TWO COMPANY SCHOOL BOTANICAL STUDIES OF INDIAN PLANTS
Calcutta (Kolkata), West Bengal, Eastern India, ca. 1800

Opaque pigments and ink on lined paper, comprising a botanical study of a foliate branch from an Indian native plant with small obovate fruits and a smaller sketch of the inner section of a seed, possibly a branch of Canthium coromandelicum, with an English inscription in pencil reading 'no. 2 Ajeva' on the upper left corner; and a similar study of another foliate branch with two blueish green fruits and a small sketch of their inner section, possibly a variety of local Ficus benghalensis, also known as Banyan Fig, the upper left corner marked with the number '12' in pencil, each mounted, glazed and framed, each 75cm x 58.5cm including the frame.

Provenance:

Major James Nathaniel Rind (d. 1813), thence by descent;

Purchased from a private UK Collection in 1994 - 1995.

James Nathaniel Rind (1753 – 1814), Major of the 18th Native Infantry, served in India between 1778 and 1801, living in Calcutta (Kolkata) between 1785 and 1789. During this period, he commissioned a large number of botanical and zoological studies, which have attracted great admiration ever since several of them were offered at auction at Sotheby’s London by his descendants, on 13 July 1971, lots 1 – 48, and subsequently widely dispersed (Henry J. Noltie, ‘Indian Export Art? The Botanical Drawings’, in Forgotten Masters: Indian Painting for the East India Company, exhibition catalogue, 2019, p. 81). Given the noticeable variety of Rind’s botanical studies, it is possible that several different artists worked on his album or that the Major himself acquired and exchanged, rather than commissioned, some of these paintings with other British eminent figures. In this sense, an interesting case is his study of yellow male inflorescences of Keora (Pandanus tectorius) attributed to Chuni Lall, an almost identical version of which was once part of Sir John Murray MacGregor’s (1745 – 1822) collection, one of Major Rind’s contemporaries. This suggests an active culture of copying images and exchanging artworks between patrons and collectors based in India.

Three botanical studies from Rind's album showing a striking similarity to our pages in terms of size, pictorial quality, and subject, were successfully sold at Sotheby’s London, The Stuart Cary Welch: Part Two: Arts of India, 31 May 2011, lots 116 - 118, and three others more recently, Sotheby's London, 25 October 2017, lot 96.