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Lot 53

 

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Known for the highly critical and frequently disfigured portraits of clergymen and members of the upper echelons of society that he painted in the 1950s, it was very rarely that F.N. Souza created an image in appreciation of someone. The present lot, a portrait of Louis Armstrong, one of the twentieth century’s most famous jazz musicians, seems to be one of the exceptional works that was borne of the artist’s admiration rather than his... Known for the highly critical and frequently disfigured portraits of clergymen and members of the upper echelons of society that he painted in the 1950s, it was very rarely that F.N. Souza created an image in appreciation of someone. The present lot, a portrait of Louis Armstrong, one of the twentieth century’s most famous jazz musicians, seems to be one of the exceptional works that was borne of the artist’s admiration rather than his unsympathetic disgust.

A stunning example of Souza’s intricate cross-hatching, this piece closely resembles his seminal 1955 series of drawings, Six Gentlemen of our Times, and was published in his 1959 collection of essays, ‘Words and Lines’, along with it. Speaking of these detailed figurative drawings, Yashodhara Dalmia says, “As the very morphology of the face begins to form, one marvels at the simplicity of means by which this is achieved. The etiological basis of Souza’s demonic faces consists of two parallel lines cross-hatched on either side like harpooning spears. By dexterously manipulating this he is able to circumvent shading. Instead, he achieves an extraordinarily mobile visage” (The Making of Modern Indian Art: The Progressives, Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2001, p. 83).

Although, in the present lot, Armstrong’s face and torso have been built out of the same cross-hatching, with his eyes placed high in his forehead and his teeth clenched, the face in this drawing is not that of a ‘soulless’ socialite or corrupt businessman, nor is it “a ridged, rocky terrain bounded by lines and petrified by its own violence” (Ibid.). Rather, in Souza’s portrayal, Armstrong comes across as a compelling and highly regarded man, a rare interpretation for the time, when racial prejudice and violence were rampant in England.

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