A group of Company School terracotta Figurines depicting Tradespeople
India, 19th Century
India, 19th Century
each on a white painted square base, clothed and accessorised, depicting a fisherman, two man servants, a seated brick maker, two peasant women, a textile seller, two clerks and a carrier
18 cm. high max.(10)
18 cm. high max.(10)
Sold for
£1,320
inc. premium
Footnotes
- Highly naturalistic sculptures of this type were made at Krishnagar, a village near Calcutta, as well as at Hatwa, Datan (near Saran), Muzaffar-pur, Dacca, Burdwan, and later, Lucknow and Poona. Like Company School paintings, these highly naturalistic sculptures prefigure photography and were made as souvenirs for Western patrons as early as the 1820s. Their inspiration seems to have been 18th and 19th Century Neopolitan creche figures. For a village market scene with figures now in the Peabody Museum of Salem, see Stuart Cary Welch, India: Art and Culture 1300-1900, New York 1985, pp. 91-2, fig. 45).
Other similar groups of figures in varying sizes have been sold through these rooms in recent years (Bonhams, Islamic and Indian Art, 5 July 2006, lot 302; 28th April 2005, lot 594 and 16th October 2003, lot 353).
Category: Islamic and Oriental Art / Islamic and Indian Art
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