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Fellow members of the Bombay based Progressive Artists' Group, S.H. Raza, F.N. Souza and Akbar Padamsee traveled to Paris in the early 1950s to break from both the Western Academic Realism that dominated art education and practices in India, and the overly sentimental artistic practices Bengal School with its stagnant romanticism. They sought, in Paris, artistic idioms to express 'freedom', a value they held dear in the wake of Indian... Fellow members of the Bombay based Progressive Artists' Group, S.H. Raza, F.N. Souza and Akbar Padamsee traveled to Paris in the early 1950s to break from both the Western Academic Realism that dominated art education and practices in India, and the overly sentimental artistic practices Bengal School with its stagnant romanticism. They sought, in Paris, artistic idioms to express 'freedom', a value they held dear in the wake of Indian independence.

For Raza, the move to Paris brought about a change in both his medium and subject. Beginning to paint with oils instead of gouache and tempera, "He moved out to the countryside; to Cezanne's Provence, as a matter of fact, and to the Maritime Alps where the French landscape with its trees, mountains, villages, and churches became his staple diet" (Yashodhara Dalmia, The Making of Modern Indian Art: The Progressives, Oxford University Press, New Delhi, p. 151-152). The present lot, painted in 1957, is a highly expressionistic vision of a rural hamlet in the French countryside at night, the white houses barely discernable against the lush landscape that surrounds them. Here, brushstroke and colour take precedence over composition and structure, signaling a new turn in the artist's oeuvre.

According to critic Rudy Von Leyden, while Raza's carefully constructed gouaches of the early 1950s comprised a period of 'crystallization' for the artist, "…the new phase which was to break in about 1953, was one of melting down and fusion. In the furnace of an entirely new passion for colour Raza's new style was born that was to bring to him international fame in a few short years…The change of medium and manner were not merely technical but signified a fundamental change of attitude. The scholar, who had measured and calculated, burst through the confines of a limited understanding of colour and space-created-by-colour into a sphere of full realisation. The transformation created such passion that one could best describe this age of Raza as the age of the Lover. This triumphant handling of paint, this living in paint can only be understood as an act of love" (Rudolf Von Leyden, Raza, Sadanga Publications, Mumbai, 1959, p. 19).

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