A Company School painting of the skin of the sea snake (Hydrophis gracilis), India, circa 1790,...

Patrick Russell (1727-1805) was a Scottish surgeon employed as a naturalist by the East India Company. In 1781, after his younger brother Claud had been appointed administrator of Vizagapatam, Russell accompanied him to India, and in November 1785 he succeeded the Dane John Gerard Koenig as botanist to the East India Company in the Carnatic. In this capacity he made large collections of specimens and drawings of the plants, fishes, and reptiles of the country and he proposed to the governor of Madras in 1785 that the company's medical officers and others should be officially requested to collect specimens and information concerning useful plants of the various districts of India. In 1787 he drew up a preliminary memoir on the poisonous snakes of the Coromandel coast, which was printed officially at Madras and in 1794 he wrote the preface to the Plants of the Coast of Coromandel by William Roxburgh, a sumptuous work published at the expense of the East India Company, and one outcome of his own recommendations made ten years before. 

His publication of 1796, An Account of Indian Serpents Collected in the Coast of Coromandel, describes forty-three snakes, with special attention given to the effects of their bites, and experiments into remedies. A continuation to the work was issued in 1809. He was particularly concerned with the snakebite epidemic and the devastating effect it had on the local community in the Coromandel, such that he devoted much of his time to describing and conducting experiments with the local snake fauna. He documented the habits and behaviours of several snakes in an attempt to try and educate the local inhabitants in respect of their being able to tell the difference between the venomous and non-venomous snakes in order to avoid being bitten. the first fascicle of his work contained forty-six plates, forty-four of which were the product of a huge collaborative enterprise in which Russell enlisted the help of other company servants.

The Natural History Museum is the repository of two major collections of dried, flattened snakeskins prepared by Russell. These were accessioned in 1837 and 1904. An original set of snake plates associated with Russell’s books was nearly purchased by the Natural History Museum at at Sotheby’s 22 November 1977, where nine of the original plates described as “Reptiles: an important collection of watercolour drawings of reptiles some being original Company School drawings for Patrick Russell’s book on Indian snakes”, were offered as Lot 325 described as of  “great scientific and historical value”.

This watercolour is most likely by an Indian artist as The East India Company employed Indian artists as assistants to naturalists on special duty to complete the drawings for Patrick Russell's 1796 publication and Russell himself referred to Indian artists who were employed by him (M. Archer, Natural History Drawings in the India Office Library, 1962).