Elephant apple

About 240 years ago an Indian artist made this beautiful painting for a British patron. The patron might be Henry Creighton who ran an indigo factory in Guamalati for the British East India Company. Documenting India’s flora allowed the Company to export and exploit useful plants for large profits.

This style of painting is called ‘Company School’ art. It was common for officials to build their own personal collections of paintings. The flora and fauna depicted was sometimes from their own gardens and menageries.

All the works in this collection include details of the plants’ reproductive parts – such as the flowers and seeds. At some point in their history a botanist studied them and tried to identify the species. On this one they wrote, ‘Dillenia - apparently D indica Linn. but colour of petals wrong’. We do not know who wrote this.

Did the artist make a mistake?

When the artist painted these elephant apple flowers they used the correct colour of paint – white. But over time, pollution in the atmosphere caused the lead in the pigment to oxidise and blacken.

In 2016, specialist conservation treatment restored the paint to its original colour. The conservator used an ethereal hydrogen peroxide solution applied with a fine brush over a vacuum table.

Visual description: A detailed watercolour painting of a cutting from an elephant apple tree. The branch is light brown and textured with several long, corrugated green leaves growing from it. At the top of the cutting, a single white flower is in bloom. Surrounding the main painting are smaller studies showing the flower in different stages, from pre-bloom to its fully open state. Prior to conservation, the white of the flower was blackened due to oxidisation.