SHAYKH ZAYN AL-DIN, CALCUTTA, INDIA, 1779

This painting and those of the following four lots (lots 58-61, also lot 105) come from an album commissioned by Sir Elijah and Lady Impey. Sir Elijah was the Chief Justice of Bengal from 1774-1782. His wife, Lady Mary Impey, joined him in Calcutta between 1777 and 1783. Like many of the English who worked in India in the 18th Century, Sir Elijah and Lady Impey were of enquiring mind, keenly interested in the exotic and mysterious atmosphere of India, its flora and its fauna. Lady Impey kept a private zoo on their large estate and assembled rare species of birds and animals, from which her Indian painters drew studies from life. She employed three painters who signed themselves 'Native of Patna'. They were Shaykh Zayn-al-Din, a Muslim and the most senior of the three painters (who painted lots 58 to 60 and lot 105), and Bhawani Das and Ram Das (the artist responsible for lot 62), both Hindus, who joined Shaykh Zayn-al-Din three years after his arrival in Calcutta. They were all natives of Patna, 300 miles upriver from Calcutta, and were trained in the naturalistic Mughal tradition.

The Mughal style appealed directly to English taste. The painters, coming from a disciplined and exacting tradition, adapted with remarkable speed to the foreign Company manner (S.C. Welch, India: Art and Culture 1300-1900, London, 1985, p. 422). The use of living examples from the Impey zoo, in combination with the Mughal inheritance of perceptive portraiture, resulted in studies of great vitality and vivid characterisation (T. Falk, Birds in an Indian Garden: Nineteen Illustrations from the Impey Collection, London, 1984, pp.2-3).

After Sir Elijah's death in 1809, the collection was sold by auction at Phillips of New Bond Street, on the 21 May 1810. The largest group was purchased by Archibald Impey, his natural son, whose widow Mrs. Sarah Impey, bequeathed their collection to the Linnaen Society, London, in 1855.