Miscellaneous Indian Drawings Collection
Exhibition and publication details
References and further reading

Miscellaneous Indian Drawings Collection

The collection known as the Miscellaneous Indian Drawings has a complex and intriguing history. It consists of hundreds of beautiful watercolours of plants presumably drawn from Indian botanical gardens during the early to late nineteenth century.

The collection contains artwork from a number of separate collections which in recent times were brought together to form one sequence. It is believed that a substantial numbers of drawings were painted by one or more local artists associated with the Calcutta Botanic Garden. It is also possible that the collection includes watercolour drawings of Bengal plants also painted by local artists, that once formed part of the Sir Joseph Banks (1743-1820) library.

Future research is required to establish the original constituent parts of the collection, the provenance of the drawings and perhaps who the local artists were.

Exhibition and publication details

The drawings from this collection have not been publicly exhibited or reproduced in publications.

References and further reading

Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation (1980) A selection of late 18th and early 19th century Indian botanical paintings recording the indigenous and introduced flora of the subcontinent, commissioned by the Honourable East India Company and executed in watercolour by native artists, variously lent from the collections the British Museum (Natural History), India Office Library, Linnean Society of London, and Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Carnegie-Mellon University : Pittsburgh. 72pp.