Colonel Mordaunt's Cock Match

Print made by Richard Earlom, 1743–1822

1792

Mezzotint and etching with hand coloring in watercolor on moderately thick, slightly textured, cream laid paper

Yale Center for British Art

A large crowd gathers under a canopy to watch a cockfight. Several men are seated, while others stand and observe the two roosters in the foreground. Diplomacy, power, and art intersect in this complex image of a cockfight. More than one hundred figures appear, including Company agents, high-ranking members of the court in Lucknow, artists, musicians, and locals. At the center, Colonel Mordaunt—a tall British officer dressed in white—and the regional ruler Nawab Asaf al-Daula gesture toward each another, echoing the fighting roosters below. The artist Johan Zoffany (seen dressed in white and seated in the upper right-hand corner) painted the original composition for his patron Warren Hastings, the East India Company’s governor- general. Earlom’s print, based on Zoffany’s painting