Harvard Art Museums

Putka, folio from the album Fishes of India

Date

c. 1810

Medium

Watercolor and gouache on Whatman paper; Company School

Culture

Indian

Department

Department of Islamic & Later Indian Art

Institution

Harvard Art Museums

Two small puffer fish are facing each other halfway down the page, just right of the center. The fish on the left is shown in profile, with a green body that is darker at the top and then fades to a cream-colored abdomen. The fish on the right is depicted from both a profile and top view. This distinct perspective simultaneously highlights the fish's eyes, the demarcations on its back, and its flared abdomen. The fish is gray with light and dark blue stripes on its back. The lower half of its body is dark gray which fades to a white abdomen. There are inscriptions in pen and pencil in the right third of the composition, behind the fish. These inscriptions are oriented vertically, like the album itself. An inscription identifies the fish as Putka. Another inscription states, what appears to be Tetradon. This could be referring to the family, Tetradontidae. It is possible that the fish represent the species Arothron reticularis from this family, a reticulated puffer fish that is found on the east coast of India. This work falls into the genre of natural history documentation, an important enterprise undertaken by many European patrons during their time in India. This genre proliferated between the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, and demonstrate the artist's intention of making quick studies from life. Individual paintings were collected to form an album that documented a variety of animals and plants, thus acting, in a way, as a field guide. Company School.

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