Six paintings of weddings, processions and a religious scene

These paintings, by Indian artists working in a mixed Indo-European style, were part of the albums produced for Europeans during the nineteenth century in India, and are generally termed Company School works after their patrons who were employees of the various European East India Companies, particularly the English East India Company, that were engaged in trade in India during this period. These merchants and travelers commissioned dozens of such albums as mementoes and records of their novel experiences in the subcontinent.

Company School paintings covered a plethora of subjects including nature studies, costumes and customs of the locals, festivals, transport and trade, as seen in the current and preceeding lots, as well as depictions of grand architectural monuments and scenes of natural beauty, all rendered in a manner which satisfied the current English taste for the "sublime" and the "picturesque," Archer, 1992, p. 16.

Indian artists in turn were eager to receive this new support and were attentive to the tastes of their new patrons as evidenced by their attempt to introduce a degree of realism and perspective in their works as well as a shift in their color palette from brilliant reds and yellows to sepia-toned washes influenced by European engravings and watercolors

Centers of Company School painting were established in various places across southern and eastern India. Stylistic details in the present lot suggest an eastern Indian provenance, possibly Patna. Compare the composition of the seated figures at the wedding scene with its ivory-toned background and striped blue foreground and the costumes of the figures in the processions with a painting of dancing girls entertaining an Indian gentleman of Patna city, see Archer, 1992, no. 61, pp. 92-93.