Colonel Mordaunt's Cock Match

Johann Zoffany painted Colonel Mordaunt's Cock Match around 1784–86, one of his most ambitious and controversial Indian paintings depicting a cock fight organized by Colonel John Mordaunt at the court of the Nawab of Oudh. The painting's complex social and racial dynamics — British officers and Indian courtiers sharing the space of popular entertainment in the colonial setting — make it one of the most discussed images of British India in the eighteenth century. Zoffany spent four years in India (1783–89) at the invitation of Warren Hastings, and his Indian paintings constitute an extraordinary documentary record of British colonial society during the critical period of the East India Company's expansion.

Zoffany renders the crowded scene with his characteristic precision, capturing the animated expressions of both British and Indian spectators. The careful attention to costumes, architecture, and ethnographic detail creates a documentary record of cross-cultural encounter in colonial India.