It is great to see Apollo shortlisting Johan Zoffany’s drawing of Elephants Fighting for their Acquisition of the Year Award. The beautiful sheet is a previously unpublished example of Zoffany’s Indian landscape drawing and was acquired by the Yale Center for British Art from us at the beginning of 2014.

It is particularly appropriate that this drawing should have found a home at Yale. The Center organised the pioneering exhibition Johan Zoffany RA: Society Observed in 2013 and has an outstanding collection of works by Zoffany including two other Indian period landscape drawings which were both in the collection of the Center’s founder Paul Mellon. Most importantly as a teaching collection in a major university, the Center is pioneering research into British art and Empire from the seventeenth to twentieth centuries providing new contexts for work such as this.

This drawing is not only beautiful but exceptionally rare as only a small number of Zoffany’s Indian drawings survive.  The posthumous auction of Zoffany’s studio, conducted by ‘Messrs Robins’ in May 1811 contained a considerable number of studies listed as: ‘drawings in chalks, illustrative of the country and manners of India – by Mr Zoffany.’ The lot descriptions include ‘twenty-one Elephants and Horses’ and ‘Seven, Natives of India’, one lot in particular is listed as: ‘Thee, Elephants Fighting, and 2 Views’. This is almost certainly the lot which included the present drawing which depicts a fight between two elephants, rendered in Zoffany’s customary mixed chalks on blue paper. The sheet probably depicts a magnificent spectacle at the court of Asaf-ud-daula, the Muslim ruler of Awadh and was almost certainly made at Lucknow.

Whilst there is no record of Zoffany attending an elephant fight, the following year the landscape painter William Daniell, travelling with his uncle Thomas, recorded in his diary on the 18th July that:

'Col. Martin, Un[cle]. & self went very early to the Nawaub’s Bungalow at Gow Gautee to see the Elephant fight. The Nawaub gave us breakfast in the English stile. There were abt. 6 or 7 Engagements some of them very fierce. Un the rest of the day making a Sketch of the fight on a half length.'

Gow Gautee was the complex Asaf-ud-daula built on the banks of the river Gompti, south of Lucknow. Two male elephants were then introduced, with the idea that they would be induced to fight for the female.  Zoffany has shown the moment of engagement between the two male elephants, surmounted by Mahouts, the horseman carrying their long spears, are in the process of encouraging the fight. The elephant on the left of the composition has been backed into the river Gompti, confirming the location of Zoffany’s scene as Asaf-ud-daula’s palace complex at Gow Gautee. Zoffany has captured the drama of the scene, using the white chalk to represent clouds of dust and the churned water of the Gompti, and the rearing horses, running figures and small dog to suggest the scale and energy of the engagement. Beyond the fight, Zoffany has included Gow Gautee itself, showing an arcade, terrace and awning. Under the awning several figures are visible, including a seated man, dressed in European costume - wearing a tricorn hat and leaning on a stick – and seated on what appears to be a dais to the far right, a figure that is likely to be Asaf-ud-daula himself. Described with remarkable economy, in a few rapid lines of chalk, these characteristic details are entirely legible to the viewer, underlining Zoffany’s extraordinary ability as a draughtsman.

It is tremendous that amongst so many ‘headline’ purchases made by museums this year that Apollo has highlighted this small but important drawing and celebrated the Yale Center for British Art’s acquisitions.