Matthew Thomas
Senior Specialist
Lot 173
An Eastern Goshawk, by Bhawani Das, from the collection of Lady Impey Company School, Calcutta, circa 1780
6 October 2015, 14:00 BST
London, New Bond Street£30,000 - £40,000
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An Eastern Goshawk, by Bhawani Das, from the collection of Lady Impey
Company School, Calcutta, circa 1780
Company School, Calcutta, circa 1780
pencil, pen and ink, and watercolour on paper watermarked J Whatman, inscribed Bas in Persian in nasta'liq script lower left, and in English In the Collection of Lady Impey at Calcutta/Painted by Bhawani Das [in Persian] Native of Patna, verso with Sir Elijah Impey's seal impression
630 x 465 mm.
630 x 465 mm.
Footnotes
Exhibited
T. Falk and G. Hayter, Birds in an Indian Garden: Nineteen Illustrations from the Impey Collection, Michael Goedhuis Ltd., London, 12th June-14th July 1984.
A Journey Through India: Company School Pictures, Spink & Son, London 1996, p. 38, no. 17.
Sir Elijah Impey was the East India Company's Chief Justice of Bengal from 1774 to 1782. He was a well-known patron of Indian artists, but his wife, Mary, Lady Impey, who joined him in Calcutta in 1777, was particularly interested in the flora and fauna of the surrounding area, creating her own menagerie. She then commissioned studies of animals and plants from various artists from the nearby city of Patna, the most senior of whom were the Muslim Shaykh Zayn-al-Din, and the Hindus Ram Das and Bhawani Das, the painter of the present lot. The series commissioned by Lady Impey (as well as others in a similar style by unknown artists) are particularly striking because of their large size, using sheets of English watermarked paper. There were 326 works in the original series, 197 of which were birds, and these were brought back to England with the Impeys in 1783, and were sold at Phillips in London in 1810.
The Eastern Goshawk (accipiter gentilis Schvedowi is known in Hindi as jarra (male) and Baz (female). It occasionally makes its way to India from the Himalayas, and it was prized by falconers. The female is slightly larger than the male.