ATTRIBUTED TO GEORGE CHINNERY (EARLY 19TH CENTURY)
Elephants with attendants in a clearing, seen from behind
pen and black ink on buff paper
14 x 11 cm
In the early nineteenth century, the British East India Company’s growing presence in India encouraged London trained artists to travel to the subcontinent. Chinnery left England in 1802 to seek portrait commissions in Madras, Calcutta, and Dacca (present-day Dhaka, Bangladesh)

George Chinnery a prolific sketcher and draughtsman wrote:
'But you know what my Sketch Books are -- all full - but many in each volume, with the embryo of design -- many filled in partially -- and many in their completed state of pen and sepia ... it will be the Sketch Book of a Painter and some 50 years hence may be interesting -- here and there I'll leave one in an unfinished state that G.C. may be seen more clearly, when it may come under the eye of a brother of the pencil.' (Chinnery to James Matheson, 1 Dec. 1838)

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