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Lot Essay
This important botanical study is inscribed on the reverse by the savant and naturalist Francis Buchanan-Hamilton with a note to Bengal Civil Servant Richard Goodlad. This evidence of the close link between the two men confirms the provenance of the large group of botanical studies by the highly talented artist previously known as 'The master of the fine albums' who can now be renamed as 'The Goodlad artist'.
On the verso of this drawing is a pencil note by the surgeon-naturalist Francis Buchanan (later Buchanan-Hamilton) (1762–1829): 'uncertain but it seems to be the Bon Kooncha of the Bengalese, which I take to be a new Genus of the Decandria monogynia but I have not seen the fruit. It is a species of the Bergera but differs from the Bergera konigi [sic] in having the margin of the leaflets entire. Decandria monogynia. Bergera integerrima B[uchanan].'
The plant was placed by Buchanan in the Linnean Class Decandria, Order Monogynia, and he coined for it the binomial Bergera integerrima, which distinguished it from the well-known curry leaf plant (Bergera koenigii) by its entire leaflets. The classification and Buchanan’s unpublished name were elegantly written in sepia ink by a clerk on the recto of the drawing. Buchanan informed his friend William Roxburgh, Superintendent of the Calcutta Botanic Garden before him, of the proposed name but neither could claim authorship: it was first published by the Swiss-French botanist Augustin De Candolle in Paris in 1824. Roxburgh recorded in Flora Indica that Buchanan first found the plant in 1797 on the ‘eastern banks of the mouth of the Megna’ (Serampore, 1832). In 1796–8 Buchanan was based at Lakshmipur on the eastern bank of the River Meghna, now in Bangladesh. As was his usual practice Buchanan also recorded the local name of the plant.
The plant is is now placed in the genus Micromelum, in the citrus family Rutaceae. A small tree, to eight metres in height, it occurs in subtropical forest at altitudes of up to 1500 metres, from northern and eastern India and Nepal, eastwards to Thailand, Indo-China and China.
The drawing is one of a series previously attributed to the ‘Master of the Fine Albums’. The inscription on the reverse of our painting and recent work on botanical drawings in the Natural History Museum (NHM) made for Buchanan’s medical superior John Fleming has proved a previously suspected close connection between Buchanan and the Bengal Civil Servant Richard Goodlad (1755–1821). Goodlad joined the East India Company in 1771, working as a merchant in Bengal until 1801. Both men lived in the same town, Baruipore, close to Calcutta between 1799 and 1800. In the garden of Goodlad’s villa there Buchanan found a wild cucumber relative of which two drawings were made in 1799 and 1800. Buchanan intended to dedicate the plant either as a new species ‘Bryonia goodladia’ or the new genus ‘Goodladia’. It was at this time, after his own discovery of the Bergera in 1797 and before Goodland’s departure from India in 1801, that Buchanan must have been asked to identify and annotate the present drawing, a dating which is consistent with a watermark on another study from the same group. Although still unknown by name, the confirming of the link between Goodlad and Buchanan as demonstrated by the present inscription merits now recognising the artist as 'the Goodlad artist'.
After returning to England Goodlad lived at Hill Place, Hampshire. Collections of botanical and zoological studies appear to have been sold and dispersed following his death in 1821. Two groups that can now firmly be attributed to Goodlad as commissioner remain intact: one at the Natural History Museum (Indian Drawings: Botanical and Zoological) and the Pearson Album at the British Museum. A third group, acquired by the Sir Edward Smith Stanley, 13th Earl of Derby prior to 1851, was in the library of Knowsley Hall, Liverpool, until 2006 when it was sold by Niall Hobhouse and Colnaghi (Niall Hobhouse, Fifty-One Flowers, Botanical watercolours from Bengal, London, 2006). The present drawing appears to have come from a further fourth dispersed album. Other works from this fourth album were sold in these Rooms, 27 October 2023, lot 127, 24 October 2024, lot 178 and 30 April 2026, lot 129, however this is the first to come to market bearing a note in the hand of Francis Buchanan-Hamilton.
We are grateful to Dr Henry Noltie for his cataloguing and note for the present lot.
On the verso of this drawing is a pencil note by the surgeon-naturalist Francis Buchanan (later Buchanan-Hamilton) (1762–1829): 'uncertain but it seems to be the Bon Kooncha of the Bengalese, which I take to be a new Genus of the Decandria monogynia but I have not seen the fruit. It is a species of the Bergera but differs from the Bergera konigi [sic] in having the margin of the leaflets entire. Decandria monogynia. Bergera integerrima B[uchanan].'
The plant was placed by Buchanan in the Linnean Class Decandria, Order Monogynia, and he coined for it the binomial Bergera integerrima, which distinguished it from the well-known curry leaf plant (Bergera koenigii) by its entire leaflets. The classification and Buchanan’s unpublished name were elegantly written in sepia ink by a clerk on the recto of the drawing. Buchanan informed his friend William Roxburgh, Superintendent of the Calcutta Botanic Garden before him, of the proposed name but neither could claim authorship: it was first published by the Swiss-French botanist Augustin De Candolle in Paris in 1824. Roxburgh recorded in Flora Indica that Buchanan first found the plant in 1797 on the ‘eastern banks of the mouth of the Megna’ (Serampore, 1832). In 1796–8 Buchanan was based at Lakshmipur on the eastern bank of the River Meghna, now in Bangladesh. As was his usual practice Buchanan also recorded the local name of the plant.
The plant is is now placed in the genus Micromelum, in the citrus family Rutaceae. A small tree, to eight metres in height, it occurs in subtropical forest at altitudes of up to 1500 metres, from northern and eastern India and Nepal, eastwards to Thailand, Indo-China and China.
The drawing is one of a series previously attributed to the ‘Master of the Fine Albums’. The inscription on the reverse of our painting and recent work on botanical drawings in the Natural History Museum (NHM) made for Buchanan’s medical superior John Fleming has proved a previously suspected close connection between Buchanan and the Bengal Civil Servant Richard Goodlad (1755–1821). Goodlad joined the East India Company in 1771, working as a merchant in Bengal until 1801. Both men lived in the same town, Baruipore, close to Calcutta between 1799 and 1800. In the garden of Goodlad’s villa there Buchanan found a wild cucumber relative of which two drawings were made in 1799 and 1800. Buchanan intended to dedicate the plant either as a new species ‘Bryonia goodladia’ or the new genus ‘Goodladia’. It was at this time, after his own discovery of the Bergera in 1797 and before Goodland’s departure from India in 1801, that Buchanan must have been asked to identify and annotate the present drawing, a dating which is consistent with a watermark on another study from the same group. Although still unknown by name, the confirming of the link between Goodlad and Buchanan as demonstrated by the present inscription merits now recognising the artist as 'the Goodlad artist'.
After returning to England Goodlad lived at Hill Place, Hampshire. Collections of botanical and zoological studies appear to have been sold and dispersed following his death in 1821. Two groups that can now firmly be attributed to Goodlad as commissioner remain intact: one at the Natural History Museum (Indian Drawings: Botanical and Zoological) and the Pearson Album at the British Museum. A third group, acquired by the Sir Edward Smith Stanley, 13th Earl of Derby prior to 1851, was in the library of Knowsley Hall, Liverpool, until 2006 when it was sold by Niall Hobhouse and Colnaghi (Niall Hobhouse, Fifty-One Flowers, Botanical watercolours from Bengal, London, 2006). The present drawing appears to have come from a further fourth dispersed album. Other works from this fourth album were sold in these Rooms, 27 October 2023, lot 127, 24 October 2024, lot 178 and 30 April 2026, lot 129, however this is the first to come to market bearing a note in the hand of Francis Buchanan-Hamilton.
We are grateful to Dr Henry Noltie for his cataloguing and note for the present lot.