'' Indian Roller on Sandalwood'' by Zain ud-Din, now in the collection of the Minneapolis Institute of Art The Impey Album was a collection of

Company style Company style, also known as Company painting or Patna painting (Hindi: ''kampani kalam'') is a term for a hybrid Indo-European style of paintings made in India by Indian artists, many of whom worked for European patrons in the East India Company ...

paintings commissioned by Elijah Impey (1732–1809) and his wife Mary Impey, Mary, née Reade (1749–1818), of the animals in their

menagerie A menagerie is a collection of captive animals, frequently exotic, kept for display; or the place where such a collection is kept, a precursor to the modern Zoo, zoological garden. The term was first used in 17th-century France, in reference to ...

in Calcutta (now

Kolkata Kolkata (, or , ; also known as Calcutta , the official name until 2001) is the capital of the Indian state of West Bengal, on the eastern bank of the Hooghly River west of the border with Bangladesh. It is the primary business, comme ...

), India, where Elijah was chief justice of the Supreme Court. Between 1777 and 1782, the Impeys hired local artists to paint the various birds, animals and native plants, life-sized where possible, and their natural surroundings. The collection, often known as the Impey Album, is an important example of

painting. The three artists who are known were Sheikh Zain ud-Din, Bhawani Das, and Ram Das. More than half the over 300 paintings were of birds. Mary also kept extensive notes about habitat and behaviour, which were of great use to later biologists such as John Latham in his work on Indian birds. The collection was dispersed in an auction in 1810, and several pieces are in various museums including the

Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 ...

in New York,

Natural History Museum at Tring The Natural History Museum at Tring was the private museum of Lionel Walter, 2nd Baron Rothschild; today it is under the control of the Natural History Museum, London. It houses one of the finest collections of stuffed mammals, birds, reptiles ...

, with three in the

Victoria and Albert Museum The Victoria and Albert Museum (often abbreviated as the V&A) in London is the world's largest museum of applied arts, decorative arts and design, housing a permanent collection of over 2.27 million objects. It was founded in 1852 and nam ...

in London, eighteen in the

Radcliffe Science Library The Radcliffe Science Library (RSL) is the main teaching and research science library at the University of Oxford in Oxford, England. Being officially part of the Bodleian Libraries, the library holds the Legal Deposit material for the sciences a ...

of the

University of Oxford , mottoeng = The Lord is my light , established = , endowment = £6.1 billion (including colleges) (2019) , budget = £2.145 billion (2019–20) , chancellor ...

, and four in

World Museum World Museum is a large museum in Liverpool, England which has extensive collections covering archaeology, ethnology and the natural and physical sciences. Special attractions include the Natural History Centre and a planetarium. Entry to the ...

National Museums Liverpool National Museums Liverpool, formerly National Museums and Galleries on Merseyside, comprises several museums and art galleries in and around Liverpool, England. All the museums and galleries in the group have free admission. The museum is a non ...

. The twelve pictures (eleven by Zain ud-Din) given to the Radcliffe Science Library are now on loan to the

Ashmolean Museum The Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology () on Beaumont Street, Oxford, England, is Britain's first public museum. Its first building was erected in 1678–1683 to house the cabinet of curiosities that Elias Ashmole gave to the University of ...

in Oxford, and between October 2012 and April 2013 were exhibited at the Ashmolean as part of an exhibition entitled Lady Impey's Indian Bird Paintings. An exhibition, Forgotten Masters: Indian Painting for the East India Company, which opened in December 2019 at the

Wallace Collection The Wallace Collection is a museum in London occupying Hertford House in Manchester Square, the former townhouse of the Seymour family, Marquesses of Hertford. It is named after Sir Richard Wallace, who built the extensive collection, along w ...

in London reunited about 30 paintings from the album. It was scheduled to run until April 2020, but like many such events was curtailed by the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identif ...

References

{{Reflist Watercolor paintings Birds in art Indian paintings