A new genre of painting emerged in India as British imperialists expanded their scope in the subcontinent in the 18th and 19th centuries. East India Company commissioned Indian masters to paint the country’s flora, fauna, people and places and called them Company School or Patna Paintings.
Sotheby’s is now auctioning these paintings in an exhibition called In an Indian Garden: The Carlton Rochell Collection of Company School Paintings sale on October 27. These paintings have been owned by a single collector for decades. It is the first time Sotheby’s has dedicated an auction to paintings from the Company School.
The works are offered by American collector and art dealer Carlton C Rochell, Jr, who worked at Sotheby’s for 18 years, founding its Indian and South-East Asian Art Department in 1988.
As employees of the colonial East India Company traveled around India, they wanted to capture scenes of the country and commissioned Indian painters to produce works for the European eye. These paintings have European palettes and styles as they were intended for viewers in Britain. They presented an exoticized view of India, its nature, and its inhabitants.
Cities in India began to develop their own style, with artists drawing from their local traditions, including techniques from miniature painting. However, the Company School paintings fused the fine detailing of miniatures with the realism preferred by the West, producing a unique style of its own and in a larger format. The works are often characterized by their linear perspective and the use of watercolor.
There was also a shift in the subject matter. Miniature painting flourished during the Mughal period, with rajas and nawabs commissioning artists to create royal portraits and depict courtly scenes, as well as historical and divine subjects. British patrons, on the other hand, wanted to focus on animals, nature and architecture.
The show was curated by writer and historian William Dalrymple and was recognized for highlighting Indian painters who produced works on paper during the late Mughal period, including Shaykh Zayn al-Din, Ram Das, Bhawani Das and Ghulam Ali Khan, whose works are also included in the auction.
Albums commissioned by famous patrons in Calcutta – Sir Elijah Impey, who served as chief justice of the High Court from 1777 to 1783, and Lady Impey – will also be up for sale. The Impey family had a menagerie in their garden and hired local artists to paint the surroundings. Their collection includes 300 paintings, more than half of which are of birds.
In 1810, the Impey Collection was sold at auction in London, some of which were acquired by institutions such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the V&A.
Other works from the Impey Collection were owned by figures such as Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, who had in her collection A Painted Stork Eating a Snail, a 1781 work signed by al-Din in Calcutta. The piece has an estimate of £200,000-£300,000.
Another work, A Great Indian Fruit Bat or Flying Box, which shows the animal with its dark wings outstretched, is estimated at £300,000-£500,000. The painting was created around 1778-1782 by Das and was owned by scholar Stuart Cary Welch and later Qatari prince Sheikh Saud bin Mohammed Al Thani.
Apart from paintings of animals, the auction also includes botanical studies of fruits and plants, such as A Botanical Study of a Silk Cotton Tree, dated circa 1800-1820 and created by a Company School in Calcutta. Previously in the collection of Joseph Verner Reed, Jr, the US ambassador to Morocco from 1981-1985, the work carries an estimate of £20,000-£30,000.
A number of pieces from the In An Indian Garden auction will go on view at Sotheby’s galleries in New York, Hong Kong and London in the coming weeks, before the auction on Wednesday, October 27.