Leaving For The Hunt At Gwalior

The departure, which this catalogue paints more often than the chase

Six titles in this register name a hunt that is leaving, departing or starting — hunters leaving a house, a departure for the hunt, a rajah starting on one, the start of a hunt, and this one, setting out from a named place. Exactly one title in the whole register names the death. That is a fact about what the subject was for. The assembly and the departure are the ceremonial half of hunting — the moment the party, the animals and the equipment are arrayed and visible — and a picture of it can carry rank, retinue and setting at once, which a picture of the chase cannot.

What the record holds

The catalogue gives 1887 as the date of creation and a private collection as the location. The dimensions are 86.4 x 132.1 cm, wide in the larger direction. Orientalism is the recorded style and American the nationality attached to the painter. The record files the work under portraiture, group portraiture, Animal Art > Horse, cultural heritage, a religious heading and an architectural heading, and the measured colour families of the image are ochre and yellow.

A note on this painter's group in the register

Twenty-seven of his works are catalogued here, most of them titled as streets, gateways, mosques and processions. The pictures record the conventions of a European market for such subjects as much as anything else, and this register reads them on those terms.