~ Victorian Set of Indian Company School Paintings on Mica of Native Servants of Calcutta ~
A fine set of paintings on Mica collected by the Victorian journalist A. Forbes during the Boer War period.
These paintings are in the ‘Company’ school or style which is a term for a hybrid Indo-European style of paintings made in British India by Indian artists, many of whom worked for European patrons.
The set contains 12 paintings on mica of ‘Native Servants of Calcutta’. Each is simply a figure without a face and without a background.
Also included is one watercolour on card, of a background and a persons face.
The object is to overlay the mica paintings onto the card to form a full picture.
The set comes in a contemporary to the time envelope with the title of the set handwritten by the collector.
~ Dimensions ~
Each piece measures 7.5cm (3 inches) by 11cm (4 ¼ inches).
~ Condition ~
The paintings themselves are all in excellent order and the colours are still vivid.
Due to the very fragile nature of mica, some of the plates have a little edge damage.
Please refer to the images for more detail.
~ Mica Paintings ~
Mica paintings are generally small images painted in gouache on one side of very thin, flexible sheets of mica which is a transparent mineral found throughout south India.
Mica paintings were very popular around the middle of the nineteenth century and featured a wide range of subject matter. They imitated paintings on glass, which were popular in Europe at the time.
Mica is a very brittle substance and it is relatively rare to find examples in good condition.
