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“It seems to me that I never began painting, that I have always painted. And I have always had, with a strange certitude, the conviction that I was meant to be a painter and nothing else.”
- AMRITA SHER-GIL

It was on Baktay’s and Petman’s recommendations that Sher-Gil was sent to study in Paris, just two years later, where her prodigious talent as an artist really blossomed. In 1929, she enrolled at the Grande Chaumière under... “It seems to me that I never began painting, that I have always painted. And I have always had, with a strange certitude, the conviction that I was meant to be a painter and nothing else.”
- AMRITA SHER-GIL

It was on Baktay’s and Petman’s recommendations that Sher-Gil was sent to study in Paris, just two years later, where her prodigious talent as an artist really blossomed. In 1929, she enrolled at the Grande Chaumière under Pierre Vaillant, and later that year, at age 16, she won admission to the studio of Lucien Simon at the École des Beaux-Arts where she studied till 1933. While at the latter, Sher-Gil sketched male and female nudes, portraits, and still lifes predominantly academic in style. She preferred to draw from models often using fellow students, friends, and her sister Indira as subjects. “There she learnt, for the first time, the mystery of the anatomy of the human form. She discovered the significance of line, form and colour.” (N Iqbal Singh, Critical Collective, online) Lot 34, a series of nude self-studies from this period, exhibit her growing understanding of the female form, which would form the basis for her oil paintings. Commenting on her portraits, Katalin Keserü writes, “In her portraits, we can follow not only her feeling for colour but also the models represented becoming living characters […] she was also interested in relationships between women. Perhaps this is why her academic nudes are unusual.” (Katalin Keserü, “Amrita Sher-Gil the Indian Painter and Her French and Hungarian Connections,” Yashodhara Dalmia ed., Amrita Sher-Gil Art & Life, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2014, pp. 73, 77)

As she matured, Sher-Gil’s ability to convey profound emotion in her artwork persisted, shaping seminal works such as The Story Teller (1937) and In the Ladies’ Enclosure (1938). Her portrayals of women and their rich inner lives, characterised by sensitivity rather than idealisation or pity, became a hallmark of her oeuvre.

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