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Lot Essay
INSCRIPTIONS:
Above: Tamarind
Below: Triandria Monogynia, Emly, Tamarindus indica of Linnaus
This watercolour belongs to a group defined by their attention to botanical detail, bright colours, and elegant copperplate inscriptions. They have been attributed to Calcutta, and are likely to have been produced by artists assembled by William Roxburgh. Roxburgh became the first paid superintendent of Calcutta Botanic Garden in 1793, and in the next twenty years he assembled a collection of 2,500 drawings which he referred to as the ‘Roxburgh Icones’ (H. J. Noltie, 'Indian export art? The botanical drawings', in William Dalrymple (eds.), Forgotten Masters: Indian Paintings for the East India Company, London, 2019, p.78). Copies were made for his colleagues in the East India Company, such as Lord Wellesley and Dr James Hare, and it is possible that this series was also derived from Roxburgh’s models. Noltie's essay on Indian botanical painting refers to the unnamed artist of this particular series as 'the Master of the fine albums', noting that they share dramatic use of shadow and a gum arabic glaze, lending them an intense quality (Noltie, op.cit., p.81).
A large collection of paintings from this series, including zoological as well as botanical subjects, are in the Natural History Museum in London (NHM ISC-Z/B). A further fifty-eight watercolours are also in the British Museum. Although the majority are painted in vertical format, some – like the present lot – are painted horizontally, such as the depiction of a jackfruit (1999,0203,0.39). A folio in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York depicts the flowers of a cotton tree, which was painted for the merchant Richard Goodlad (Acc.no.2016.489). The fact that this patron is known to have traded mainly in Calcutta and to have ties with the Botanic Garden strengthens the attribution to that city.
All plants in this series are labelled with their indigenous name, as well as their definition according to Linnaean taxonomy. In 1758, the tenth edition of the Systema Naturae of Carl Linnaeus (1707-78) proposed a way of classifying animals based on shared physical traits, which became the foundation of modern systems of biological classification. Thus the Tamarind is referred to as Triandria Monogynia, classifying the flower according to the arrangement of stamens and pistels in a flower, as well as by its Latin name Tamarindus Indica. This name is misleading, since the Tamarind is not indigenous to India but rather to tropical Africa. Nonetheless, its association with the subcontinent is so long that the name ‘Tamarind’ is a corruption of the name given to it by Arab merchants, Tamar Hind, or ‘the Indian date’. Though all of this is noted on the painting, it sits alongside a careful transliteration of the Tamarind’s indigenous name, ‘Elmy’. In their desire to understand India’s flora, botanists thus paid attention to European methodologies as well as local knowledge and nomenclature.
Above: Tamarind
Below: Triandria Monogynia, Emly, Tamarindus indica of Linnaus
This watercolour belongs to a group defined by their attention to botanical detail, bright colours, and elegant copperplate inscriptions. They have been attributed to Calcutta, and are likely to have been produced by artists assembled by William Roxburgh. Roxburgh became the first paid superintendent of Calcutta Botanic Garden in 1793, and in the next twenty years he assembled a collection of 2,500 drawings which he referred to as the ‘Roxburgh Icones’ (H. J. Noltie, 'Indian export art? The botanical drawings', in William Dalrymple (eds.), Forgotten Masters: Indian Paintings for the East India Company, London, 2019, p.78). Copies were made for his colleagues in the East India Company, such as Lord Wellesley and Dr James Hare, and it is possible that this series was also derived from Roxburgh’s models. Noltie's essay on Indian botanical painting refers to the unnamed artist of this particular series as 'the Master of the fine albums', noting that they share dramatic use of shadow and a gum arabic glaze, lending them an intense quality (Noltie, op.cit., p.81).
A large collection of paintings from this series, including zoological as well as botanical subjects, are in the Natural History Museum in London (NHM ISC-Z/B). A further fifty-eight watercolours are also in the British Museum. Although the majority are painted in vertical format, some – like the present lot – are painted horizontally, such as the depiction of a jackfruit (1999,0203,0.39). A folio in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York depicts the flowers of a cotton tree, which was painted for the merchant Richard Goodlad (Acc.no.2016.489). The fact that this patron is known to have traded mainly in Calcutta and to have ties with the Botanic Garden strengthens the attribution to that city.
All plants in this series are labelled with their indigenous name, as well as their definition according to Linnaean taxonomy. In 1758, the tenth edition of the Systema Naturae of Carl Linnaeus (1707-78) proposed a way of classifying animals based on shared physical traits, which became the foundation of modern systems of biological classification. Thus the Tamarind is referred to as Triandria Monogynia, classifying the flower according to the arrangement of stamens and pistels in a flower, as well as by its Latin name Tamarindus Indica. This name is misleading, since the Tamarind is not indigenous to India but rather to tropical Africa. Nonetheless, its association with the subcontinent is so long that the name ‘Tamarind’ is a corruption of the name given to it by Arab merchants, Tamar Hind, or ‘the Indian date’. Though all of this is noted on the painting, it sits alongside a careful transliteration of the Tamarind’s indigenous name, ‘Elmy’. In their desire to understand India’s flora, botanists thus paid attention to European methodologies as well as local knowledge and nomenclature.