His Honor The Lieutenant Governor of the Punjab and Party, Shimla

This photograph may commemorate a family reunion of the Lyalls. In 1887 James Lyall (1838–1916) (possibly on the left) was appointed lieutenant governor of the Punjab region, the same year that his elder brother Alfred Lyall (1835–1911) (second from left) retired as lieutenant governor of North-Western Provinces. After recovering from a serious illness, Alfred visited James in Simla. The women are likely Alfred’s daughter Mary Evelina Lyall (1868–1948) (left) and “Mrs. Lyall,” possibly Mary’s aunt, James Lyall’s wife. A master at staging group portraits, Deen Dayal used symmetry, proximity, height, and other formal devices to indicate the sitters’ interrelationships and relative ranks.