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Sotheby’s will stage its first auction devoted solely to Company School paintings, the work of Indian master artists commissioned by East India Company officials in the 18th and 19th centuries. Titled In an Indian Garden: The Carlton Rochell Collection of Company School Paintings, the single-owner sale takes place in London on 27 October 2021.
The paintings range from individual animal and human studies to complex architectural panoramas, together recording the fauna, flora and architecture of the Subcontinent. They are offered by the American collector and dealer Carlton C. Rochell, Jr., who spent the first 18 years of his career at Sotheby’s, founding its Indian and Southeast Asian Art Department in 1988 and serving as Managing Director of Sotheby’s Asia before opening his own New York gallery in 2002.
Ahead of the sale, highlights go on view in New York (17 to 20 September), Hong Kong (7 to 11 October) and London (22 to 26 October). Many of the artists represented, among them Shaykh Zayn al-Din, Ram Das, Bhawani Das and Ghulam Ali Khan, featured in Forgotten Masters: Indian Painting for the East India Company, the 2019 to 2020 Wallace Collection exhibition curated by William Dalrymple; seven works in the auction were loaned to that show, while most of the others have not been seen publicly in decades.
The sale draws on the most renowned series of Company School paintings, including albums commissioned by Sir Elijah and Lady Impey, the Fraser brothers, Viscount Valentia and Major General Claude Martin. The Impey family kept a menagerie in their Calcutta gardens and hired local artists to record it, with more than half of their collection of over 300 works depicting birds. That collection was sold in London in 1810, and related images now sit in institutions including the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Victoria and Albert Museum.
Individual lots trace a distinguished chain of ownership. A Painted Stork Eating a Snail, signed by Shaykh Zayn al-Din, Calcutta, dated 1781 (est. £200,000 to 300,000), was formerly owned by Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. A Great Indian Fruit Bat or Flying Fox, signed by Bhawani Das, Calcutta, circa 1778 to 82 (est. £300,000 to 500,000), passed through Stuart Cary Welch and later Sheikh Saud bin Muhammad Al Thani. A Malabar Giant Squirrel in an Almond Tree, signed by Shaykh Zayn al-Din, Calcutta, dated 1778, carries an estimate of £200,000 to 300,000.
Botanical and topographical works round out the offering, among them A Panoramic View of Alwar, attributed to Ghulam ’ Ali Khan, Delhi, circa 1820 (est. £80,000 to 120,000), once in the collection of William Beckford at Fonthill Abbey, and A Crimson Horned Pheasant, signed by Ram Das, Calcutta, circa 1777 to 82 (est. £100,000 to 150,000), formerly the property of the Linnean Society of London.
(Press Release)
