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1. RED-WHISKERED BULBUL India (Calcutta) dated 1777 Height: 46.5 cm Width: 68.5 cm |
Pencil, pen and ink, and watercolour with gum Arabic heightened with bodycolour on English paper watermarked, “J Whatman”. Inscribed to the lower left corner: “Fine Ear/ In the Collection of Lady Impey in Calcutta/Painted by (Zayn al-Din) Native of Patna 1777” Further inscribed in Persian and Urdu with the local names of the tree and the bird. The name of the tree is: deraktht-e qadam (or qidam) Such a tree is not recorded by John T. Platts in A Dictionary of Urdu, Classical Hindi and English, 1930, or by Steingass. The word derakht means “tree” in Persian and qadam means “foot” and could also mean “merit”. If read as qidam in Arabic, it could mean “age”, “preceding age”, “surpassing in virtue” or “excellence”. If the word is a misspelling of kadam or kadamb, then the tree may be Nauclea cadamba (Platts, p. 821). The bird is described as a kanhra, a type of nightingale (Platts, p. 808). Numbered “20” in pencil in the upper left corner. The reverse of the painting is stamped with Sir Elijah Impey’s seal. A Red-whiskered Bulbul (Pycnonotus jocosus) perched on a fruit tree accompanied by a moth. Bulbuls are a large family of medium-sized songbirds, distributed across Africa and Asia. Some, like this handsome individual, have distinctive plumage and crests, while others are a drab greenish brown such as the forest species known as “greenbuls”. All the bulbuls however are noted for their distinctive vocalisations and it is thought that their name may be derived from the Persian and Turkish words for “nightingale”. The loud and evocative call of the bird is sharp “kink-a-joo”, and the song is a scolding chatter. It is more often heard than seen, but will perch conspicuously, especially early in the morning, to call from the tops of trees. The Red-whiskered Bulbul was one of the many species originally described by Linneaus in 1758 in his Systema Naturae. Local names include Turaha pigli-pitta in Telugu, Sipahi bulbul in Bengali and Phari-bulbul/Kanera bulbu in Hindi. The bird measures around 20 centimetres in length. It has brown upper parts and white under parts with buff flanks and a dark spur running on to the breast at shoulder level. It has a tall pointed crest, red face patch and thin black moustachial line. The tail is long and brown with white terminal feather tips. For two paintings of Red-whiskered Bulbuls from the collection of another famous European patron and collector of natural history paintings in India, Claude Martin, see the Niall Hobhouse exhibition catalogue by William Chubb, The Lucknow Menagerie: Natural History Drawings from the Collection of Claude Martin (1735-1800), 2001, nos. 53 and 54. Provenance: Sir Elijah and Lady Impey Acknowledgement: We are grateful for the expert advice of Katrina Cook of the Natural History Museum. |