- Title
- Hanging Parrots on Branches, Folio from the Impey Album
- Date Made
- 1780
- Medium
- Opaque watercolor and ink on paper
- Dimensions
- Image: 20 x 29 in. (50.8 x 73.66 cm); Sheet: 25 x 37 1/4 in. (63.5 x 94.62 cm)
- Accession Number
- M.72.36.1
- Collecting Area
- South and Southeast Asian Art
- Curatorial Notes
This natural history study is from the Impey Album of 326 paintings commissioned in Kolkata (Calcutta) between 1777 and 1782 by the distinguished art patron and natural historian Lady Mary Impey (1749-1818), the wife of the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Calcutta, Sir Elijah Impey (1732-1809). The Impeys maintained an aviary and a menagerie in their Calcutta residence where the Mughal-trained artists they patronized could observe and accurately portray zoological and botanical subjects directly from nature. The Impey Album contained studies of 197 birds, 76 fish, 28 reptiles, 17 beasts, and 8 plants. It was dispersed at auction in London in 1810.
The Persian and English inscriptions identify the subjects and the artist, Shaikh Zaya al-Din (Zainuddin) of Patna in 1780 and state that it was in the collection of Lady Impey, Calcutta. Zaya al-Din (active 1777-1782) was the lead painter for the Impey Album, along with Bhawani Das and Ram Das. In the upper left corner are the numerals “99” indicating the folio’s sequence in the album. Painted on a large sheet of imported English Whatman paper (J WHATMAN watermark), the illustration depicts a pair of hanging parrots (latkan tota). The upper parrot is perched on a branch of what is likely a Karanja tree (Millettia pinnata), while the lower parrot sits on a branch of Queen’s crepe myrtle (Lagerstroemia reginae Roxb., modern Lagerstroemia speciosa). (Translation by Wheeler Thackston.)
See also M.85.222.1.
