Here, D'Oyly met George Chinnery,[6] who spent a great deal of time staying with D’Oyly during his early career.

Brian Houghton Hodgson stayed with the couple when he first arrived in India in the 1820s; the D’Oylys introduced him to society and helped him establish connections with high officials of the Indian government.

From 1821 to 1831, D'Oyly was Opium Agent of Bihar and Commercial Resident of Patna; this was one of his most productive periods, and he produced numerous paintings and sketches.

[12] Between 1832 and 1833, D'Oyly took leave at the Cape of Good Hope, returning to Calcutta to become the Senior Member of the Board of Customs, Salt, Opium and of the Marine.

[13] D'Oyly sketched incessantly and took an active interest in the arts generally, finding these leisure pursuits to be an agreeable way to relieve the boredom associated with colonial life.

He produced landscapes, scenes of Indian life, portraits, and caricatures, primarily in watercolour, and also wrote satirical verse.

[17] His published work, which was invariably heavily illustrated, encompassed a variety of subject matter, from natural history to social satire, and was occasionally written in verse.

A short historical account of Dacca was appended to each book, written by James Atkinson, with engravings by Edwin Landseer.

[22] His 1828 work Tom Raw, the Griffin (which scholars believe was one of his earliest books, in around 1811) is an illustrated satirical novella in verse which relates the adventures of a cadet in the East India Company.

They published Feathered Game of Hindostan (1828) and Oriental Ornithology (1829); Webb Smith depicted the birds and foliage, and D'Oyly the backgrounds.

Those published in conjunction with Christopher Webb Smith, for example, included a two to three-page description accompanying each illustration, with the commentary provided by Captain Thomas Williamson.

Two such works are Daily Life in the Early Eighteen-Thirties Illustrated with the Hitherto Unpublished Johannesburg Album of Sketches (1898) and The Cape Sketchbooks of Sir Charles D'Oyly 1832-1833 (1968).