Add Or 4363

The Sheep Eater; seven stages in a man’s consumption of a sheep, illustrated in consecutive sequence from right to left. Only the ground is shaded while the sky is left blank.

By a Calcutta artist, c.1795-1800.

Inscribed above in ink: ‘Jura Geer Berah Geer the famous Sheep Eater from Surong near Kas Gunge in the Furrakabad District at his Breakfast;’ and below: ‘1. His first position’ [standing holding the sheep by its back with his teeth]. ‘2. The second position’ [removing the intestines]. ‘3. Drinking the Blood. 4. tearing the Ribs out. 5. Tearing the Throat out. 6. Devouring the hind Quarter. 7. Eating the Caustic Plant called Madar as a Salad.’

Water-colour on laid paper; 295 by 463 mm, within a black frame.

Provenance: collection of James Nathaniel Rind. Purchased 1987.

Published Hobhouse Ltd, ‘Indian Painting during the British Period’, no.13; J.P. Losty ‘The Sheepeater of Fatehgarh’, ‘South Asian Studies’, v.4, 1988, pp. 1-11.

Note: Rind, of the Bengal Native Infantry, in India 1778-1801: the inscriptions are in is hand. Rind collected unusual subjects. Two other versions of the Sheep Eater with the same inscriptions and handwriting are known: in a private collection (Welch 1978, 44-9, with Rind’s signature, which this version lacks), and in the Victoria and Albert Museum (I.S. 11-1887 (15/49), Archer 1992, 82-3). For another version of the activities of this Sheep Eater, see Add.Or.4297-8, done for General Thomas Hardwicke on the spot at Fatehgarh in 1796. Rind was in Fatehgarh in 1797, and travelled extensively on survey work in the northern and western provinces in the previous decade, and may well have seen this phenomenon himself; he seems to have been sufficiently impressed to have several versions done of this drawing perhaps for distribution to the curious. For other items from Rind’s collections see WD3465-71 and NHD60/1-2.