In May 1786, the print-and-bookseller William Holland released from his shop at 66 Drury Lane an etching by James Gillray (1756-1815) entitled A Sale of English Beauties in the East Indies. Gillray, a friend and contemporary of Rowlandson, was another of the great English caricaturists and satirists, exemplified in his biting A Sale of English Beauties in the East Indies. Some twenty-five years later, Gillray, having collapsed into a breakdown from which he never recovered, the publisher Thomas Tegg of Cheapside commissioned Rowlandson to produce a new version of the composition for a fresh edition.

The scene depicts a Calcutta wharf at the moment of unloading. A merchantman has just dropped anchor; her masts and rigging rise behind the figures, and along the quay a crowd of British and oriental men has come down to inspect the cargo. The cargo is a consignment of young English women. At the extreme left, a tall and foppish auctioneer in pale powdered wig stands on an improvised rostrum and knocks down his lots with a gavel.

The bale that serves as the auctioneer’s desk is lettered Mrs. Phillips, the Original Inventor, Leicester Fields, London – a maker of contraceptives – and below, For the use of the Supreme Council. A second packing case lies in the foreground at the lower left, propped against the auctioneer’s rostrum, and carries on its top face the inscription For the Amusement of Military Gentlemen, with four book titles lettered down the long side and end panel: Crazy Tales, Pucelle, Fanny Hill and Elements of Nature. Gillray had named eight; Rowlandson has reduced the list to four, perhaps to those that remained current in 1811. The casks at the foot of the composition are inscribed Leakes, that is, Walter Leake’s Pills, the proprietary cure for venereal disease then advertised throughout the London newspapers. Above the warehouse door at the right, a placard announces Warehouse for unsaleable Goods from Europe, to be returned by next Ship, by which a large lady is weighed and a group of women are weeping.

The principal lot is being knocked down: a slender young woman in a high-waisted Empire gown and a tall feathered headdress stands between suitors, looking languishingly at an Indian buyer in a yellow turban on her right while her left hand is taken by a stout Englishman in a brown coat, a parasol held over his head by a small attendant in a loincloth. The Englishman’s pocket is stuffed with papers inscribed Instructions for the Governor-General. Beyond this central group, a woman reaches out to an elderly man in a jewelled white turban, turning aside from a young military officer. Meanwhile, a stouter oriental man in a yellow tunic smoking a long pipe raises the petticoat of the woman.

Rowlandson faithfully reproduces Gillray’s original, with only slight alterations and Rowlandson’s livelier hand at times evident. The resulting etching that followed bears the legend Pub.d May 10th 1811 by Tho.s Tegg No. 111 Cheapside. Hand-coloured editions are held in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, the Wellcome Collection, the British Museum and the Lewis Walpole Library at Yale.

The scandalous scene portrayed is an attack on the moral conduct of the English in India, likely connected with the impeachment of Warren Hastings, the first Governor-General of Bengal. It was a landmark British parliamentary trial that ran from 1788-1795, accusing Hastings of corruption and extortion, largely stemming from his management of the East India Company. The case fuelled literary and political satire, perhaps none more provocative than Gillray’s work, and faithfully reproduced by Rowlandson, thus uniting two celebrated caricaturists of their day and this original watercolour, being a rare survivor.