Colesworthey Grant

Colesworthey Grant (sometimes spelt Colesworthy) (25 October 1813 – 31 May 1880) was an English artist and pioneer activist against cruelty to animals in India.

Grant was born in London to a Scottish father who manufactured mathematical instruments and a mother of Welsh ancestry. He arrived in India at the age of nineteen and joined his brother George who was a clock and watch-maker in Calcutta. Colesworthey was injured in the spine from a fall during one of his exercise sessions and could not walk straight after that. Colesworthey took an interest in sketching and began to contribute to the India Review from 1838 through Dr Fred Corbyn and later to the Calcutta Monthly Journal. These early works included portrait sketches of many eminent persons who lived in Calcutta. He later became a professor of drawing at Presidency College.

Colesworthey founded the Calcutta Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals in 1861, one of the first organizations of its kind in the world. Grant was moved by the injuries and mutilations he saw to street animals, particularly draught cattle and horses, inflicted mostly by their owners and keepers. He published a text for children on animal cruelty that was to be used in Sunday schools. Towards the end of his life he received an Honorary Diploma from the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.