A MALABAR TROGONBY SHAYKH ZAYN AL-DIN (FL. 1777-1782), CALCUTTA, INDIA, DATED 1779A MALABAR TROGONBY SHAYKH ZAYN AL-DIN (FL. 1777-1782), CALCUTTA, INDIA, DATED 1779Opaque pigments on English paper watermarked "J Whatman", inscriptions in pen and pencil in Urdu and English in the bottom left and numbered "65" in the top left corner, the reverse with the stamp of Sir Elijah Impey20 7/8 x 29 5/8in. (53.2 x 75.3cm.)Inscriptions:In the lower left corner, 'In the Collection of Lady Impey Painted by Zayn al-Din Native of Patna 1777'Above, bana karibi 'Forest oleander', tatmur(?) ya suda suhagin 'Tatmur(?) or Suda Sohagin'This stunning painting belongs to the famous series of natural history studies completed between 1777 and 1783 for Sir Elijah and Lady Mary Impey. Sir Elijah was appointed Chief Justice of Bengal in 1774 and joined by his wife three years later. The couple were keenly interested in the new and exotic flora and fauna they encountered in India and Lady Impey kept a private menagerie of animals in their large estate from which she commissioned painters to draw studies from life. The Mughal style of keen observation and discipline appealed greatly to the tastes of the English patrons. The combination of using living examples, the perpetuation of the European ‘bird on a stump’ convention of illustration familiar to the patron and the Mughal inheritance of perceptive portraiture resulted in new genre of painting exhibiting great vitality and character (T.Falk, Birds in an Indian Garden: Nineteen Illustrations from the Impey Collection, London, 1984, pp.2-3). During their stay in India the Impeys assembled an album of 326 natural history studies of which 197 are of birds. Of the artists that so rapidly adapted to the tastes and conventions of these new patrons, Shaykh Zayn al-Din was perhaps the fastest and most capable. A ‘native of Patna’, Zayn al-Din trained in the Provincial Mughal style patronised by the Nawabs of Murshidabad and Patna in the mid-18th century. Although one of three main artists working on the Impey Album of paintings, Zayn al-Din was the most senior and likely the sole artist at first. Yet for such an important leading figure in Indian painting of the 18th century his oeuvre has received relatively little attention (A. Topsfield, ‘The natural history paintings of Shaikh Zain ud-Din, Bhawani Das and Ram Das’, in W. Dalrymple (ed.), Forgotten Masters: Indian Painting for the East India Company, London, 2019, p.40). A collaborative patron, it is doubtless that Lady Impey greatly studied natural history in her library and would have instructed Zayn al-Din in the conventions of European natural history studies. From what we can tell the artist painted over 40 works in his first year, showing an almost immediate mastery of the subject. His best work, certainly felt in the present painting, displays ‘a superb synthesis of a European mode of natural history specimen illustration with an Indian sensibility and vital feeling for nature, allied with a flair for decorative effect’ (op.cit.). Some of the series of works produced by Zayn al-Din show attempts at experimentation. We find European style watercolour modelling and shadow in a depiction of a Pied Hornbill, now in Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum (LI901.7), which would not be repeated. Yet the rest of his excellent bird studies belong in two groups: those with the subject isolated on a plain ground and those situated on a branch or botanical arrangement. The present lot belongs to this second group for which Zayn al-Din showed a real confidence for by his second year of painting, quickly advancing and developing the European ‘bird on stump’ convention he was taking after. His studies were endlessly variable and we find a great skill at arranging composition. We find that both extremely complex compositions, seen in a painting of a Brahminy Starling with Two Anteraea Moths now in the Minneapolis Institute of Art (2018.53.4), and more elegantly simple works, like the present example, are handled with great proficiency. In fact, Zayn al-Din’s skill at artfully positioning his subjects on their perches is considered one of his greatest strengths (op.cit., p.41). The Malabar Trogon (Harpactes Fasciatus), previously known as the Fasciated Curucui, is here depicted in a branch of Melastoma malabathricum which has been misidentified as an Oleander. Notoriously difficult to spot, the Trogon depicted here is a female; males are more ornately coloured. Also known for their supremely delicate and paper-like skin prone to tearing, it is extremely difficult to preserve a specimen making the appearance of the bird in scientific reference and study rare. The scientific importance of this study is therefore attested to by the fact that the work is mentioned in John Latham’s A General History of Birds, Volume III. In his discussion between the differences between male and female birds he writes “[these features] likewise figured among those [drawings] of Lady Impey, but in the latter, the band on the breast is very narrow.” (Winchester, 1822, p.213). Following the death of Sir Elijah Impey in 1809 the collection of paintings was sold at Phillips of New Bond Street on 21st May 1810. The majority of the paintings were bought by Archibald Impey, the son of Sir Elijah, and later bequeathed to the Linnaen Society London, a group from which this painting comes. Other paintings from the Impey Album are held in many major institutions worldwide. Other paintings from the album by Shaykh Zayn al-Din have sold in these Rooms, 19 May 1998, lots 89 to 91; 05 June 2007, lot 227 and 228; and 07 October 2008, lot 272. More recently works were sold at Sotheby’s London, 27 October 2021, lots 13 and 15.细节 A MALABAR TROGONBY SHAYKH ZAYN AL-DIN (FL. 1777-1782), CALCUTTA, INDIA, DATED 1779Opaque pigments on English paper watermarked J Whatman, inscriptions in pen and pencil in Urdu and English in the bottom left and numbered 65 in the top left corner, the reverse with the stamp of Sir Elijah Impey20 7/8 x 29 5/8in. (53.2 x 75.3cm.) 来源 The Collection of Sir Elijah and Lady ImpeyThe Linnean Society since 1855,sold Sothebys, London, 10 June 1963, lot 44.The Anthony Hobson Collection