But all this had changed dramatically when it came to be known that the artist’s other family was soon to descend on Calcutta. As with many another bohemian, Chinnery was in some ways, extremely conventional – the possibility that his legal wife and children might learn about his Bengali ewe-mutton and her two kids, threw him into a panic. The delectable little butter-bun of the day before suddenly metamorphosed into a gravy-making gobble-prick: she and her two boys were summarily evicted from their quarters and packed off to a tenement in Kidderpore, where a khidmatgar would visit them occasionally to hand over a monthly tuncaw.

The arrangement deceived no one, of course, for amongst the sahibs of the city Mr Chinnery’s private life was a matter of almost as much interest as the fluctuation of prices at the Opium Exchange. Marianne Chinnery had found out about her husband’s other family soon enough, and to her great credit she had tried to ensure that they were provided for and that her husband did his duty by them. She had even arranged a church christening for the two little boys: known to their friends as Khoka and Robin, they were christened ‘Henry Collins Chinnery’ and ‘Edward Charles Chinnery’ respectively – which became a source of great hilarity to their playmates, who continued of course, to use their Bengali nicknames.

More usefully perhaps, Marianne Chinnery had also prevailed upon her husband to take the boys into his studio, so that they might learn his trade, and both of them had spent a few years working under their father’s tutelage. Unfortunately for them, this interlude in their lives was not to last long: they had not yet reached their teens when their father fled the city, abandoning both his families.

This was a double blow, for by that time Marianne Chinnery too had lost interest in Khoka and Robin: perhaps the death of her own son had made it more difficult for her to deal with them; perhaps her daughter, having married an English District Magistrate, had pressed her to sever a connection that might be an embarrassment to her husband; or perhaps it was merely that greater exposure to colonial society had coarsened her own sensibilities. In any event, after George Chinnery’s departure, Sundaree and the two boys were more or less abandoned to their fate: the little money the painter sent was not enough to live on, and Sundaree had had to supplement her income by cooking and cleaning for a succession of British families. But Sundaree was a formidable woman in her own right: despite all her difficulties, she had done what she could to ensure the continuation of her sons’ training in the arts – other than the paintbrush, she liked to say, there was nothing to keep them from sharing the lot of every other street-chokra in Kidderpore.