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Lot 29

 

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"Beauty is Nature's creation; colours are a wonder; Light, which contains colours, is a miracle..." - FRANCIS NEWTON SOUZA

F N Souza was one of the first Indian artists to achieve high distinction in the Western art space. Painted in 1964, the present lot belongs to a highly lucrative period that is generally considered the apex of his career. "For almost ten years, from 1956 to 1966, he dominated the British art scene, showing... "Beauty is Nature's creation; colours are a wonder; Light, which contains colours, is a miracle..." - FRANCIS NEWTON SOUZA

F N Souza was one of the first Indian artists to achieve high distinction in the Western art space. Painted in 1964, the present lot belongs to a highly lucrative period that is generally considered the apex of his career. "For almost ten years, from 1956 to 1966, he dominated the British art scene, showing his work and selling regularly. He was written about extensively and received praise from critics such as John Berger, Edwin Mullins and David Sylvester, to name a few." (Rasheed Araeen ed., The Other Story: Afro-Asian Artists in Post-War Britain, London: South Bank Centre, 1989, p. 23)

In a career defined by scathing portrayals of individuals and society, Souza painted landscapes that exemplify his mastery over the elements of form and space. The present lot, with its dark and sombre tones, embodies the apocalyptic vision that dominated Souza's landscapes from the 1960s. They reflected both the post-war gloom of Britain and the mounting tension between nations in the aftermath of the war. Yashodhara Dalmia writes that works like the present lot "seem to be driven by a cataclysmic force, which wreaks havoc... The tumbling houses in their frenzied movement are also symbolic of all things falling apart, of the very root of things being shaken..." (Yashodhara Dalmia, The Making of Modern Indian Art: The Progressives, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2001, p. 93)

Likely a depiction of Hampstead Village - an affluent district in North London where Souza resided during this time - the present lot demonstrates Souza's fluid and skilful handling of line techniques that delineate the composition into one of constructed upheaval. Even in this image of frantic chaos, Souza takes precise care to lay out his immediate surroundings in Belsize Park, where he lived and worked, evident in the columns, roofs and pointed pediments of the houses in the present lot.

The thunderous, dark and foreboding sky appears as if a portent of the calamitous doom yet to hit the landscape, while the creeping foliage and thorny branches surrounding the tumbling houses threaten to overwhelm the unsuspecting neighbourhood. Using urgent brushstrokes and crisp black lines, Souza subverts the tranquil, charming suburb into one of chaos. "The Landscapes, architectonic with their 'cubic factors' are ultimately lyrical. There's an unrestrained enthusiasm, a liberty in the application of color that is applied swiftly with a palette knife, creating smooth pulsating textures. While disregarding the limits of the picture plane roads break off into the endless sky and trees appear always in the foreground as colourful 'blurs' (a device Souza uses to create perspective). Our emotions are guided by the effects of the vibrant color schemes that belong to a world of subconscious fantasy indicative of the fertility of Souza's personal vision." (Anthony Ludwig, Souza, New Delhi: Dhoomimal Gallery)

By the time he painted the present lot, Souza's work had appeared in many prestigious galleries in the UK, including the Tate, the Royal Academy of Arts, the Whitechapel Art Gallery, Bradford Museum, and Castle Museum, Norwich, as well as across Europe. Art historian Eddie Chambers writes, "If ever a mid twentieth-century immigrant artist symbolised an impulse towards the universal languages of art that were simultaneously grounded in individual particularities of identity, it was Souza." (Eddie Chambers, Black Artists in British Art: A History Since the 1950s, London: I B Tauris & Co Ltd, 2014, online)

Despite his significant presence in London's art circles around this time, Souza still struggled to make ends meet. He was likely approached by Reeves (formerly Reeves and Sons), an artists' paint company in London (est. 1766), to use their paint products. Unable to afford these paints, Souza gave them this work in exchange. The present lot was thus owned by the Reeves brand, until Winsor & Newton, a highly respected fine art product manufacturing company that was given the Royal Warrant by Queen Victoria more than a century prior, acquired them in 1976.

In 1990, Winsor & Newton was acquired by AB Wilh. Becker, a Swedish paint and coatings company owned by Lindengruppen, whose founder and President, Ulf G Linden, had a lifelong passion for art. This led him to found Colart, a separate division for art supplies, in 1991. Winsor & Newton became one of the core brands under Colart, who acquired Reeves in the process. Now one of the world's leading fine art companies, Colart also owns iconic brands such as Lefranc & Bourgeois, Conte A Paris, Liquitex, Snazaroo, and most recently the quarterly art and culture magazine Elephant.

The present lot resided in Winsor & Newton's factory premises in Wealdstone, Harrow in North West London until they moved to Shepherd's Bush in 2013.

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