COMPANY SCHOOL (19th-Century).
[Melon, Figs, and Other Exotic Fruits]
Pencil, wash and watercolor on paper. Mount with washed borders.
c. 1820 from A Collection of Drawings of Indian Natural History.
18 3/4" x 24 1/2" sheet, 23 1/2" x 29 1/2" framed.

Provenance: Collection of Benjamin Wolff.

Lots 51 & 52 are the Finest Existing Company School Compositions: a compelling choice of Indian flora and fauna

The aesthetic highlights of the Wolff Collection are those belonging to the tradition of Company painting, famously patronized by such notable collectors as The Marquis Wellesley, Major General Thomas Hardwicke, W.L. Gibbons, and of course the Impeys. Mary, Lady Impey (1749-1818) seems to have taken the lead in commissioning meticulous, often life-sized pictures of their birds and animals from three artists from Patna, 200 miles away along the Ganges River: Shaikh Zain ud-Din, Bhawani Das, and Ram Das. All three artists had clearly been trained in the old Mughal techniques of miniature painting, but by working for the Impeys, using English watercolors on English paper, and taking English natural history works as their models, an extraordinary fusion of English and Indian artistic impulses took place, a fusion that resulted in an entirely new type of painting known today as the Company School. By the time the Impeys left India in 1783, these artists had produced over two hundred works on large sheets of imported English paper, mainly of birds though also of animals, fish, and reptiles. In their assimilation of European conventions, they are also outstanding forerunners of the Company style, practiced by Indian artists for British and other European patrons well into the 19th century.