Important Notice

Jehangir Sabavala's Flight into Egypt-I is an allusion to a biblical event described in the Gospel of Matthew (Matthew 2:13-23) that has been an immensely popular subject in art for centuries. The event follows Joseph and Mary who, after learning from the Magi about King Herod's ploy to kill all infants in Bethlehem, flee on a donkey with infant Jesus into Egypt. Religious art dating from the Renaissance address this event through... Jehangir Sabavala's Flight into Egypt-I is an allusion to a biblical event described in the Gospel of Matthew (Matthew 2:13-23) that has been an immensely popular subject in art for centuries. The event follows Joseph and Mary who, after learning from the Magi about King Herod's ploy to kill all infants in Bethlehem, flee on a donkey with infant Jesus into Egypt. Religious art dating from the Renaissance address this event through naturalistically rendered figures occupying the canvas. What truly sets apart Sabavala's interpretation is its departure from the usual focus on the figures, to span the impending dangers both behind them and ahead of them. Its significance comes not only from the framing of the scene, but from its suggestion in continuity of narrative. It has been lauded for its intellectual and technical handling of a subject matter that has, for centuries, evoked very specific imagery.

Renaissance artist Giotto di Bondone's Flight into Egypt, for instance, stresses on its religious importance: Joseph, Mary and Jesus are depicted haloed, and the urgency to flee is barely palpable. The focus, instead, seems to be on their exaltation, which is befitting of religious art. While humans were the focal point in renaissance art, this preoccupation had been replicated over centuries, as can be seen in the treatment of the theme in the works of Albrecht Durer (1504-05), Nicolas Poussin (1657-58), Alexandre-Gabriel Decamps (1803-1860), among others, with a different approach only in stylistic handling. Sabavala's Flight into Egypt abandons their glorification and immerses the viewer in the danger they face.

Ranjit Hoskote commented on this series: "[It] adumbrates the important theme of diaspora….We involve ourselves in the dread of the fugitives as they ride through a narrow defile cut between glowering mountains, or take a crescent-shaped road through a dust-storm, compressing the sky between the hills and the upper edge of the canvas" ("Infinity Measured in Mirages", The Crucible of Painting: The Art of Jehangir Sabavala, Eminence Designs Pvt. Ltd., Mumbai, 2005, pg. 121). Art critics and writers lauded it for the mastery it displayed in the interplay of light and shade, as well as the suspense its subject carried with it. In his foreword to the December 1972 exhibition, Adil Jussawalla observed, "Where the painter's spiritual conflicts open up, in strictly visual terms, corresponding conflicts in nature, they succeed marvellously….It doesn't matter whether we know what the flight into Egypt signifies or who the figures in the painting are. In other words, the paintings' literary source of inspiration is so completely subsumed in the visual that it is irrelevant. Certain unexpected contradictions in nature and between nature and man stand visually revealed." S. V. Vasudev, art critic with the Times of India in 1973, noted-of Sabavala's 16th individual exhibition at the Jehangir Art Gallery in which this work was displayed-that "…when it comes to treating a rarefied landscape, with the sole emphasis on light and space, there is rarely and other painter in India who can bring to it a metaphysical feel-in refinement of thought, technique and treatment."

Another Times of India article, compiled in noted art critic Richard Bartholomew's seminal work The Art Critic, alludes to Flight into Egypt. He notes the recurrence of maya (illusion) and yatra (the journey) as themes in his paintings: "…a kind of pilgrimage and flight…finds repeated expression." Both themes exist in this work: the mountains appear gentle where the light softens them, and the parts steeped in shadow-at the far end and at the fore-suggest danger. In 'The Reasoning Vision: Jehangir Sabavala's Painterly Universe', Dilip Chitre acknowledges the urgency the work possesses: "The walls are like curtains, translucent one moment; at the next, they seem solid, impregnable, oppressive. The family is apprehensive, anxious…pitted as it is against the menacing sheer cliffs." The urgency is in the journey. Bartholomew brings in the parable of Joseph and Mary's journey, with a focus on the figures: "...human forms are like cypresses in the landscape, stylised...to establish the figurative...but the donkey that Mary rides and Joseph leads in the flight into Egypt is actually part and parcel of an unfolding desert flower. Therefore, symbolism of a kind supports Sabavala's point of view".

Following its original 1970s display at various shows, Flight into Egypt-I was also among the works displayed at Jehangir Sabavala's Retrospective at NGMA (Mumbai and Delhi) from November 2005 - January 2006, heightening its importance among his body of works.

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