Henry Ambrose Oldfield served as a surgeon at the British Residency in Kathmandu from 1850 to 1863, during the early years of the reign of Jang Bahadur Rana. Most previous Nepali art was religious art, but Oldfield's drawings and water-colours are of military and secular subjects as well and as such provide important information on Nepal’s army and the architecture of the Kathmandu valley at that time. His work was so accurate that it has helped to guide some recent restoration projects.

Oldfield apparently had a good relationship to Maharaja Jang Bahadur Rana. When Nepal declared war to Tibet in 1855, he got permission to accompany the troops of Jang Bahadur’s brother Bam Bahadur to Nepal’s North-West border near Kerong. In those days the very few Europeans who reached Kathmandu were not allowed to leave the Kathmandu valley.

Henry Ambrose Oldfield also wrote about the geography and the religion of Nepal. Together with his wonderful drawings and watercolour renderings of scenes from Nepal his works were collected and published after his death in a book with two volumes, entitled:

Sketches from Nipal,
historical and descriptive,
Anecdotes of the Court Life and Wild Sports of the Country
in the Time of Maharaja Jang Bahadur, G.C.B.
to which is added
An Essay on Nipalese Buddhism,
and
Illustrations of Religious Monuments, Architecture,
and Scenery,
from the Author’s own Drawings.
By the Late
Henry Ambrose Oldfield, M.D.,
of H. M. Indian Army,
Many Years Residency Surgeon az Khatmandu, Nipal.
––––––––––––––––
VOL. I. [VOL. II.]
––––––––––––––––
London:
W. H. Allen and Co., 13, Waterloo Place,
Pall Mall, S.W.
––––––
1880.