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Lot Essay
In Persian along upper edge, wilayati kwik, 'provincial vulture'
In pencil in the lower left, 'This vulture does not conform/ to any one yet described/ [unclear] of what size'
The present lot comes from an important natural history series of studies created for George Annesley, 2nd Earl of Mountnorris and Viscount Valentia, at the time of his private tour of India between 1802 and 1806. Annesley was a keen amateur natural historian and made sure to visit as many zoologists and botanists as he could over the course of his travels, which he recorded in three volumes published in 1809 titled Voyages and Travels to India, Ceylon and the Red Sea, Abyssinia and Egypt in 1802-06. In Calcutta he encountered a number of officers and family of the East India Trading Company, who shared his enthusiasm for natural history and whose assembled menageries and aviaries were the subject of many of his commissions of drawings and paintings.
Many of these works have since ended up in numerous collections. Two were gifted from Annesley to Lord Wellesley in 1803, when the latter hosted him in Barrackpore. These paintings are now in the British Library and published in Mildred Archer, Natural History Drawings in the India Office Library, London, 1962, p.96. Another painting from the series, now in the Chester Beatty Library, is published in Linda York Leach, Mughal and other Indian Paintings from the Chester Beatty Library, London, 1995, vol.ii, pp.761-762.
For part of a series created for such a keen natural historian, the bird depicted here is something of an enigma. On the face of it, the features painted suggest it is an Old World vulture, and from the fact that it is the subject of an Indian painting one would expect it to be an Asian species. But this would be incorrect. The closest vulture species to that depicted would be an African Hooded Vulture (Necrosytres monachus) but the "hood" consists of pale-brown rather than black feathers. The black colouring is more similar to an American Turkey Vulture or similar, but the nostril shape and wing markings do not fit the present painting either. The bill is unhooked and the fleshy cere behind - rather than surrounding - the nostril. Meanwhile the red head, seemingly covered in feathers, and supposed wing bar do not match up with any slender-billed vulture species.
This is seemingly a bird that does not exist or, perhaps, the last example of a species now extinct! Otherwise, it is possible the bird was painted from memory or a composite of other images of vultures, such as those by Mughal artist Mansur in the Kevorkian Album. Either way, the present lot is no doubt a beautiful painting of a vulture with the same sense of perspective and character one associates with Company School painting and which makes the style so popular.
In pencil in the lower left, 'This vulture does not conform/ to any one yet described/ [unclear] of what size'
The present lot comes from an important natural history series of studies created for George Annesley, 2nd Earl of Mountnorris and Viscount Valentia, at the time of his private tour of India between 1802 and 1806. Annesley was a keen amateur natural historian and made sure to visit as many zoologists and botanists as he could over the course of his travels, which he recorded in three volumes published in 1809 titled Voyages and Travels to India, Ceylon and the Red Sea, Abyssinia and Egypt in 1802-06. In Calcutta he encountered a number of officers and family of the East India Trading Company, who shared his enthusiasm for natural history and whose assembled menageries and aviaries were the subject of many of his commissions of drawings and paintings.
Many of these works have since ended up in numerous collections. Two were gifted from Annesley to Lord Wellesley in 1803, when the latter hosted him in Barrackpore. These paintings are now in the British Library and published in Mildred Archer, Natural History Drawings in the India Office Library, London, 1962, p.96. Another painting from the series, now in the Chester Beatty Library, is published in Linda York Leach, Mughal and other Indian Paintings from the Chester Beatty Library, London, 1995, vol.ii, pp.761-762.
For part of a series created for such a keen natural historian, the bird depicted here is something of an enigma. On the face of it, the features painted suggest it is an Old World vulture, and from the fact that it is the subject of an Indian painting one would expect it to be an Asian species. But this would be incorrect. The closest vulture species to that depicted would be an African Hooded Vulture (Necrosytres monachus) but the "hood" consists of pale-brown rather than black feathers. The black colouring is more similar to an American Turkey Vulture or similar, but the nostril shape and wing markings do not fit the present painting either. The bill is unhooked and the fleshy cere behind - rather than surrounding - the nostril. Meanwhile the red head, seemingly covered in feathers, and supposed wing bar do not match up with any slender-billed vulture species.
This is seemingly a bird that does not exist or, perhaps, the last example of a species now extinct! Otherwise, it is possible the bird was painted from memory or a composite of other images of vultures, such as those by Mughal artist Mansur in the Kevorkian Album. Either way, the present lot is no doubt a beautiful painting of a vulture with the same sense of perspective and character one associates with Company School painting and which makes the style so popular.