Indian Company School Indian Greater Coucal Bird

An original c.1830 watercolour painting, Indian Company School, Indian Greater Coucal Bird.

A superb example of a Indian Company painting and part of an outstanding collection of Indian bird subjects that we have for sale.

As is typical for Company School style, the bird is painted with tremendously vivid opacity and fine detail. The vignette includes a patch of earth on which the bird stands, providing context and grounding the bird within the composition.

The Greater Coucal, or Mahuka, bird is a large member of the cuckoo order of birds. A widespread resident in the Indian Subcontinent, they are weak fliers, and are often seen clambering about in vegetation or walking on the ground as they forage for food.

'Company School' refers to a variety of hybrid styles that came about through the influence of Western (especially British) patrons on Indian artists in the 18th and early 19th centuries. Finding traditional, stylised Indian painting not to their taste, these patrons began to collect works that, while incorporating traditional elements from Rajput and Mughal painting were given a more 'western' appearance through their use of perspective and rounded modelling, as opposed to the more decorative, 'flatter' styles that had gone before. The Company style evolved to meet this demand: as many of their collectors worked for the East India Company, these paintings became associated with the name. Leading centres of the Company style were the main British settlements of Calcutta, Madras (Chennai), Delhi, Lucknow and Patna.

Europeans commissioned sets of images depicting festivals and scenes from Indian life, with people of different castes or trades being particular favourite subjects, as well as dancers and musicians. Collectors were particularly attracted to what were perceived to be the exotic customs, costumes and architecture of their adopted—and in many cases temporary—homeland. Paintings were mostly on paper, and most were small, reflecting the Indian miniature tradition and the intention that they would be kept in portfolios or albums.

Sadly there is little information about the identity of the numerous and flourishing ‘Company School’ artists; indeed Company School (or Kampani kalam) has been criticised as a term for defining a diverse body of works by the identity of its patrons rather than the talented Indian artists by which they are painted. These paintings resonate with fascinating and important questions and contradictions of cultural exchange.

On thin wove paper.