PTI

London, Apr 10: A collection of photographic images of India from 1850s to 1940s owned by NRI businessman Kanwardip Gujral was sold for a record price of 512,000 pounds at the Bonhams Auction in London on Thursday.

The strength of interest in the sale impressed Bonhams specialists who said the sale had set a new benchmark for images of this kind.

David Park, head of Books Maps and Manuscripts at Bonhams said: ''This sale of a single owners' Collection received a huge amount of interest. As a result, the sale made 512,000 pounds with many items going to three to four times their estimate.''

This sale has rewritten the prices for all the major photographers whose works were featured in the sale. The value of their work has been seriously raised, he said.

Top item in the sale was 'Lot 14', a series of 102 prints of Kashmir in the 1860s and 70s owned by Lord Lansdowne, Viceroy of India from 1886 to 1894.

It had been estimated to sell for 10,000 to 20,000 pounds but at the Bonhams sale it went for 72,000 pounds. The photographs were by John Burke, William Baker and James Craddock.

The Collection was that of the late Kanwardip Gujral, a Hamburg-based businessman who was born in Lahore before partition but brought up in Agra after 1947.

His first purchase of Indian photographs was in 1976, but he began collecting in earnest in 1990 when he bought a group of nineteenth century albums while on holiday in Italy.