Seventeen Illustrations of Castes, Trades and Occupations

The illustrations depicting persons belonging to various castes, couples attired in distinctive dress and people engaged in various trades and occupations, all set against a blue sky with clouds and landscapes in the distance.

Tanjore school paintings are typified by character studies and the subjects are generally identifiable by their dress or implements of their trades. In the words of Captain Charles Gold in his Oriental Drawings of 1806, "On the suggestion of Europeans, some of the country artists (also called Moochys) have been induced to draw series of the most ordinary casts (sic) or tribes, each picture representing a man and his wife, with the signs or marks of distinction on their foreheads, and not in their common, but holiday clothes," see Archer, 1992, p. 17, and this is eminently illustrated in the present lot.

Early Tanjore works depicted their subjects against brightly colored green, blue or yellow backgrounds. Stylistic features in the present works such as the turbulent clouds in the sky, background details and shadows painted beneath the figures display an attempt to add depth and realism to the images, thereby dating them to a more mature phase in the development of the style.