Object number2024.23.26
Chunee, the Elephant Who Wouldn't Die
Date2018
Artist
Sue Coe
(British, born 1951, active in the United States)
CultureAmerican, British
MediumOffset lithograph
EditionEdition A/P of 100
DimensionsSheet: 20 x 28 in. (50.8 x 71.1 cm)
Image: 18 x 25 1/2 in. (45.7 x 64.8 cm)
Image: 18 x 25 1/2 in. (45.7 x 64.8 cm)
Credit LineGift of Stephen F. Eisenman
On View
Not on viewPeriod21st c
Classification(s)
SignedOn recto, signed lower right corner in pencil: Sue Coe
InscribedOn recto, by artist, lower left corner in pencil: A/P; lower right: For S and Hrat love [signature] 2018. On recto, printed in black ink: London's first proper zoo, was at the Exeter Exchange in Covent Garden. Chunee the Elephant, lived for 17 years on the second story along with other animals in iron cages. Chunee did tricks, [space] taking off hats / of customers with his truck, and returning them. Lord Byron said he wished Chunee was his butler. On Feb 1826 Chunee had a septic tusk and stopped doing tricks. He started to break out of his cage, and fearing he would fall through the floor, they tried to kill him with arsenic, which he refused. Soldiers shot 152 musket balls into him, and his agonized cries could be heard down the Strand. He tried to do his tricks. He was finally killed by a sabre attached to a pole, and was known as 'the elephant who refused to die.' This image was printed by a Heidelberg offset press that weighs the same as Chunee.
Object information is a work in progress and may be updated as new research findings emerge.
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