extensive periods spent in Madras. It is possible that Smart might have known Goldingham during his time in Madras between 1785 and 1795. Regardless, he was an artist of a high renown in Madras and, thus, presented Goldingham with a natural choice as portraitist upon his return to London. This miniature was probably commissioned to mark Goldingham’s election as Fellow of the Royal Society in 1808. For Smart, the sittings would have also been informative, for they would have provided him with the chance to learn of more recent developments in India. This would have of particular concern for the artist for his son, a budding miniaturist also called John, had recently sailed for Madras in the hope that he might make his fortune there. Sadly, this was not to be; like so many western adventurers, the climate proved too hostile for him and he died shortly following his arrival the next year. The elder Smart – no doubt greatly affected by the loss of his artistic heir – himself died in 1811, but three years following the execution of the present work.

[1] R. H. Phillimore (ed.), Historical Records of the Survey of India (Dehra Dun, 4 vols, 1945), i, p. 338.
[2] Ibid., p. 392.
[3] For further information see: Illustration of the measurement of the acceleration of gravity with an invariable pendulum in Madras by John Goldingham, 1821. This watercolour shows Goldingham with a telescope assessing the lags in the swings of Kater's pendulum against the pendulum of the Haswell clock. Thiruvenkatachari (his Second Assistant) is reading the clock; Shrinivasachari (his First Assistant) is jotting notes. (Source: J. Goldingham, in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London (London, 1822), pp. 112, 127-70.