Eastern Art Online, Yousef Jameel Centre for Islamic and Asian Art

Ashmolean − Eastern Art Online, Yousef Jameel Centre for Islamic and Asian Art

Lady Impey’s Indian Bird Paintings

(from 16th Oct 2012 until 14th Apr 2013)

Explore remarkable studies of Indian and exotic birds commissioned by Lady Impey around 1780.

Detail of Sulphur-crested cockatoo (Cacatua galerita) on a custard apple branch (Annona reticulata),
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Pied Hornbill (Anthracoceros malabaricus)

  • loan
  • Description

    This large, mainly fruit-eating Hornbill is found in forests in India and Nepal. In this early commission for Lady Impey, Shaikh Zain ud-Din depicts the bird perched on a tree stump entwined by a flowering creeper, in the manner of European natural history illustrations that he may have seen in the Impeys’ library, such as the Histoire naturelle (1749-1788) of the Comte de Buffon. Unusually he also includes a shadow effect in the foreground as a gesture to occidental naturalism. An inscription describes Zain ud-Din as ‘Native of Patna’, a major centre in Bihar where he may have previously worked.

  • Details

    Associated place
    AsiaIndiaeast IndiaWest Bengal Kolkata (place of creation)
    EuropeUnited Kingdom England (place of creation)
    Date
    1777
    Artist/maker
    Shaikh Zain ud-Din (active c. 1770 - 1785) (artist)
    Whatman (established 1740) (manufacturer)
    Associated people
    Mary, Lady Impey (1749 - 1818) (commissioner)
    Material and technique
    gouache on paper
    Dimensions
    mount 112 x 81.5 cm (height x width)
    page 85.5 x 59.8 cm (height x width)
    Material index
    Technique index
    Object type index
    No. of items
    1
    Credit line
    Lent by the Radcliffe Science Library, University of Oxford.
    Accession no.
    LI901.7

Past Exhibition

see (1)

Location

    • currently in research collection

Objects are sometimes moved to a different location. Our object location data is usually updated on a monthly basis. Contact the Jameel Study Centre if you are planning to visit the museum to see a particular object on display, or would like to arrange an appointment to see an object in our reserve collections.

 

Notice

Objects from past exhibitions may have now returned to our stores or a lender. Click into an individual object record to confirm whether or not an object is currently on display. Our object location data is usually updated on a monthly basis, so please contact the Jameel Study Centre if you are planning to visit the museum to see a particular Eastern Art object.

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