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拍品專文
INSCRIPTIONS:
On one painting in pencil: 'The Jowlee Fish'
These paintings come from a known series, an album entitled ‘Fish & Reptiles found in Bengal”. An old label on the painting, which was photocopied prior to being lost, records the circumstances of its patronage for a “Henry Ch. Plowden esq”. Richard Chicheley Plowden was a Civil Servant in Bengal between 1780 and 1788, then a director of the East India Company from 1803 to 1829. His son William Henry was born in 1787 and followed his father into the service of the East India Company, working in Canton from 1805 to 1834. Perhaps these paintings were executed under the patronage of William Henry as a boy, though perhaps the more likely option is that they were commissioned for him, perhaps as part of his education as a future servant of the East India Company. Shaykh 'Abdullah is also known from a watercolour of a stupa near Varanasi, which is dated to 1814 and is today in the British Library (shelfmark WD698). Two further folios from this album, depicting a frog and another fish, were sold at Christie’s South Kensington, 22 November 2016, lot 44.
Though taken from the same series, the compositions are starkly different. On one, the fish – possibly a member of the Acentrogobius genus – appears flat. The treatment of the fish in the other painting is quite different. In this one the fish, perhaps a specimen from the Chennidae genus which Francis Hamilton referred to as ophiocephalus or ‘snake headed’, shows one in motion and painted from above. This may reflect the different circumstances under which the fish were painted. While Shaykh 'Abdullah may have been painted from a specimen spotted in shallow water, the former may have been drawn from one acquired in the Calcutta fish market, a technique for specimen collection which is still used by biologists in India today.
On one painting in pencil: 'The Jowlee Fish'
These paintings come from a known series, an album entitled ‘Fish & Reptiles found in Bengal”. An old label on the painting, which was photocopied prior to being lost, records the circumstances of its patronage for a “Henry Ch. Plowden esq”. Richard Chicheley Plowden was a Civil Servant in Bengal between 1780 and 1788, then a director of the East India Company from 1803 to 1829. His son William Henry was born in 1787 and followed his father into the service of the East India Company, working in Canton from 1805 to 1834. Perhaps these paintings were executed under the patronage of William Henry as a boy, though perhaps the more likely option is that they were commissioned for him, perhaps as part of his education as a future servant of the East India Company. Shaykh 'Abdullah is also known from a watercolour of a stupa near Varanasi, which is dated to 1814 and is today in the British Library (shelfmark WD698). Two further folios from this album, depicting a frog and another fish, were sold at Christie’s South Kensington, 22 November 2016, lot 44.
Though taken from the same series, the compositions are starkly different. On one, the fish – possibly a member of the Acentrogobius genus – appears flat. The treatment of the fish in the other painting is quite different. In this one the fish, perhaps a specimen from the Chennidae genus which Francis Hamilton referred to as ophiocephalus or ‘snake headed’, shows one in motion and painted from above. This may reflect the different circumstances under which the fish were painted. While Shaykh 'Abdullah may have been painted from a specimen spotted in shallow water, the former may have been drawn from one acquired in the Calcutta fish market, a technique for specimen collection which is still used by biologists in India today.