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Lot 90

 

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Even as he established a modern pictorial idiom that represented the many realities of independent India, M F Husain remained attuned to rural Indian life and the country’s rich artistic and cultural heritage. He channelled these influences in his artistic style, choice of subject, and a personal symbolism, opening them to new perspectives in his work. Critic Geeta Kapur remarks, “Husain, for all the diversity of his life and art, has attempted... Even as he established a modern pictorial idiom that represented the many realities of independent India, M F Husain remained attuned to rural Indian life and the country’s rich artistic and cultural heritage. He channelled these influences in his artistic style, choice of subject, and a personal symbolism, opening them to new perspectives in his work. Critic Geeta Kapur remarks, “Husain, for all the diversity of his life and art, has attempted to locate himself, to keep in touch with the sources of Indian life scattered in myriad forms. The prevailing topic of his art has been peasants and tribals, and those gods of myths and legends who still hover among villagers.” (Geeta Kapur, “Maqbool Fida Husain”, Contemporary Indian Artists, New Delhi: Vikas Publishing House Pvt Ltd, 1978, p. 126)

Painted in 2002, the present lot echoes Husain’s seminal 1960 canvas, Farmer’s Family, now in the collection of the National Gallery of Modern Art in New Delhi. Here, a farming family is depicted celebrating the harvest, a commemorative theme that the artist also explored in the series of Holi paintings he executed during the 1950s and 60s. Husain was drawn to the Indian village as a theme, especially at the beginning of his career in the 1950s. During this formative phase, he captured the charm of rural India, portraying the Indian peasant alongside cultural signifiers such as the bullock, plough, and cart, as icons of the spirit of a newly independent nation. Paintings such as Yatra and Zameen, both from 1955, became hallmarks of this period and are among his most acclaimed. Zameen was acquired by the National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi, and earned Husain the prestigious Lalit Kala Akademi award that same year. Ebrahim Alkazi writes, “Most artists have been attracted at one time or other to the charm and colour of the Indian countryside and drawn inspiration from it. Few have brought to it the poetic lyricism which Husain has.” (Ebrahim Alkazi, M F Husain: The Modern Artist & Tradition, New Delhi: Art Heritage, 1978, p. 17)

Despite his romanticised view of the Indian countryside, Husain does not resort to mawkish sentimentality. In the present painting, the farmer and his wife are not conventionally attractive but convey strength and rootedness to the land. They possess an “upright quality of patience and a sturdiness which is the quality of a race and a type that endures…” (Kapur, p. 127) These qualities are amplified by the various symbols that surround the figures. Myth and reality exist simultaneously in this scene-a pair of bullocks embody hard work, and perseverance; the Hindu god Hanuman, shown carrying healing herbs to Ram’s brother Lakshman, symbolises strength and loyalty; and the harvest that the woman bears represents fertility and abundance. Husain seems to suggest that despite the onslaught of urbanisation, it is the Indian village that sustains us, with farmers as the backbone of an economy predominantly dependent on agriculture. Kapur observes, “Husain’s vision of India may not be “progressive” in the strict sense of the word. But it has a faith as infectious as the faith of the peasant he portrays. As urban Indians we are too inclined to burden the peasants with all sorts of inappropriate sentiments, wanting either to preserve or to reform them; sometimes wanting to “return” to these sons of the soil with a grandiloquent gesture of repentance. Husain does not put the onus of humanity on the peasant’s shoulders but shares with them a sense of camaraderie.” (Kapur, p. 127)

Husain integrates several indigenous and classical art traditions into the present lot. Remarking on the various influences that underlie such compositions, Alkazi writes, “There are three main sources of creative energy as far as Husain is concerned. In the first place, there is the Indian landscape, by which is meant the cultural climate of a region, the amalgam of geographical feature, architectural style, costume, physiognomy, colour, texture, rhythm, legend and folk expression peculiar to it, and as reflected in its most representative class, the peasantry...The second source is the art of the past, in particular, Indian sculpture and miniature painting. Husain’s repeated return to them…is his way of maintaining a life-line with the past…The third major source of Husain’s inspiration is through his intimate contact with the masses.” (Alkazi, p. 7)

The human form was central to Husain’s work, and his exposure to Mathura sculptures on a visit to the Viceregal exhibition at Rashtrapati Bhavan in 1948 and Chola bronzes during a trip to Madras in 1954 went on to decisively shape its depiction. Here he delineates the peasants’ bodies with economical, virile lines. Their forms are tense and agile yet come alive with the fluidity and grace of classical Indian sculpture. The woman strikes a tribhanga or tri-axial pose typical of classical Indian dance, a characteristic often seen in his figures. He once explained, “One reason why I went back to the Gupta period of sculpture was to study the human form-when the British ruled we were taught to draw a figure with the proportions from Greek and Roman sculpture...That was what I thought was wrong...In the east the human form is an entirely different structure...the way a woman walks in the village there are three breaks...from the feet, the hips and shoulder...they move in rhythm...the walk of a European is erect and archaic.” (Artist quoted in Yashodhara Dalmia, “A Metaphor for Modernity”, The Making of Modern Indian Art, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, p. 102)

The flat planes of yellow, ochre, and blues are reminiscent of the vibrant palettes of Basohli and Jain miniature paintings, another stylistic element that remained integral to Husain’s work throughout his career. Paired with rural subjects, these rich, earthy tones express the vitality and fecundity of nature. Viewed as a whole, the present lot reflects the deep respect that Husain had for the Indian farmer and his own connection to rural life even long after he had left the small town of Pandharpur in Maharashtra, where he was born, and had risen to prominence as one of India’s leading modern artists. Alkazi summarises, “At their best, his paintings are profound., but they are never forbiddingly intellectual or cerebral. They have a strong emotional undercurrent, an engaging warmth, an immediate visual appeal, and they are passionately humanistic. Man is central to Husain’s paintings. He is the artist’s sole concern. All his technique, imagination and skill are at the service of an image of man which proclaims his dignity and essential worth.” (Alkazi, pp. 7, 38)

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