Lot 172:
Sold for: £2,050
Description
An album containing approximately fifty three hand-painted mica paintings produced in the Company School style, typical of the Trichinopoly or Madurai regions of South India. The collection is arranged in an antique paper scrap album and is divided into thematic groups. The first fifteen folios depict various professional and social castes, including a “Saddler,” “Gardener,” “Milk seller,” and “Carpenter,” typically shown as male and female pairs in traditional costume with tools of their trades. Subsequent folios illustrate scenes of daily life and transport, including “Tiger Hunting” with elephants, a “Mysore Coach,” a “Camel” rider, and a topographical landscape titled “Rock of Trichinopoly.”
The album further contains eleven bazaar scenes featuring detailed shopfronts such as a “Native Sweetmeat Bazar,” “Native Rice Bazar,” and a “Mooselman Hookah Bazar.” The final section comprises iconographic depictions of Hindu deities, including Ganesha, Hanuman, and “Siva lingum & Parvathy worshipping.” Each painting is executed in gouache and gum arabic on thin, translucent sheets of mica (muscovite), mounted onto corner-slotted paper pages. Numerous descriptive captions in English are written in pencil on the paper mounts beneath the mica sheets.
Condition report:
The paper album shows significant age-related wear, including frayed edges, toning, and fragile binding (photo 2). Several mica paintings exhibit fractures and losses to the corners, notably visible on the \"Native Sweetmeat Bazar\" and \"Native Paddy Bazar\" (photos 27, 28, and 30). One painting of a multi-armed deity exhibits more significant damage with a large section of the mica carrier missing (photo 33). The pigments remain vibrant throughout, with some minor flaking present on a few examples.
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