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Percy Carpenter, Hog Hunting in Lower Bengal, London: Day & Son, 1861

Tinted lithographed title with hand-colored vignette, 8 hand-colored lithographed plates with descriptive text for each, all mounted on card with captions and ruled border printed in gold; contemporary morocco-backed maroon cloth boards, upper cover gilt-lettered, flat spine gilt-lettered, all edges gilt
61 x 43.5 x 1 cm

LIST OF PLATES
1. The Meet / 2. The Beat / 3. Tally Ho ! / 4. The First Spear / 5. The Charge / 6. The Hog at Bay / 7. The Death, including the Frontispiece – “Last Scene of All” / 8. The Tent-Club at Tiffin

Percy Carpenter (1820-1895) was a British artist. The younger son of artists William Hookham Carpenter and Margaret Sarah Carpenter, he studied painting at the British Royal Academy where he exhibited in 1841. As his brother, artist William Carpenter spent several years in India between 1850 and 1857, Carpenter too traveled to Singapore, Ceylon and India between 1855 and 1860.

In 1858, he exhibited a panoramic oil painting of Singapore as viewed from Mount Wallich, which was lithographed and published in London. By early 1859, Carpenter had reached Calcutta, where field sports became his specialty. In early 1860, the Bengal Tent Club commissioned him to make drawings of a pig-sticking event to be held in March that year. Its members suggested that the paintings should be published, and accordingly eight of his paintings were lithographed and published as ‘Hog Hunting in Lower Bengal’.

As explained in detail in the introduction the drawings got formed based on the sketches and notes taken during a meet held by the Calcutta Tent Club in March 1860 on the Sowerra Burrea Plains, near Tumluk, 50 miles southeast of Calcutta. The hunting party consisted of fifteen members of the Club, including their guests, with around four horses per person and attendants, numbering around sixty people. There were also eleven elephants to act as beaters in the long grass, jungle, and woods on the plain. The hunt lasted three days during which time they killed thirty seven hogs.

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