UNKNOWN

Indian, 18th century

Study of Birds, circa 1780

Graphite pencil and watercolor on paper

Public domain

Gift of Ralph and Catherine Benkaim 1983.028

This small drawing in graphite and watercolor on paper shows seven birds of whom four are depicted as distinct species. These four are all from around South Asia, likely southern Myanmar (Burma) or Thailand. These include: a scaly-breasted (or “nutmeg”) munia; a Chesnut munia; a Red Avadavat, also known as Red Munia or the Strawberry Finch; and a fusion of a yellow-vented bulbul and a different bird with a red beak (at the center of the composition). There are also small, vague details such as a dragonfly, butterfly, distant white cranes, tea leaves, and other vegetation.

So we can see that, even though they’re depicted together, the birds in this drawing are not all native to the same areas. Though today one may observe these birds as far from South Asia as California and the Caribbean, this is a result of the colonial domination and trade activities that were kicking off around the time of this painting’s creation. Yet this distribution of birds was not yet the case when this work was made. So the artist may have simply copied the birds from different prints. But if drawn from life, the 18th century artist may have had to visit the separate habitats of the different birds and then depicted them in this composite image. If so, he would have had to travel extensively to observe these different birds under varied conditions. Alternatively, he may have observed the birds in one place as part of the centuries-old caged bird trade. In the latter case one can imagine the artist sketching and painting the birds removed from their natural environments and brought together in one place. An additional possible site of creation for this painting would have been at a menagerie, where wealthy patrons collected flora and fauna that they commissioned artists to capture.

In any case, it is quite likely that the draftsman was involved in the East India Company, which was active in India and stretched to places like modern-day Myanmar and Thailand. Though the birds can--at least in four cases--be specifically identified, the artist cannot. Frequently the East India company hired locals to depict birds and botanical specimen. This history, the subjects, and the style of the work suggest that it can be associated with Company painting, or kampani kalam in Hindi. These paintings exemplified a hybrid Indo-European aesthetic that emerged from the encounters between the East India Company and the peoples of the subcontinent and surrounding countries. The British enterprise expanded significantly in this region in the late eighteenth and nineteenth century. Not unlike the Virginia Company that would help to spur settlements like Williamsburg, the East India Company saw the move of many of its English employees to India. In keeping with the exoticization Europeans placed on the New World and Europe’s long-standing tradition of Orientalizing that which lay to the east, these British colonialists and merchants quickly became interested in capturing, documenting,, and commercializing the new things they saw. In other words, the people, monuments, flora, and fauna of south Asia became “exotic” commodities for British consumers.. Though clearly money making and acquiring raw materials dominated the East India Company agenda its agents and employees also had a marked interest in exploration and classification of all that was new to Europeans. The Study of Birds can be seen within this context of classification.

Enlightenment interest in classification and exploration, of course, was a primary driver of the European colonial expansion manifest in the East India Company. Perhaps taken with the exoticizing idea of indigenous authenticity, they commissioned Indian painters to create the mementos they brought back to Europe, such as this study of birds. Yet these Indian artists painted with a European style and palette—ensuring the hybrid nature of these Company paintings. Interestingly, the Indian painters were in part inspired by earlier British Orientalists—the layers of influence and borrowing exemplified in Study of Birds is thereby quite intricate; Indian painters depicted South Asian cultural and biological heritage for European audiences in European Orientalist styles employed to capture places like South Asia.

The most famous and later examples of visual ornithological documentation come from the great French-American ornithologist John James Audobon (1785-1851) born around the time this drawing was made. Comparison with Audobon shows the unknown artist’s relative ignorance of or disinterest in ornithology. Though exquisite in its beautiful rendering, the bird study lacks the specificity of type and anatomical correctness of Audobon’s work. Thorough descriptions of the cognition, behavior, and morphology of the birds accompanied Audubon’s illustrations in the five volumes of his Ornithological Biography. While Audubon himself would have foregone backgrounds as did this unknown artist, he hired other painters to fill them in with species’ characteristic habitats and thus imbue his works with environmental knowledge.

Consequently, despite the unknown artists’ close observation, Enlightenment context, and artistic craft this is a record of specific birds but, unlike Audobon, it is not an ornithological document. Though unfinished, this slight study painted with European mediums and style, retains a sense of the decorative in composition and anatomy. Looking closely at the drawing--at the underlying graphite and the stages of work on the individual birds from light sketch to the delicately painted shows this decorative sensibility but also conveys something of the liveliness and individuality of each creature.

In contrast to Audubon’s work, this exhibit painting seems far more decorative and whimsical--somewhere between postcard memento, William Morris’s textiles of the following century, an image from a children’s book. This work is clearly unfinished, but what is complete reveals a focus entirely on the shapes and colors of the birds, with little attention to anatomy—much less landscape. The exclusion of environmental knowledge and the absence of detail makes clear that the artist’s priority was decoration, not documentation. That the birds were grouped together, unlike Audubon’s single-species portraits, and playfully engaged in flight, eating, and dragonfly watching, hints at an anecdotal or sentimental purpose of the artist. Altogether, this art may be viewed simultaneously in the contexts of Orientalism, the Enlightenment, and even Romanticism –but also as simply a playful moment in the creative process of an Indian artist capturing the world around him.

What makes this piece so exciting is that it is like a composite image not just of different birds from different places, but also a swirling, non-linear look at all the steps in making art. So even though we don’t know the artist’s identity, we arguably get a great look into their artistic thinking than that of a known artist who did not leave behind works in progress. In this way, Study of Birds gives us both a snapshot of a specific imperial ornithological landscape and very special insight into the art-making of this unknown artist.

Hannah London '21