JAVA AND THE DUTCH EAST INDIES, INDONESIA, CIRCA 1770

Although most strongly associated with India in the late 18^th and 19^th centuries, the term ‘Company School’ also describes artists working for British patrons in the East Indies. Just as in India, also in Java and in Malaysia, European private and official collectors employed local artists to create studies of the new flora and fauna they encountered. From the late 18^th century a Chinese "Company School" had developed in the Treaty ports of Canton and Macau and these artists migrated elsewhere in Southeast Asia, at that time known as the East Indies, to seek work for European patrons (Mildred Archer, Natural History Drawings in the India Office Library, London, 1962, p. 59). Although there are subtle differences in style between the Chinese painters and those working in India, in both cases the artists adopted the strictures expected of British natural history drawings.

This group of paintings include eight of birds and two of sharks. Nearly all can be identified from their appearance with the common locality where most of species occur is Java. On each is an inscription in black pen with what is likely the local Indonesian name for the animals. Other South East Asian School studies of similar size with the same watermarked paper have been sold in these Rooms previously on 19 May 1998, lot 140 and 147.

The studies in the group are:
A Coconut Lorikeet (Trichoglossus haematodus) perched on a fruit;
Olive-backed Tailorbird (Orthotomus sepium) perched on a branch;
Drongo (Dicrurus sp.) perched on a flowering branch;
Peregrine Falcon (Falco peregrinus) perched on a branch;
Flycatcher (?) perched on a blossoming branch;
Red-billed Malkoha (Zanclostomus javanicus) perched on a branch;
Black-naped fruit-dove (Ptilinopus melanospilus) perched on a branch eating fruit;
A bird perched on a flowering branch feeding on nectar;
Hasselt’s bamboo shark (Chiloscyllium hasseltii), juvenile;
Requiem shark.