Album with 12 Indian bird paintings, 19th C.

Dim.: 24 x 16 cm (each page)

The album may be of Chinese-Cantonese origin, where it would fit in the tradition of rice or pith paper paintings.

However, such paintings also started to appear in India, under the influence of the East India Company (or Compagnie des Indes de l'Est).
The Kampani qalam or the Company school of painting refers to the artworks created for the officials of the East India Company in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Documenting the flora, fauna, heritage and people of the Indian subcontinent, it consists of a wide-ranging repository of art that was commissioned by British officials in India.

The artists were influenced by a heady mixture of styles. The Mughal style of portraiture was still strong in India and while painting these artworks, the artists were introduced to European models which resulted in a unique mixture. They are characterised in the medium by the use of watercolours (instead of gouache), and in technique by the appearance of linear perspective and shading.