An Asian Koel (Eudynamys scolopacea) on a flowering branch, from the Impey Album, signed by Shaykh Zayn al-Din, India, Company School, Calcutta, dated 1777

Sir Elijah Impey (1732-1809) and Lady Impey (1749-1818)

His estate sale, Phillips, London, 21 May, 1810

Acquired by Lady Pollie Victoria Hogg from a London gallery in 1940-41

Min Hogg (1938-2019), founding editor of the World of Interiors from 1981 to 2001, thence by descent to her nephew

Bonhams, London, 11 June 2020, lot 170

This is an illustration of a male Asian Koel, distinguishable by its glossy black feathers, long tail, pale green bill and red eyes. This large bird from the cuckoo family is widespread in the Indian subcontinent and usually found in open woodland as well as gardens and parks in urban areas (Grimmett et al 1998, pp.84-5, 415). The inscription on the present work identifies the koel as perching on the flowering branch of a Deodar tree.

The present painting was commissioned by Mary Reade, Lady Impey (1749-1818), the wife of Sir Elijah Impey, Chief Justice of Bengal from 1774-82. Sir Elijah and Lady Impey arrived in Calcutta in 1774. Lady Impey soon developed a keen interest in the local flora and fauna and established a private menagerie and aviary at the Impey estate in Calcutta. Three Indian artists from Patna were employed to paint the birds, animals and various plants, the senior among them a Muslim artist called Shaykh Zayn al-Din. Bhawani Das and Ram Das, two Hindu artists, joined Zayn al-Din two or three years later. The artists were trained in the Mughal style of Indian painting and were able to adapt their skills at precision and naturalism to the European tradition of natural history illustrations. This group of paintings commissioned by Sir Elijah and Lady Impey between 1777 and 1783, now known as the ‘Impey Album’, is considered one of the finest sets of natural history illustrations made for the British in India.

Birds and animals, the main subjects of the Impey series, were illustrated on large sheets of English Whatman paper. Inscriptions in English and Persian identifying the subjects were added to almost all the paintings, some including the name of the artist and a date, as in the present lot.

Shaykh Zayn al-Din was Lady Impey’s chief artist and started working for her in 1777. Most of his dated works from 1777 illustrate his immediate confidence and mastery of the new style favoured by Lady Impey. He is thought to have painted around forty works that year (Topsfield 2019, p.42). Birds depicted on branches of fruiting and flowering trees are known from his early years with the Impey family. The elegant composition of the present work is closely comparable to a ‘Rufous Treepie and Caterpillar on a Branch’, also painted by Zayn al-Din in 1777, now in the Minneapolis Institute of Art (2018.53.10; Topsfield 2019, no.26, p.63). 

A group of 326 watercolours was brought back to England by the Impeys in 1783 of which 197 were studies of birds, 76 of fish, 28 of reptiles, 17 of animals and 8 of flowers. After the death of Sir Elijah Impey in 1809, the collection was dispersed at a sale at Phillips, London, on 21 May 1810.

Further paintings from the Impey Album are in various museum collections including the British Library, Victoria and Albert Museum and Wellcome Institute, London; the Bodleian Libraries, Oxford; David Collection, Copenhagen; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Yale Center for British Art, New Haven; San Diego Museum of Art; Minneapolis Institute of Art.

For other illustrations from the Impey series sold at Sotheby’s London in recent years, see The Khosrovani Diba Collection, 19 October 2016, lot 21; Arts of the Islamic World, 23 October 2019, lot 204; Arts of the Islamic World and India, 27 October 2021, Lot 163; In an Indian Garden: The Carlton Rochell Collection of Company School Paintings, 27 October 2021, lots 13, 14, 16; and more recently in Arts of the Islamic World and India, 25 October 2023, lot 51; and The Edith & Stuart Cary Welch Collection, 25 October 2023, lot 61.