Brahminy Starling on a Neem Branch

One bird on one branch, and a great deal of empty paper. The starling’s crest, the grey of its wings and the serrated neem leaves are drawn with a natural historian’s care; nothing else is allowed in.

The note at the lower left reads: In the collection of Lady Impey Calcutta. Painted by Zain al-Din, Native of Patna, 1780; the painter’s name is written in Persian script. Mary Impey and her husband Elijah, the chief justice, kept a menagerie and between 1777 and 1782 paid local artists to record its birds, animals and plants, life-size where they could. More than half of the three hundred or so pictures were of birds. Mary Impey kept notes on habitat and behaviour that later ornithologists used.

Zain al-Din had trained in the Mughal workshops of Patna. He was the most prolific of the three known artists on the album, which was dispersed at auction in 1810.