TWO SATYR TRAGOPAN PHEASANTS
Company School, Calcutta, circa 1820
watercolour and body colour on English paper watermarked J Whatman, embossed stamp BW lower centre
525 x 755 mm.; 445 x 660 mm.(sight)
Footnotes:
Provenance
Benjamin Wolff (1790-1866), a Danish lawyer.

Wolff trained as a lawyer in Copenhagen before leaving for Calcutta in 1817 to make his fortune, returning home in 1830. He was an accomplished draughtsman and also collected paintings and aquatints of Indian architecture, people, flora and fauna. His embossed stamp, with a crown motif, is on the lower part of the sheet of paper.

This painting - which appears to show two male Satyr Tragopans - in fact depicts one bird before, and during, an idiosyncratic mating performance. Two male tragopans would not in reality tolerate such close proximity to each other.

The bird's name (Latin, tragopan satyra) comes from the two blue 'horns' on the head, resembling those of the legendary satyr - half-man, half goat - of classical mythology. All five species of tragopan have these 'horns'. In this painting the horns are shown lying passively beneath the crest and look rather like blue feathers. They are not feathers, however, but long fingers of skin connected to the blue skin that can be seen on the face and throat.

The bird on the right is shown in a relaxed posture, his throat skin hanging limp and shrivelled when compared with his orange plumage. The bird on the left has begun his display (with the horns not yet erect). Concealed behind a rock or log the bird will begin to inflate his throat skin, tail spread and wings rhythmically beating, while emitting clicking noises. The throat skin quickly spreads into a remarkable shield, revealing a dark blue centre and vivid pink-patterned sides. Meanwhile the horns spring erect on either side of the jet black crown. The male bird then springs up suddenly from his hiding place, raises himself to his full height and with wings dropped reveals himself to the female.

Such displays are infrequently observed by humans, since they inhabit dense bamboo thickets, oak and rhododendron forests in the Himalayan mountains of northern India, Tibet, Nepal and Bhutan.

For two other depictions of this bird, both from the Impey Album, see Sotheby's, Arts of the Islamic World, 12th October 2005, lot 41 (attributed to Shaykh Zayn al-Din), and Christie's, Arts of India, 10th June 2015, lot 61 (by Ram Das).