Celebrating Asian Art

Demoiselle Crane (anthropoids virgo), Company School, Calcutta, circa 1820, Opaque watercolour on paper, with pencil, pen and grey ink, watermarked J WHATMAN, inscribed in Persian with the name of the bird, kakara. 46.6 by 62.5 cm.

Provenance
Sold at auction in Lincoln, 1970s
Private collection, England, 1970s-2014
Simon Ray, London, 2014
Private collection, Europe, 2014-23

A large and finely painted image that in many ways epitomises the triumph of Company School painting. When Lady Impey’s ornithological albums, commissioned by her in Calcutta in the 1770s, were seen by the scientific community in England following her return around 1808, they caused a sensation. Never before had such realistic images been seen and their reception was rightly lauded. Here, perhaps forty years later, the tradition has been perfected by artists responding to decades of British patronage. However, the political and economic scene was about to change and within ten years the genre had declined and would soon vanish.

Grey Heron (ardea cinerea), Company School, Calcutta, circa 1820, Opaque watercolour on paper, with pencil, pen and grey ink, watermarked J WHATMAN, inscribed in Persian with the name of the bird, anjan, 50.5 by 68 cm.

Provenance
Sold at auction in Lincoln, 1970s
Private collection, England, 1970s-2014
Simon Ray, London, 2014
Private collection, Europe, 2014-23

A large and finely painted image that in many ways epitomises the triumph of Company School painting. When Lady Impey’s ornithological albums, commissioned by her in Calcutta in the 1770s, were seen by the scientific community in England following her return around 1808, they caused a sensation. Never before had such realistic images been seen and their reception was rightly lauded. Here, perhaps forty years later, the tradition has been perfected by artists responding to decades of British patronage. However, the political and economic scene was about to change and within ten years the genre had declined and would soon vanish.

FOLIO FROM THE IMPEY ALBUM, Burmese chestnut-backed Shrike (Lanius colluroides) on an oleander branch, Attributed to Shaikh Zayn al-Din, Calcutta, 1777-82, Pencil and watercolour heightened with gum arabic on paper watermarked J WHATMAN, the reverse stamped with the seal of Sir Elijah Impey, 41.2 by 54.8 cm.

Provenance
Sir Elijah (1732-1809) and Lady Impey (1749-1818), Calcutta and London
Lady Impey: Phillips, London, 21 May 1810
Colnaghi, London, 1980s
Private collection, London
Simon Ray, London, 2011, no.64

THE BURMESE SHRIKE
The grey crown identifies it to be of the nominate race, Lanius colluroides that is found from Burma through Assam, Thailand and Indochina. It is female and its barred plumage shows it to be a young bird. Shrikes are technically songbirds but they share many of the habits of birds of prey, feeding on small reptiles and even on birds and mammals. They have the habit of storing their foodstuffs impaled on thorns as in a rather gruesome larder, giving them the popular name of “butcher birds”.

THE ARTIST AND HIS PATRONS
Shaikh Zain al-Din is sometimes described in the inscriptions on pages from the Impey album as coming from Patna, also known as Azimabad. He was trained as a court painter in the naturalistic Mughal tradition almost certainly at Murshidabad, capital of the Nawabs of Bengal, where a court studio flourished in the 1750s and early 1760s. In a brief war with the East India Company 1763-64, Nawab Qasim ‘Ali moved his capital to Patna, taking his artists with him, where there flourished for a short while a school of painting including presumably Shaykh Zain al-Din among the artists, although no work from him is signed in this period.