Add Or 4301

Two tumblers and a woman contortionist, with a troupe-leader and a drummer. The tumblers are linked and turning over and over, the woman is extracting a hook from a pool of water using only her nose.

By a Trichinopoly (Tanjore?) artist, 1780-86.

Inscribed on an accompanying cover sheet: ‘26. Two men tumbling over and over - a woman walking upon her hands. A Woman plunging her Head backwards into a hole in the ground, upwards of a foot deep, a foot and a half in Diameter, and filled up to the brim with water, and remaining under water, until she hooks in her nose a little iron hook, thrown into the well on purpose. She has no assistance from her hands, which she never moves from the edge of the Hole. N.B. I saw this trick of hooking the piece of crooked iron in the Nose, performed a number of times before I could give credit to it. D.S. The drawing is very badly executed.’.

Water-colour; 304 by 466 mm.

Provenance: from an album in the collection of Sir Thomas Phillipps, MS no.13405 (Sotheby’s, ‘Bibliotheca Phillippica, New Series: Mediaeval and Oriental Manuscripts Part IX’, 27th November 1974, p.105). Purchased 1986.

Note: The album (originally of 30 paintings) was inscribed: ‘Paintings exhibiting a great variety of attitudes, feats of Activities ... performed by sets of Mendicant peoples, a remarkably expert company of which at Trichinopoly the proprietor hired to remain with his painters for some weeks to enable them to take sketches of all their Attitudes.’ It was originally in the collection of David Simpson, who served as surgeon at Trichinopoly 1780-86 (D.G. Crawford, ‘Roll of the Indian Medical’ Service, Calcutta, 1930, p. 265), and sold at Christie’s 26 May 1792, lot 60, when it was bought by Charles Townley. Add. 15504A-B and Add.Or.4319-4356 were also in this collection.

The drawing is surrounded by a wide orange border, with the figures on a green ground with some contours and tufts of grass indicated, against a plain blue sky.