In June 2023, we were delighted to present a major album of watercolours by one of the leading practitioners of ‘Company School’ painting for European patrons in 19th-century India, The Balfour Album by Shaykh Muhammad Amir of Karraya. A work of far greater extent than any other known single collection of his work, and a spectacular evocation of the lost world of Calcutta in the era of Company rule, The Balfour Album achieved £112,700*.
Shaykh Muhammad Amir of Karraya, who was active in the second quarter of the 19th century, is acknowledged as 'by far the most talented and original' of all Calcutta painters specialising in work for the British (Archer, 1972), Shaykh Muhammad Amir of Karraya 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 a selection 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.'
Little is known of Shaykh Muhammad’s life or background, but his paintings have provoked lively 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.
The album came to market from the family of Edward Green Balfour (1813-1889), surgeon-general of the Madras presidency and pioneering writer on climate change, and was offered for sale in our Rare Books, Maps, Manuscripts & Photographs on 21 June 2023, as part of an extensive selection of Indian books and manuscripts from several private owners.
All sold lots include buyer's premium.
