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"Thousands of lovely flowers grow next to the
Crystal waters of the Tisza
But more beautiful than all the many flowers is a rosy
Cheeked Hungarian girl, with her rosy cheeked face..."
- AMRITA SHERGIL, "THE HUNGARIAN GIRL," 1920-24

Amrita Sher-Gil is considered one of India's most significant artists of the 20th century, and her early work provides insights into her imagination and skill as a draughtsman... "Thousands of lovely flowers grow next to the
Crystal waters of the Tisza
But more beautiful than all the many flowers is a rosy
Cheeked Hungarian girl, with her rosy cheeked face..."
- AMRITA SHERGIL, "THE HUNGARIAN GIRL," 1920-24

Amrita Sher-Gil is considered one of India's most significant artists of the 20th century, and her early work provides insights into her imagination and skill as a draughtsman and painter. Sher-Gil started drawing and painting by the age of six, when residing in the Hungarian town of Dunaharaszti, she had begun, according to her mother, "illustrating little stories I used to tell or Hungarian folk-songs of which she was very fond. Later on she would compose her own fairy stories, illustrating them with coloured crayons." (Marie Antoinette quoted in Yashodhara Dalmia, Amrita Sher-Gil: A Life, New Delhi: Penguin, 2006, p. 14)

The present lot is a soft watercolour, portraying two women enjoying the cool, foamy water - white as marble, as indicated in the Hungarian inscription - dressed in bright summer dresses with flowers in their hair. This work was painted by Sher-Gil in Simla in 1923, when she was just ten years old. It was also around this time that she won her first prize for art - a fifty rupee cash award - for painting her first responses to cinema. Sher-Gil's fondness for portraying female figures and relationships, seen in her early works, would remain with her throughout her career, manifesting in later oil paintings which often depicted women and were "handled with great sensitivity and not with superficial pity or condescension." (Dalmia, p. 20)

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