Madras Spring Meeting 1837.

£950 · Offered by Shapero Rare Books

A Madras (Chennai) printed sheet advertising a horse race held at the Madras Race Club at Guindy on the 30th of January, 1837. An early depiction of the oldest race course in India, probably second only to the Daniells's lithograph of 1798, in the year the Madras Race Club was officially constituted. Patrick Boyle Smollett (1804-1895) was at the time working for the East India Company and evidently acting as steward of the races. He would retire in 1858 and return home to Scotland where he would become MP for Dumbarton. William Hunsley was a known engraver and lithographer working in Madras in the 1830s and 1840s. A few years later, in 1841, he would produce an important series of military costumes of the Madras Army. Single printed sheet, approx. 30 x 20 cm, with engraving of the Madras Race Club by William Hunsley, with pencil annotations giving the names of the jockeys, housed in a later glazed frame (41.5 x 31.5 cm).

• Binding: Hardcover

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