A SMALLPOX CEREMONIAL PROCESSION
PROPERTY FROM A PRIVATE AMERICAN COLLECTION
Company School, Thanjavur (Tanjore), Tamil Nadu, Southern India, ca. 1780 - 1800

Opaque pigments heightened with gold on wove paper, the horizontal composition depicting a crowded ceremonial procession with several groups of devotees from different casts praying to local folklore gods to spare them from smallpox, a group of women joining the parade behind the white-clad brahmins on the far right, on the opposite side drummers and a group of men simply wearing a cloth and a belt of black bells around their waist, their skin covered in white dots, the scene set within black and red rules, and red and orange borders, a pencil inscription in English at the bottom reading People prays by Smallpox God, once a year by different casts of people, the back with an inventory number in pencil, no. 14, suggesting the present lot was once part of an album, 32cm x 47cm.

For a very similar example depicting an analogous smallpox procession, please see The Smallpox Ceremony painting at the V&A Museum (acc. no. AL.8799), part of a series of ten Tanjore paintings depicting Indian festivals and ceremonies. It is worth mentioning that both the V&A example and the present lot share a similar English caption ('Different Casts People praying by God of Small Pox') emphasising their didactical function to a foreign crowd and their ethnographic quality in the eyes of Western collectors. For further reference on Southern Indian Company School paintings, please see Mildred Archer, Company Paintings: Indian Paintings of the British Period, 1992, p. 54.