Shaykh Muhammad Amir of Karraya or studio (fl. c. 1830-50) The Balfour album

Shaykh Muhammad Amir of Karraya or studio (fl. c. 1830-50) The Balfour album 26 watercolours on wove paper, each approx. 27 x 21cm (all portrait format except numbers 9, 12 and 25, landscape; numbers 8, 10, 18 and 24 with J. Whatman Turkey Mills watermarks visible), corner-mounted to varicoloured paper leaves in contemporary green half morocco album, contemporary manuscript titles in ink to foot, many additionally with contemporary English translations of the title in pencil to lower left (given below in round brackets where applicable; supplied titles in square brackets), all annotated lower right 'Shekh Mahomed Ameer, Calcutta at Karyah', 'S. Mohammed Ameer Painter, situated at Kurrya' or similar (except 'A teacher of Hindostanee', in the same style but not annotated). Contents comprise: 1. Assabardar (Mace bearer) 2. Sotaburdar (Mace bearer) 3. Hooka burdar 4. Serkar (Native clerk) 5. Dewan (A landed proprietor) 6. (A teacher of Hindostanee) 7. Barber 8. Chouruburdar [Fly-whisk wallah] 9. Palankeen 10. Matoy walla (Sweet meat seller) 11. Burkundaz (Watchman) 12. Hindoostany Carriage 13. Dorcah (Dog keeper) 14. Maytur[?] (House sweeper) 15. B. Woman [Bengali water carrier] 16. Estruwallah [Iron wallah] 17. Dancing girl 18. Grass cutter 19. Abdawr (Wine cooler & table servant) 20. Coachman 21. Ayah (Ladies attendant) 22. Serdawr Bearer (Body attendant & house servant) 23. Hurkarah (Letter carrier or message bearer) 24. Khansamah (Head table attendant) 25. Karachee (Native carriage) 26. Bheshtee (Water carrier). With a similar watercolour bound between numbers 22 and 23, titled Hindoostanee Lady, signed 'Zayn al-Abidin musawwir [painter]', 19 x 15.5cm, Qajar-style, heightened with gum arabic Qty: (1) Note: A major collection of watercolours by one of the leading practitioners of ‘Company School’ painting for European patrons in 19th-century India. The only sets of any comparable extent which we can identify are a group in the British Library comprising 17 pictures of servants, castes, and tradesmen (Add. Or. 171-187), and the famous Holroyd album, produced for Calcutta merchant Thomas Holroyd, given by him to the Oriental Club in 1839, sold by them in 1961 and now dispersed. Acknowledged as 'by far the most talented and original' of all Calcutta painters specialising in work for the British (Archer, 1972), Shaykh Muhammad enjoyed an enthusiastic following among the city's colonial elite in the second quarter of the 19th century. In 1844 the traveller Fanny Parkes purchased a set of paintings evidently similar to the present album, publishing versions of the serkar, burkundaz and the Bengali water carrier in her 1850 travel memoir, Wanderings of a Pilgrim in Search of the Picturesque. In 2019-20 Shaykh Muhammad's work featured in the Forgotten Masters exhibition of Company School paintings at the Wallace Collection, London, at which six of his paintings were shown. William Dalrymple, historian of British India and curator of the exhibition, paid tribute to his inimitable fusion of European and Indian techniques: ‘The Shaykh was equally at home painting a Palladian house or thoroughbred horse, a group of dhobis or a pair of dogs. His single figures are sometimes shown in the Mughal tradition, in profile … but when he wished to, the Shaykh could paint in a more European style than any of his rivals, with low horizons and expanses of blank white space that no Mughal artist would have allowed. He had completely mastered perspective, foreshortening and shading, giving his work a realism and naturalism unique among Indian artists of his generation. Yet while in anatomical accuracy his horse portraits can stand comparison even with Stubbs, there is still an indefinable Indian warmth about his work, a Mughal application of the heart as well as the head'. Unlike his contemporary in Vellore, Yellapah, Shaykh Muhammad is not known to have produced a self-portrait, and little is known of his life or background. His paintings, however, have provoked speculation on his potentially ambivalent attitude towards to his patrons, who are either omitted entirely or, if they are present, are shown with their faces artfully concealed. One such painting, his depiction of a palanquin with a partially visible British passenger, is found in the present album (item 9). If this figure is indeed Thomas Holroyd, as stated in the Forgotten Masters catalogue, Shaykh Muhammad apparently had no reservations about reproducing the likeness for other customers. Provenance: By family repute acquired by Edward Green Balfour (1813-1889), surgeon and naturalist in India; thence by descent. Balfour travelled to India in 1834 as an assistant surgeon in the Madras medical service, and ended his career as surgeon-general in the presidency. An acknowledged polymath, he wrote on subjects including Indian languages and literature and forestry in addition to medicine. His most influential work in his own day was his Enyclopaedia of India and Southern Asia, published at Madras in 1857. Today he is also remembered for his pioneering ecological writings, which explored what he believed to be the 'direct relationship between deforestation, climatic change, and environmental degradation' (ODNB). Literature: Mildred Archer, Company Drawings in the India Office Library (1972), p. 76, cf. catalogue numbers 59-61. idem, Company Paintings: Indian Paintings of the British Period (1992), cat. nos. 80-82. William Dalrymple, ed., Forgotten Masters: Indian Painting for the East India Company (2019), pp. 17 and 122-131, cat. nos. 66-71.