Left: Patiala Elephants. The Drive. R. T. Pritchett (1828–1907). 1887. Brassey, following p. 62. Right: The same scene in watercolour. Photography © Maggs Bros. Ltd. 2023, reproduced here by kind permission. [Click on the images to enlarge them.]
Another of the watercolours worked up from Pritchett's voyage on the Sunbeam with the Brasseys shows the elephants of this princely state in an attractive curved formation as the men on the ground advance with their weapons. Lady Brassey was not much involved with such expeditions, but she does record in her journal: "Monday, January 24th — The gentlemen went out shooting early. Started at 11. 30 in carriages drawn hy four horses, and drove through scrub-like jungle to meet the shooting party. Rode on elephants, in rather tumhle-to-pieces howdahs" (23). The object of the "drive" was apparently birds like partridges, quails and jungle-fowl (though she mentions seeing deer as well). So the men in advance of the elephants, seen much more clearly in the black-and-white illustration, would have been beaters, trying to make the birds rise into the air for targets. In general, there is much more detail in the illustration than in the watercolour, although colour helps bring the scene to life and evoke the atmosphere. As we see in the pen-and-ink sketches, and indeed in the many other illustrations in The Last Voyage, drawing was Pritchett's true skill.
Scanned (i.e. left-hand) image, text and formatting by Jacqueline Banerjee. [You may use the scanned image without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you (1) credit the Internet Archive and (2) link your document to this URL in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in a print one.]
Bibliography
Brassey, Lady Annie. The Last Voyage, to India and Australia, in the "Sunbeam". Illustrated by R. T. Pritchett. London: Longman, 1889. Internet Archive. From a copy in the New York Public Library. Web. 15 September 2023.
Created 18 September 2023