Zoffany’s ‘monkey’ and other early depictions of the western hoolock gibbon

Abstract

The animal included in Johan Zoffany’s painting Claude Martin and his Friends ( c. 1786) is here identified as a male western hoolock gibbon ( Hoolock hoolock ( Harlan, 1834 )). Other early images of the animal made in India and elsewhere are discussed, including those commissioned by Francis Buchanan Hamilton at the Barrackpore Menagerie, Bengal. The scientific description of the species by Richard Harlan, made belatedly and in North America, is discussed, as is a possible route by which the individual depicted by Zoffany could have reached captivity in Lucknow far from its native habitat in north-east India.