Harvard Art Museums

Manua, 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

The fish is painted in the center of the page in profile. It features a blunt, curved head with large eyes and a downward, curving, agape mouth. Its body tapers to a narrow tail. It has two dorsal fins, including a tall, spiny fin at the center of its back. The fish has a small lateral fin and an abdominal fin that both taper near the tail. Its tail is club-shaped. Its body is dark gray with darker gray and brown mottling. Its abdomen is a light gray. The page has inscriptions in pen and pencil in the lower third of the composition, to the left and right of the fish, and along the bottom of the sheet. One inscription identifies the fish as Manua, while another appears to state Gobius Plenianus. The fish is most likely from the Gobiidae family, and perhaps represents the Amoya madraspatensis, a ray-finned fish that can be found in the eastern Indian Ocean. 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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