Sotheby's to sale Company School album in April

KOLKATA: Sotheby's will offer a large and important Company School album of water colours of costumes, craftsmen, trades and processions in India circa 1832-35 at its sale in April. The album is valued at £200,000-300,000, and provides a fascinating insight into Indian culture of the period.

Superior to the majority of similar related productions of Company patronage, the album is remarkable not only for its size and quality, but also for its uncommon subject matter. Alongside depictions of craftsmen, processions, dancers and contemporary costumes, unusually the album also contains a self-portrait showing the artist at work, Among the other characters illustrated are a fisherman, doctor, barber, goldsmith, a dressing servant and dancing girls.

All in all, the album includes 35 large sheets bound in their original leather covers and is estimated at £200,000-£300,000.

In an era before cameras and photography, administrators, officials and visitors to the East India Company would commission such albums, painted by local Indian artists to bring back and show their friends and relatives.

The album contains some interesting and rare portraits, including dignitaries such as the former king of Kandy, his son and the Prime Minister of Ava.

Another sheet contains wonderful portraits of six soldiers of the Madras regiments of Horse Artillery, Light Cavalry, Rifle Corps, Pioneer Corp, Infantry and Golundauz.

The focus of the album as well as its pictorial style is the southern and eastern regions of India, Vellore. A very similar album is in the India Office Collections in the British Library in London.