Harvard Art Museums

Gainchie, 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

At the center of the page is a long, narrow, lozenge-shaped fish. It has a pointed snout and its dorsal and abdominal fins are near the end of the body cavity, next to the base of the tail. Company School. The page contains marks in pencil and ink above and below the fish. The inscriptions identify the fish as Macrognathus pancalus, a barred spiny eel, which is a freshwater fish native to southern Asia. The term gainchie has been erroneously inscribed on the paper; it refers to Ganchi, or Macrognathus aculeatus, the lesser spiny eel. 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.

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