Sir Charles D'Oyly, Bt., was born in Calcutta in 1781, and after being educated in England returned to India in the service of the East India Company, heading a fashionable group of Europeans devoted to artistic pursuits, first in Calcutta, and later in Patna, where he was Opium Agent and later Commercial Resident. D'Oyly was a man of boundless energy and social charm, and he was also a skilled writer of light verse. In 1828 he published a long poem called 'Tom Raw the Griffin', which he illustrated himself. A griffin means a greenhorn: someone who is new to India and unaccustomed to its ways. This painting, which in the end was not used in the published book, illustrates Tom Raw's visit to Taylor & Co.'s emporium, which sold European porcelain, cut glass and many other imported goods and trinkets to the British inhabitants of Calcutta. Fashionable ladies and gentlemen parade in the long colonnaded hall of the shop, while Indian attendants look on. Porcelain and crockery is stacked upon and below a table to the right, while elaborate chandeliers hang from the ceiling.