Religious mendicant couples including: a Sattanah, a Pandaran, a Poojalah and a Gungaram

The present pair of watercolours is a version of a series of watercolours in an album in the Victoria & Albert Museum, painted by a Tanjore artist and dated to 1830 (see M. Archer, Company Painting: Indian Paintings of the British Period, London, 1992, p. 60, nos. 26(8) and 26(10), illustrated in colour). The watercolours depict religious mendicant couples. In the first watercolour the characters are shown, one with five pots on his head, another beating a mridanga and another with a shrine above her head with a seated Bhairaca. The second watercolour depicts a non-Brahmin Vaishnavite couple, both carrying begging bowls and the man carrying a banner depicting the philosopher. Another character is shown blowing a conch shell and a woman is depicted with a peacock feather carrying a skin bag.
Mildred Archer writes in her catalogue that by the 1830s the Tanjore artists had realised a delicate and realistic style that was unrivalled in any other school of Company Painting.