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Lot Essay
Sir Elijah Impey was Chief Justice of Bengal from 1774 to 1782. His wife Mary, Lady Impey, who joined him in Calcutta in 1777, was enchanted by the flora and fauna of her new surroundings and established a private menagerie at their estate on Middleton Row. She assembled a wide variety of exotic animals and birds and employed three Indian artists to paint them from life.
The artists all signed themselves 'Natives of Patna', the most senior of them being the Muslim artist Shaikh Zayn-al-Din, and the other two artists were Hindus Bhawani Das and Ram Das, who joined Zayn-al-Din three years after his arrival in Calcutta. All three artists were trained in the Mughal tradition of the court painters, a style of painting most appealing to English patrons and most suitable for the adaptation to European tradition of bird illustration. The Impeys were the first European patrons of natural history painting in India and are still considered today as amongst the most important. The present watercolour comes from a group that totalled 326 and were brought back to England with the Impeys in 1783. The collection was sold at Phillips, London, 21 May 1810. Examples from the Impey series can now be seen in the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Radcliffe Science Museum in Oxford, the Binney Collection in San Diego and the Wellcome Institute, London. A small number remain in private collections. A group of watercolours from the Impey Collection were sold by the 18th Earl of Derby in these Rooms, 17 June 1998, lots 170-3.
The Great Indian Fruit Bat is extremely large, with a wing span of up to 1.5 metres. They roost at night in colonies in trees and feed during the day in large groups among fruiting trees. It is found in India, Sri Lanka and the Maldive Islands, Myanmar (Burma), and western China.
The artists all signed themselves 'Natives of Patna', the most senior of them being the Muslim artist Shaikh Zayn-al-Din, and the other two artists were Hindus Bhawani Das and Ram Das, who joined Zayn-al-Din three years after his arrival in Calcutta. All three artists were trained in the Mughal tradition of the court painters, a style of painting most appealing to English patrons and most suitable for the adaptation to European tradition of bird illustration. The Impeys were the first European patrons of natural history painting in India and are still considered today as amongst the most important. The present watercolour comes from a group that totalled 326 and were brought back to England with the Impeys in 1783. The collection was sold at Phillips, London, 21 May 1810. Examples from the Impey series can now be seen in the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Radcliffe Science Museum in Oxford, the Binney Collection in San Diego and the Wellcome Institute, London. A small number remain in private collections. A group of watercolours from the Impey Collection were sold by the 18th Earl of Derby in these Rooms, 17 June 1998, lots 170-3.
The Great Indian Fruit Bat is extremely large, with a wing span of up to 1.5 metres. They roost at night in colonies in trees and feed during the day in large groups among fruiting trees. It is found in India, Sri Lanka and the Maldive Islands, Myanmar (Burma), and western China.