Lot Essay
Published between 1805 and 1807, Oriental Field Sports was the product of the collaboration between a self-taught artist and a disgraced former officer in the Bengal Army. Together, they created what has been described as 'the most beautiful book on Indian sport in existence'. It contained forty scenes which depicting the adventures and misadventures which a traveller might have while hunting in India, as well as describing indigenous hunting techniques such as the way of capturing an elephant as depicted in one of these prints. Though anecdotal in tone, for many years this was probably one of the most popular books about India available to an English reader in the early 19th century.