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Lot 48

 

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“My art [is] a mixture of academic, impressionist and cubist texture, form and colour... And with each step I have evolved a new experience. But if I look back, I find I have carried all the elements forward.” - JEHANGIR SABAVALA

Jehangir Sabavala faced a conundrum upon his return to India in 1951, after completing his education in London and Paris. He found that he not only had to reconcile the “contrary demands of the... “My art [is] a mixture of academic, impressionist and cubist texture, form and colour... And with each step I have evolved a new experience. But if I look back, I find I have carried all the elements forward.” - JEHANGIR SABAVALA

Jehangir Sabavala faced a conundrum upon his return to India in 1951, after completing his education in London and Paris. He found that he not only had to reconcile the “contrary demands of the Impressionist and Cubist traditions” which he had imbibed during his years as a student at the Académie Julian and Académie André Lhote in Paris, but also the realities of India’s landscape and people with these demands. (Ranjit Hoskote, “Coming Home to A Strange Land,” The Crucible of Painting: The Art of Jehangir Sabavala, Mumbai: Eminence Designs Pvt. Ltd., Mumbai, 2005, p. 63) As a result, “Sabavala employed the 1950s in testing his Cubist education against the patterns of his experience: would it hold, could it be extended and modified?” (Hoskote, p. 63)

Sabavala’s attempts to reconcile these dissimilar elements of his painterly world are evident in these paintings, “conceived and delivered in taut lines and strong wedges.” Although “India was not the most congenial context for one of Lhote’s disciples to absorb and practice his principles: the Indian light is much sharper, and the structures it creates far crisper than in Europe; the subcontinent’s natural excess of colour overstimulates the eye, tempts the senses”, he articulately addressed these issues by granting colour and composition as much primacy as form on the canvas. (Hoskote, p. 63)

He acknowledged the “primacy of composition over improvisation, of the precise juxtaposition of colour, form and plane over undirected tachisme...” (Hoskote, p. 63) This involved much “intellectualising” on his part on “...the analysis of planes, the passages of light. I became more sure of how I wanted my painting fractured and adopted a definite form, a daring, high-pitched and high-keyed palette.” (Artist quoted in Hoskote, p. 63)

Rendered in a vivid colour palette, and composed of geometrical forms and sharp, angular planes - notably those of the courtyard and the architectural forms in the background - A Blue Lake, A Leafless Tree is a strong example of Sabavala’s experiments from this time. The painting, for which he made a preliminary sketch in 1956, comes from a period during which Sabavala painted several vivid canvases inspired by sun-drenched scenes that the artist encountered in Rajasthan whilst on one of several trips from Bombay to Delhi to exhibit his works. It became a “private journey of re-discovery, plotted across the India of the 1950s: the country, its culture, geography and people... He had looked carefully at the people of each region he worked in, their customary poses and gestures, their distinctive clothing, habits and rituals, the alternately squat and slanted profile of the local bazaar.” (Hoskote, p. 77)

Highlighting the unique visual language employed by Sabavala at the time, critic D G Nadkarni wrote that the artist “belongs neither to those pursuing so-called indigenous imagery with an already played-out folk origin nor to the unambiguously westernised, sometimes self-consciously experimental avant-garde... It is essential to understand that (Sabavala’s) art is as much Indian as the now traditional, folk-motivated art with which western gallery-goers seem to be familiar. The difference is that Sabavala’s work travels beneath the surface and catches visually the spirit of this ancient mass of land called India. It is not surprising that, in effect, it projects a universally valid image of nature itself.” (Hoskote, p. 77)

The present lot was originally a part of the collection of South Australian businessman Sir Kenneth Wills. He used to make frequent visits to Bombay (now Mumbai) to source textiles for G and R Wills, his family’s shipping and freight forwarding conglomerate, around the time Sabavala returned to India. Sir Kenneth was so impressed by several of Sabavala’s paintings, such as the present lot, as well as The Bundi Courtyard and The Waterpump, Jaipur, that he went on to acquire them for his collection. Sir Kenneth, who later became the Vice Chancellor of the University of Adelaide, had fought in both world wars, following which he joined the family business in London.

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