Lot 41: AN EXOTIC PHEASANT (TRAGOPAN SATYRA), FROM THE IMPEY ALBUM, ATTRIBUTED TO SHAYKH ZAYN AL-DIN, COMPANY SCHOOL, CALCUTTA, INDIA, CIRCA 1777-82

AN EXOTIC PHEASANT (TRAGOPAN SATYRA), FROM THE IMPEY ALBUM, ATTRIBUTED TO SHAYKH ZAYN AL-DIN, COMPANY SCHOOL, CALCUTTA, INDIA, CIRCA 1777-82

measurements note
54 by 47.2cm.

watercolour on European (Whatman) paper, framed

PROVENANCE

The Property of a Private Collector

NOTE

The animal and bird drawings produced for Lady Impey between 1777 and 1783 are among the earliest and without doubt the finest of natural history illustrations made for the British in India. Sir Elijah Impey was appointed first Chief Justice in Bengal in 1774 following the new Regulating Act which called for the establishment of law courts in Calcutta. When Sir Elijah left for India with his wife Mary they took their household with them, including servants and a moonshee from whom Sir Elijah could learn Persian. He set about collecting manuscripts and miniatures almost immediately, having his personal Persian collector's seal cut within the year. But it was his wife, bound to the house by family duties and frequent child-bearing, who collected exotic creatures in the garden of their Calcutta home, which must have become a veritable menagerie.

From 1777 Lady Impey employed Shaykh Zayn al-Din from Patna where, it can be assumed, he had been trained in the Mughal techniques of miniature painting. After three years Zayn al-Din was joined by two Hindu painters, Bhawani Das and Ram Das, both also from Patna. The project continued until Impey was recalled to London in 1783, by which time a total of 326 drawings, 197 of them birds, had been completed. The attribution to Zayn al-Din is based on a very similar version of the Satyr Tragopan, signed by Zayn al-Din and dated 1777, sold at Colnaghi in 1984 (see Birds in an Indian Garden: Nineteen illustrations from the Impey Collection, Colnagi, London, 1984). An adaptation of the composition by Ram Das, formerly in the collection of the Linnean Society, was sold in these rooms 10 June 1963, lot 30.

Examples from the Impey series of natural history drawings are today in the collections of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, the Wellcome Institute, London, the Radcliffe Science Library, Oxford, the San Diego Museum of Art and in private collections.

For illustrations of others of the Impey series see M. and W.G.Archer, Indian Painting for the British, Oxford, 1955, nos.6-9; T.Falk and G.Hayter, Birds in an Indian Garden, London, 1984; S.C.Welch, India. Art and Culture 1300-1900, New York, 1985, no.281; B.N.Goswamy and E.Fischer, Wonders of a Golden Age, Zurich, 1987, no.109; sales in these rooms 10 June, 1963, lots 1-64 (the Linnean Society group); 29 April, 1992, lot 1; 23 October 1992, lots 492-494; 22 October 1993, lot 229; 24 April 1996, lot 67; 13 October 2004, lot 22.

The Satyr Tragopan is a large bird of the pheasant family, growing to around 75 centimeters. It inhabits the moist forests of rhododendron and deciduous trees with dense undergrowth which cover large areas of the Himalayas in Nepal, Sikkim and Bhutan. It lives at high altitude between 2000 and 4000 metres and feeds on ferns and other ground vegetation.