Calcutta (Eastern India)
Opaque watercolour on European paper
The female Rosy Minivet is distinguished by her olive-grey upperparts and soft yellow underparts. This species inhabits open forests and woodlands across the Indian subcontinent and Southeast Asia, often migrating seasonally.
The term ‘Company Painting’ has come to be used by art historians for a special type of Indian painting which was produced for mainly British patrons. It was an attempt by Indian artists to adjust their styles to British needs and to paint subjects that appealed to them. They first made an appearance in the Madras Presidency in the mid-18th century and subsequently in Murshidabad, Patna, Benares, Calcutta, Delhi, Punjab, and Western India. The paintings depict in great detail the architecture, costumes, trades, modes of transport, festivals, customs, and flora and fauna of the period. They thus also served as authentic records—used to illustrate letters, journals, travel narratives, and more—and remain invaluable documents of a way of life that had endured for centuries but is now rapidly vanishing.
Within this broader tradition, ornithological painting flourished between the late eighteenth and mid-nineteenth centuries, blending Mughal precision with Western scientific approaches to natural history. Artists in Lucknow, Calcutta, Patna, Madras, and Delhi produced highly detailed studies of birds, often perched on flowering branches or shown against plain grounds, employing new materials such as watercolour and European paper introduced by the British.
Painting Size (cms): 25(H) x 19.5(W)
Painting Size (inches): 10(H) x 7.5(W)
