Indian Company School, Pair of Asian Stonechat Birds – 19th-century watercolour painting
Indian Company School, Pair of Asian Stonechat Birds – 19th-century watercolour painting
Indian Company School, Pair of Asian Stonechat Birds – 19th-century watercolour painting
Indian Company School, Pair of Asian Stonechat Birds – 19th-century watercolour painting

Indian Company School Pair of Asian Stonechat Birds

£800.00
£800.00
Esaurito
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An original 19th-century watercolour painting – Indian Company School, Pair of Asian Stonechat Birds.

An attractive Indian Company School painting with an orthithological subject.

The birds resemble the male and female Siberian or Asian stonechat, migratory birds which commonly winter in India.

Natural history subjects and India's native flora and fauna became popular amongst Western patrons and collectors in the late 18th and early 19th century. In Lucknow, General Claude Martin provided imported European paper to artists to prepare botanical studies and other natural history works, whilst in Calcutta, Mary, Lady Impey (wife of Chief Justice of the Supreme Court in Bengal, Elijah Impey) had a menagerie where she employed artists to paint a variety of animals and birds. Also in Calcutta, Dr William Roxburgh, superintendent of Calcutta Botanical Garden from 1793, appointed local artists to make botanical studies of the specimens in his charge. The efforts of Martin, Impey, Roxburgh and their artists gave rise to a large body of Company Paintings dedicated to natural history.

Company School paintings of birds not only make for a valuable ornitholoical record, but also allow for beautiful decorative compositions, with jewel-like colours and fine feather detail.

In watercolour on cream wove paper. With gum arabic to intensify the colour.

+ Read the S&W Collection Research

Indian Company Paintings

'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.

COA
+ Artwork Details

Dimensions: Height: 22.6cm (8.9") Width: 18.5cm (7.28")

Presented: Unframed.

Medium: Watercolour

Age: 19th-century

Signed: No.

Inscribed: No.

Dated: --

Condition: Some faint scattered foxing as shown. There is a short repaired tear to the upper right edge of the paper and a small nick to the lower edge. Please see photos for detail.

Stock number: KC-828