COMPANY SCHOOL, CALCUTTA, INDIA, LATE 18TH OR EARLY 19TH CENTURY

Officers of the British East India Company and their families became important patrons of the arts as the company expanded its range in India beyound trade to include diplomacy and administration. This gave rise to so-called Company School of painting, of the 18th and 19th centuries. As a result, Indian artists, many of which were previously trained in late-Mughal painting practices, evolved their styles in order to respond to their patrons' European tastes, scientific interests, and sense of discovery. The outcomes were large-scale images of India's flora, fauna, people, and landscape. While formal natural studies include a major category of Company painting, other genres included romanticized views of landscape and architecture.

This dramatic image is of the great Indian fruit bat (Pteropus giganteus) frontally displayed with both wings out-stretched. The body is shown in considerable detail, with the bat’s fur, eyes, curling claws, and wing veins naturalistically articulated. This work is closely related to another image of a bat painted by the well-known artist Bhawani Das, who was trained in Mughal miniature painting and commissioned by Sir Elijah Impey, Chief Justice of Bengal (1774–82), and his wife, Lady Mary, to make extensive natural history studies at their estate in Calcutta, (see, William Dalrymple, Forgotten Masters, Indian Painting for the East India Company, London, 2020, p.70, fig.33).

There are two other known Company school illustrations of fruit bats (ibid., pp.69 and 71, figs.32 and 34). It is important to note that our bat was executed on European (Whatman) paper, as were many other known Impey album pages with similar illustrations. Our painting was perhaps made by a follower of Bhawani Das who worked in a slightly more naturalistic mode.