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Born in 1922, Jehangir Sabavala studied art in Bombay, London, and Paris. Practicing in the modernist mode, the artist's infinite, tranquil land and seascapes, painstakingly constructed of precise wedges of colour, are not intended to convey the physical attributes of a place, but rather to communicate its intangible character.

The present lot, reminiscent of the Deccan landscape during and after the monsoons, is a study in... Born in 1922, Jehangir Sabavala studied art in Bombay, London, and Paris. Practicing in the modernist mode, the artist's infinite, tranquil land and seascapes, painstakingly constructed of precise wedges of colour, are not intended to convey the physical attributes of a place, but rather to communicate its intangible character.

The present lot, reminiscent of the Deccan landscape during and after the monsoons, is a study in verticals, underlining the tight control of light, colour and texture that Sabavala had achieved by the late 1970s. The rocky cliffs in this painting borrow as much from the landscape of Mahableshwar and the Western Ghats in India as they do from the Phaedriades in Delphi, Greece, that the artist recalls from a 1957 trip there. As he wrote in his travel diary, "The site has grandeur, mystery, and the force to frighten - the amazing bulk and presence of the two great rocks, all pink and glistening grey, called the 'flamboyants', dominate Delphi" (as quoted in Ranjit Hoskote, The Crucible of Painting: The Art of Jehangir Sabavala, Eminence Designs Pvt. Ltd., Mumbai, 2005, p. 134).

Describing this painting, part of a suite of works executed in 1978, one of the artist's first biographers, Pria Devi observes, "A river collects to spill the potential turmoil of clouds above into spume below. This thrusts upwards with the force of its descent. Lateral lodes of dull purple, umber and rust are elemental mineral; their fracture softened by planar translucencies and liquid fluencies. A volatile element rips open a fissure in that which confines and defines it. Oppositions open and yield" (Jehangir Sabavala, Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi, 1984, p. 8).

Sabavala first explored the subject of cascading water a few years earlier, in the 1974 painting, Waterfall. Speaking about this work, a precursor of the present lot in terms of subject, format and palette, Dilip Chitre notes, "For those who have visited the Western Ghats during the monsoon, this image is not unfamiliar. The Deccan landscape is Sabavala's favourite though he transforms it into his own idiom. A great cascade of water over a cleft cliff-face, falling with stupendous force, occupies the tight, vertical frame. The sky is a narrow band at the top and it is echoed by the even narrower band of water at the bottom. In between, ripping the rock-hard brown of the cliff, is the sheer, cataracting vertical fall of water, now shaded, now white. The sprays film the continuous or broken columns of water which fall over the giant rock-face. Layer upon layer of brown-umber, sienna and ochre have been used to texture the surface and give an impression of granite solidity. The elemental force of water mesmerizes us by its sheer energy" (The Reasoning Vision: Jehangir Sabavala's Painterly Universe, Tata McGraw-Hill, New Delhi, 1980, p. 69).

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