By the late eighteenth century many Mughal-trained painters in central and eastern India were looking to the emerging British ruling class for patronage. The products of this new Company School were often albums of flora, fauna, and other exotic sights of India, made to be taken back to Britain. Of the varied subjects, bird studies, such as this bold depiction of a sturdy black stork, may be deemed a classic type. Paintings of birds, animals, and flowers had been an important genre in Indian art since the time of the Mughal emperor Jahangir (r. 1605–27), and the continuation of such subjects under British patronage was a natural extension of that established tradition, although the results were often quite different stylistically.

In this painting the stork is standing upright in a receding landscape, of considerably reduced scale, that contains a meandering river. The dramatic contrast in size between the bird and the vista it dominates gives the composition a distinctively idiosyncratic mood. This effect is also seen in another, similar page depicting a hawk in a landscape, possibly from the same series, in the Biennia Collection at the San Diego Museum of Art. While the background of the Metropolitan's picture is rendered in a washy application of paint, the bird itself has areas of dense color and fine brushwork.