A stork-billed kingfisher (Halcyon Capensis) on a flowering branch, from the Impey Album, signed by Shaykh Zayn al-Din, India, Company School, Calcutta, dated 1778

This is an illustration of an adult stork-billed Kingfisher, a large predominantly freshwater bird. It is distinguishable by its huge coral-red bill, brownish cap, blue-green upper feathers, and pale-orange collar and underside, as depicted here. It often sits on an overhanging branch waiting to dive down to catch prey, and is usually found near shaded lakes and slow-moving rivers in wooded areas in the eastern parts of the Indian subcontinent, including the coastal backwaters of Kerala and in the tidal creeks of forests and near the seashore in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands.

The present painting was commissioned by Mary Reade, Lady Impey (1749-1818) who was married to Sir Elijah Impey, Chief Justice of Bengal from 1774-82. Sir Elijah and Lady Impey arrived in Calcutta in 1774. Lady Impey developed a keen interest in the local flora and fauna and established a private menagerie and aviary at the Impey estate in Calcutta. Three Indian artists from Patna were employed to paint the birds, animals and various plants, the senior among them a Muslim artist called Shaykh Zayn al-Din. Bhawani Das and Ram Das, two Hindu artists, joined Zayn al-Din two or three years later. The artists were trained in the Mughal style of Indian painting and were able to adapt their skills at precision and naturalism to the European tradition of natural history illustrations. This group of paintings commissioned by Sir Elijah and Lady Impey between 1777 and 1783, now known as the ‘Impey Album’, is considered one of the finest sets of natural history illustrations made for the British in India.

Birds and animals, the main subjects of the Impey series, were illustrated on large sheets of English Whatman paper. Inscriptions in English and Persian were added to almost all the paintings, some including the name of the artist and a date, as in the present lot. Birds depicted on branches of fruiting and flowering trees are often associated with Shaykh Zayn al-Din. These compositions were probably developed after consultation with Lady Impey. Our Kingfisher is portrayed on a branch from a plant of the Acanthaceae family. The elegant simplicity of the present illustration is comparable to a ‘Rufous Treepie and Caterpillar on a Branch’ painted by Zayn al-Din in 1777, and an ‘Indian Roller on Sandalwood Branch’ painted in 1779, both illustrations now in the Minneapolis Institute of Art (Dalrymple 2019, cat. nos.24, 26, p.61, 63). Other similar works by the artist, with an emphasis on the bird rather than on the flowering or fruiting branch and its leaves, include ‘A Sulphur-Crested Cockatoo on an Ashoka branch' (Falk and Hayter 1984, cover illustration) and ‘A Grand Eclectus Parrot on a Mango Branch’ (Falk and Hayter, ibid., unpaginated), both dated 1777. 

A group of 326 watercolours was brought back to England by the Impeys in 1783. After the death of Sir Elijah Impey in 1809, the collection was dispersed at a sale at Phillips, London on 21 May 1810. Sixty-four watercolours from the Impey series, including the present lot, were bequethed to the Linnean Society of London by Mrs Sarah Impey in 1855. 

Examples from the Impey series of natural history drawings are in the collections of the British Library, Victoria and Albert Museum and Wellcome Institute, London; the Bodleian Libraries, Oxford; San Diego Museum of Art; Minneapolis Institute of Art, among others, and in various private collections. 

For four other illustrations from the Impey series, see Sotheby’s London, In an Indian Garden: The Carlton Rochell Collection of Company School Paintings, 27 October 2021, lots 13 to 16.