Currently not on view
Study of a Yellow-footed Green Pigeon, Illustration from the Rind Album,
ca. 1800
This painting is an example of Indian Company School painting. As the British East India Company expanded its activities in South Asia during the late 1700s, great numbers of its employees moved from England to carve out new lives for themselves in India. As they traveled throughout the country and encountered novel flora and fauna, stunning ancient monuments, and "exotic" new people, they wanted to capture these images to send or take home. Whereas a modern tourist would rely on a camera for such a task, eighteenth- and nineteenth-century travelers hired Indian painters. The works produced by these artists, undertaken in a European style and palette, are known as "Company" paintings. They are characterized by the use of watercolors (instead of gouache, which was used in traditional Indian paintings) and by the appearance of linear perspective and shading. This charming yellow-footed green pigeon—the state bird of Mahashtra, in the west-central region of the subcontinent—comes from an album commissioned by James Nathaniel Rind (d. 1814), who lived in India between 1778 and 1801.
Information
ca. 1800
India, Calcutta
–1971 Mrs. S. Richardson and Mrs. S. M. Norman (London, UK), sold at Sotheby’s (London, UK), July 13, 1971.
1970s Sven Gahlin (1934–2017; London, UK).
1970s K.J. Hewett (1919–94; London, UK).
1970s–2017 Private Collection (London, UK).
–2017 Private Collection, through Forge & Lynch (London, UK), sold to the Princeton University Art Museum, 2017.
