BY ZAYN AL-DIN OR A CLOSE ASSOCIATE, CALCUTTA, EAST INDIA, CIRCA 1775

The depiction of the grey headed myna bird here is near identical to that of a bird on a page from the Impey Album which was formerly in the collection of the late Anthony Hobson and sold Christie’s, London, 10 June 2015, lot 58. That folio was signed ‘Shaykh Zayn al-Din native of Patna’ and dated 1782. So similar are the two birds that it seems likely that they, and by extension the painting of the following lot from the same series as this one, are the work of the same celebrated artist or a close follower. It is notable that the artist copies the birds so similarly whilst allowing a certain freedom in the depiction of the different plants. It is possible therefore that Zayn al-Din composed his multi-subject drawings in a modular fashion, sometimes working with the same subjects but shifting them so that they fit the brief. The close similarity between the bird here and on the Hobson folio raises the possibility that Zayn al-Din and the other Impey artists worked sometimes from copybooks or from dead specimens rather than from life.

Shaykh Zayn al-Din was a native of Patna trained in the naturalistic Mughal tradition and the most senior of the three painters who worked on the natural history illustrations in the famous Impey Album. He was also the only one to work on multi-subject paintings, mixing ornithological and botanical subjects as seen here. This painting, and that of the following lot, bears hallmarks of his style with the bird positioned on a clipped flowering branch angled toward the upper right corner of the sheet.  This approach was characteristic of Zayn al-Din and his close followers.

For another painting from the same series, and a note about the dating, please see the following lot.