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“Beauty is Nature’s creation; colours are a wonder; Light, which contains colours, is a miracle...” - F N SOUZA

F N Souza’s craft was driven by an innate urgency to communicate his views and experiences, which gave rise to a distinctive artistic style characterised by powerful, lyrical lines and distorted forms. While his perspectives on religion, sex, and the hypocrisy of society manifested in gnarled, visceral figures and... “Beauty is Nature’s creation; colours are a wonder; Light, which contains colours, is a miracle...” - F N SOUZA

F N Souza’s craft was driven by an innate urgency to communicate his views and experiences, which gave rise to a distinctive artistic style characterised by powerful, lyrical lines and distorted forms. While his perspectives on religion, sex, and the hypocrisy of society manifested in gnarled, visceral figures and unabashedly erotic nudes, landscapes were an equally vital part of his repertoire. His earliest works from the 1940s include small-format watercolour paintings of Goan landscapes, which he fondly wrote of in essays such as Nirvana of the Maggot where he reminisces about tranquil days spent as a young boy bathing in a lake and observing the flora and fauna around him. Following his move from India to England in 1949, these works grew in complexity into enigmatic European landscapes and cityscapes that reflected his meditations on life. Fellow artist Jagdish Swaminathan has described Souza as a “painter of cityscapes and religious themes. While in the latter he is loaded with a troubled presentiment, in the former he is singularly devoid of emotive inhibitions […] Souza’s cityscapes are the congealed visions of a mysterious world.” (Jagdish Swaminathan, “Souza’s Exhibition”, Lalit Kala Contemporary 40, March 1995, p. 31)

The present lot was painted in 1956, as Souza approached the peak of his artistic career following six years of struggle. After leaving India for London in 1949 in search of better patronage for his art, he was met with constant rejection from galleries who were reluctant to exhibit the work of foreign artists. Souza’s biographer Edwin Mullins recounts an instance where the artist and a friend had to transport a large painting from North Kensington, where he lived, to Bond Street because a gallery had shown a bit of interest-only to have the piece rejected and then have to carry it back. (Edwin Mullins, Souza, London: Anthony Blond Ltd., 1962, p. 19). Finding it increasingly difficult to earn a living through his art alone, Souza considered returning to India in 1954 but put his plans on hold when offered a solo exhibition at the Galerie Raymond Creuze in Paris. His fortunes began to change in 1955 when writer and poet Stephen Spender published his essay Nirvana of a Maggot in the literary magazine Encounter, which garnered significant attention. Around the same time, Souza met Victor Musgrave, owner of Gallery One, who arranged a one-man exhibition for him in February. This exhibition brought him critical acclaim, including praise from John Berger, and commercial success. The following year, the artist secured his first major patron, Harold Kovner, a wealthy American who provided steady financial support in exchange for commissioned artworks of Souza’s choosing.

The present lot is likely based on a view from London’s Hampstead Village where Souza lived in the mid-1950s. However, its low architectural elements and earthy palette of greens, browns, and ochres also suggest influences from his birthplace, Goa. This ambiguity of location affirms Edwin Mullins’ observation that he was a “painter of the mind and rather than of the eye” who drew on memory and imagination rather than reality to create his compositions. (Mullins, p. 33) Elaborating on his artistic approach Souza said, “I work a lot from photographs… I often paint my landscapes from photographs. Or rather I begin to paint them from photographs. In the end they are mostly collective images of many places I’ve known all rolled into one. Bits of Bombay, a street in Barcelona, a tree in Rome. And I often introduce into my composite landscapes the livid green of the monsoons of Goa.” (Artist quoted in Mervyn Levy, “F N Souza the Human and the Divine,” G S Whittet ed., Studio Vol 167 No 852, April 1964, pp. 135 - 36)

The work simultaneously captures the sombre atmosphere of Post-War Britain, a period that inspired a generation of artists to explore and express their concerns about the human condition. Though the subject of the painting is ostensibly placid, Souza suffuses the pictorial plane with a sense of unease by using his signature dark, thick lines, frenzied brushstrokes, and a heavy impasto technique, reflecting the influence of European expressionist painters such as Georges Rouault and Chaim Soutine. “The graphic power of Souza’s lines produce simplified and bold images, while the thick oil paints applied liberally to the board or canvas, with swift strokes, give his work a sense of vitality and movement... Cityscapes, constructed from fragmented images and memories, are also important subjects and perhaps suggestive of Souza’s cosmopolitan life and frequent travelling.” (“F N Souza: Icons of a Modern World,” All Too Human: Bacon, Freud and a Century of Painting Life, London: Tate, 2018, p. 20, accessed on tate.org.uk, online)

Souza’s landscapes of the 1950s are remarkable not as a plastic celebration of nature but rather as potent reflections on reality told through a “strange personal vision…They do not reach out into the metaphysical unknown, or suggest the fascination of primeval forces, or dwell upon the momentous juxtaposition of crimson and cerise…These are earth paintings, and their impact lies in the artist’s power to distort and strengthen the eye’s image of this world and to produce an effect almost shocking in its intensity.” (Mullins, p. 33)

FN SOUZA AND RAGNAR ZEDELL

The present lot was initially bought from F N Souza by Ragnar Zedell, a friend and one of his earliest supporters in Stockholm, during the artist’s visit in the early 1960s. In a 2005 interview, Zedell recounted an event where Souza, after receiving a negative review from a prominent critic for an exhibition of his works at a gallery near Old Town in the city, took down the display and offered to sell the entire collection to Zedell at half price. “I paid him 20,000 Kronas, all the money I had because I liked him,” Zedell recalled. (“Interview with Conor Macklin,” Francis Newton Souza, London: Grosvenor Gallery, 2005, online)

Zedell, who owned a shop selling shipping and maritime items, developed a strong friendship with Souza during his time in Stockholm.. He displayed his artworks in his store and directed interested customers to the artist’s studio. If a customer purchased a piece, Souza would visit Zedell’s shop to pay him a commission.

Zedell made a point of meeting the critic ten years after that fateful exhibition review to inform him of Souza’s global success. “The critic fell off his chair in shock!” Zedell laughed. (Quoted in “Interview with Conor Macklin,” online)

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