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A study of a bird perched on the branch of a flowering plant Company School, Calcutta, late 18th/early 19th Century image 1
A study of a bird perched on the branch of a flowering plant Company School, Calcutta, late 18th/early 19th Century image 2
Lot 206

A study of a bird perched on the branch of a flowering plant
Company School, Calcutta, late 18th/early 19th Century

26 October 2020, 11:00 GMT
London, New Bond Street

Sold for £11,312.50 inc. premium

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A study of a bird perched on the branch of a flowering plant
Company School, Calcutta, late 18th/early 19th Century

watercolour with gum arabic and some bodycolour on watermarked paper, a fragment of an original inscription from a painting from the Impey album taped to the backboard and acquired with the painting (text below)
500 x 475 mm.

Footnotes

Provenance
Acquired by Lady Hogg from an unknown London gallery in 1940-41, which was by repute destroyed on the day following its purchase.
Lady (Pollie Victoria) Hogg, maternal grandmother of the current owner, until 2003.
Min Hogg, her daughter (1938-2019), founding editor of the magazine World of Interiors from 1981 to 2001.
Thence by descent to her nephew.

A painting from the Impey album, from the same collection as the present lot, was sold in these rooms, Bonhams, Islamic and Indian Art, 11th June 2020, lot 170.

The inscription which comes with the painting is clearly in the same hand as the famous inscriptions on the Impey paintings, and was presumably excised from a now perhaps lost work by Shaykh Zayn al-Din. It reads:

derakh-e ach
ramgora
In the Collection of Lady Impey at Calcutta
Painted by Zayn al-Din [in Persian] Native of Patna 1779

Derakh means 'tree', ach, 'large', and ramgora, a Javanese species of bird well known in India. In Bengal, Ramgora is the Java Sparrow.

Additional information