East India Company art to be auctioned

SOTHEBY’S will hold a first-ofits-kind auction of Company School Paintings, the work of Indian artists commissioned by the East India Company in the 18th and 19th centuries.

The paintings are being offered by the American collector and art dealer Carlton C Rochell Junior, who spent the first 18 years of his career at Sotheby’s, where he founded the Indian and Southeast Asian Art Department in 1988.

“I first began to collect these lesser-known masterpieces over two decades ago simply for my personal enjoyment, my imagination having been captured by their ‘East meets West’ aesthetic,” said Rochell Junior.

In An Indian Garden: The Carlton Rochell Collection of Company School Paintings is described as a fusion of science and art, from zoological portraits to complex architectural panoramas, from the early colonial years in India.

The exhibition will be held across Sotheby’s in New York, Hong Kong and London, ending in an auction on October 27.

In 2019 and 2020, the Wallace

Collection in London presented Forgotten Masters: Indian Painting for the East India Company, curated by British writer and historian William Dalrymple. Many of that exhibition’s artists – Shaykh Zayn al-Din, Ram Das, Bhawani Das and Ghulam Ali Khan – are represented in the Sotheby’s event.

“These paintings reflect a fascination and passion for India’s culture and history... and showcase a remarkable hybrid style merging Mughal and European elements,” said Benedict Carter, Sotheby’s head of sale.