Two studies of ducks, Persia or Central Asia, circa 14th-15th century

gouache and gold on paper, laid down on a modern album page

Considerable wear and cracking of pigments and paper. Some patches of flaking and areas of staining or discoloration. As viewed.
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These two studies of ducks, mounted together on a later album page, are examples from a curious and interesting group of bird studies that have appeared on the market over the past twenty years and that seem to be linked stylistically to the well-known drawings and paintings of fourteenth and fifteenth century origin in the Istanbul Albums (Topkapi Saray Library, H.2152, H.2153, H.2154 and H.2160), the Diez Albums in Berlin (Staatsbibliothek) and a handful of related dispersed examples in other museums. These works have been published several times over the last century, most fully in the first edition of journal Islamic Art (1981, edited by Ernst Grube and Eleanor Sims) and in The Persian Album 1400-1600 by David Roxburgh (Yale University Press, 2004). Among these drawings and paintings are several that depict birds of different types in a variety of settings - perched on flowering or leafy branches, standing and preening themselves or swimming in water (see Islamic Art 1, 1981, figs.111, 114-127, 134-141, 164-171), including several that appear closely linked to the present examples (see Islamic Art, 1981, figs. 164-171). 

The exact origins, dates and attributions of the studies in the Istanbul and Berlin Albums (and the related dispersed examples) has been the subject of much debate, and the origins of the present works are also enigmatic. They clearly owe a great stylistic debt to Chinese painting, but do not appear to be Chinese. But nor do they appear to be truly Persian either. The enigmatic origins of this whole group of birds studies, including the sub-group to which the present studies belong, was elegantly discussed in an article by Ernst Grube entitled "Patterns of Migration" in  Hali, The Journal of Carpets, Textiles and Islamic Art, Issue 113, November 2000, pp.105-107. There remains the possibility that these bird studies are the result of a cross-breeding of styles somewhere along the trade routes between China and Western Persia during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.

The other examples from the present group that have appeared on the market in the last two decades are as follows: Sotheby's, 13 April 2000, lot 31; Christie's, 10 October 2000, lot 84; Bonhams, 2 May 2001, lot 38; Bonhams, 17 October 2002, lot 32. In addition a further example was published by Grube (op.cit., fig.7). As well as sharing a common style, the studies in the present group have all been mounted on later album pages with pink borders, and all but the present example also bore small panels of calligraphy and/or illumination cut from fifteenth-century Persian manuscripts. The scale of the birds in these seven paintings is closely similar and they have all been cut down from a larger composition. However, it seems unlikely, though not impossible, that they all belong to the same original composition and have been fragmented, since the overall size of a painting that included all of these would have been very large. It is perhaps more likely that they come from two or three compositions which have been dismembered and mounted, or that they are individual studies that have suffered in terms of their condition over the centuries and have been trimmed in order to mount them. The study of the Mandarin duck here is unique among this group for being fully coloured and for the absence of a gold background.