Provenance:
George Annesley, 10th Viscount Valentia (1769-1844)
Niall Hobhouse, London
Francesca Galloway, London
The Himalayan Monal or Impeyan Pheasant is a resident of the Himalayan region in India, Pakistan and Nepal. The male is identified by its unmistakable iridescent green head, wire-like crest, green and copper feathers on its hindneck and mantle, blue and purple wings, cinnamon-brown tail feathers and velvety-black underparts. It is usually found on grassy and rocky slopes in the summer and in oak, deodar and rhododendron forests during winter. The scientific name for the pheasant was given by the ornithologist John Latham to commemorate Lady Impey (1749- 1818), wife of Sir Elijah Impey, Chief Justice of Bengal from 1774 to 1782.
This painting was formerly in the collection of the 10th Viscount Valentia (1769-1844). George Annesley, 2nd Earl of Mountnorris, styled Viscount Valentia, made a tour of India in a private capacity between 1802 and 1806. He wrote an account of his travels, including a description of his visit to Barrackpore, in Voyages and Travels to India, Ceylon, the Red Sea, Abyssinia and Egypt in the Years 1802-06, published in three volumes in London in 1809. As a keen, amateur natural historian he met many professional botanists and zoologists working in India at the time, and he viisited Lord Wellesley in Calcutta in February 1803. Lord Valentia collected many natural history drawings himself, mostly of birds. Most of the drawings in his collection depict the bird, if small, either perched on a branch or twig and, if large, depicted standing with no landscape. This illustration is unusual for its painted ground.