Important Notice

“Pyne’s private mythology is peopled by wounded gladiators, dying kings, wandering saints, and birds of evil counsel. Perhaps he is – as he says, adapting Nijinsky – ‘only whole when [he is] painting’, since his art is not an extraneous frill to his life, but rather, is his fundamental mode of exploring and expressing his inner reality. And yet, he shares it in the hope of creating communication with the Other – the elusive, always receding... “Pyne’s private mythology is peopled by wounded gladiators, dying kings, wandering saints, and birds of evil counsel. Perhaps he is – as he says, adapting Nijinsky – ‘only whole when [he is] painting’, since his art is not an extraneous frill to his life, but rather, is his fundamental mode of exploring and expressing his inner reality. And yet, he shares it in the hope of creating communication with the Other – the elusive, always receding Other, who is sometimes incarnated in the form of the viewer” (Ranjit Hoskote, “Reflections on the Art of Ganesh Pyne”, Ganesh Pyne – A Pilgrim in the Dominion of Shadows, Gallerie 88, Mumbai, 2005, p. 15).

In the present lot, titled Godhuli, the word for twilight or dusk in Bengali, Ganesh Pyne depicts an old saint, wandering in the woods, engrossed in the melodies resonating from his small stringed instrument, perhaps an ektara or tanpura. Dressed in simple saffron robes, the mendicant’s feet disappear in the dense undergrowth of the forest, making him look as if he is levitating. Along with the fading light of late evening that the artist has masterfully recreated in tempera, this image gives the canvas an air of mystic transcendentalism.

Explaining the artist’s choice of tempera as a medium, Ranjit Hoskote notes, “Neither oil nor watercolour satisfied him: their range of effects was neither sumptuous enough on the one hand, nor ethereal enough on the other, to convey his particular atmospheres. He wished to work in a medium that was equally free of opacity and transparency. It was in the teaching and practice of Nandalal Bose, the Shilpacharya, as he was known, that Pyne found the medium that he was to adopt as his own: tempera, using fine medical gum as the binder for ground pigment. Tempera gave Pyne both crispness of line and a sense of dept, the necessary illusion of volume as well as a sense of idyllic lightness” (Ibid., p. 13).

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