Print photographed by the author, with formatting and additional information by Jacqueline Banerjee. You may use the images without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you (1) credit the photographer and (2) link your document to this URL in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in a print one. [Click on the images to enlarge them.]
The Delhi Durbar. Assault at arms. The 15th Bengal Lancers tent pegging, by Inglis Sheldon-Williams (1870-1940). This is a print of the original watercolour, which was dated Delhi January 1903. It manages to convey both speed and drama.
The 15th Bengal Lancers were famous for their assistance to the British during the uprisings that began in India in 1857. They were raised by Captain Charles Cureton (1826-1891) in 1858 from the Multan area of Punjab, which is now in Pakistan, and were known as "Cureton's Mooltanees" or "Multanis," becoming the 15th Lancers in 1903, at the very time Sheldon-Willliams depicted them (see "15th Lancers (Cureton's Multanis").
Close-up of the white horse and its rider.
Cureton himself played a major role in suppressing the Mutiny, serving with these men "throughout the campaigns in Rohilkhand and Oudh in 1858 and 1859," and many more, being "eleven times mentioned in dispatches published in general orders.... He distinguished himself as a cavalry leader, and performed many acts of great personal bravery" (Vetch and Stearn), becoming a major and lieutenant-colonel, and being knighted in the year he died. The sporting print gives something of the bold and vigorous spirits of the men under his command.
Tent pegging is a quintessentially Asian sport, a particularly "fast and dramatic" one
in which riders carrying a lance or sword must spear and pick up a peg from the ground while at full gallop.... Cavalrymen have practised the game since at the least the 4th Century BC, and Asian empires were responsible for introducing the sport to other parts of the world. By all accounts the sport developed as a cavalry training exercise designed to develop a soldier’s prowess with sword and lance from the back of his horse, but what is less certain is whether it was used as a general training method or for a specific combat situation. ["History of Tent Pegging"]
It is especially appropriate that Sheldon-Williams chose to depict this scene, because his father Alfred Sheldon-Williams, who died in 1886, was a sporting as well as a landscape painter. He illustrated Troop Horses Returning from Watering (see Wingfield 321).
The artist's signature and the place and date of completion.
Link to Related Material
Bibliography
""15th Lancers (Cureton's Multanis)." FIBIS (The Families In British India Society). Web. 20 September 2024.
"History of Tent Pegging." Equestrian Federation of India. Web. 20 September 2024.
Vetch, R. H., and Roger T. Stearn. "Cureton, Charles Robert (1789–1848), army officer." (This includes material on his son, the Charles Cureton discussed above.) Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Online edition. Web. 20 September 2024.
Created 20 September 2024