William Carpenter was the eldest son of the distinguished portrait painter Margaret Sarah Carpenter and of William Hookham Carpenter, who became Keeper of the Prints and Drawings Department at the British Museum. In early 1850 he set off in the footsteps of his younger brother Percy, also an artist, and landed in Bombay. He spent much of his time painting portraits of local rulers and the surrounding countryside, often wearing Indian dress himself. He travelled widely, from Sri Lanka in the south to Kashmir in the north, and he also spent some time in the Punjab and Afghanistan before moving south to Rajasthan. He appears to have returned to England in 1856. Ten years later he was living in Boston, USA, but he later returned to London, where he died in 1899.
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This painting depicts a Tibetan Buddhist priest or lama wearing a tall hat and carrying a prayer-wheel in his right hand. Prayer-wheels are devices for spreading spiritual blessings and well-being. A protective container houses a central axis that has rolls of thin paper wound around it. These are imprinted with multiple copies of the mantra (prayer) 'Om Mani Padme Hum'. The wheel is spun round and round so that the blessings are distributed in all directions. Larger decorative versions of the mantra are also carved on the outside cover of the wheel.
