“Against stunned black the curling, quivering white folds float in slow motion. Like the Madonna—glowing marble melting over the knees of the ‘Pieta’...In the folds of her sari breathes a revived soul.” — M F HUSAIN

M F Husain was deeply affected by Mother Teresa, whom he met for the first time at Palam Airport in New Delhi in 1979. His enduring engagement with her image was intertwined with a personal longing for maternal... “Against stunned black the curling, quivering white folds float in slow motion. Like the Madonna—glowing marble melting over the knees of the ‘Pieta’...In the folds of her sari breathes a revived soul.” — M F HUSAIN

M F Husain was deeply affected by Mother Teresa, whom he met for the first time at Palam Airport in New Delhi in 1979. His enduring engagement with her image was intertwined with a personal longing for maternal affection, shaped by the loss of his own mother when he was just two years old. As he once remarked, “I have tried to capture in my paintings what her presence meant to the destitute and the dying, the light and hope she brought by mere inquiry, by putting her hand over a child abandoned in a street. I did not cry at this encounter. I returned with so much strength and sadness that it continues to ferment within... To translate that pain in my paintings, I think I will have to die of it.” (Artist quoted in Ila Pal, “The Mighty McBull”, Husain: Portrait of an Artist, Noida: HarperCollins Publishers India, 2017, p. 99)

Although Husain initially produced a handful of naturalistic portraits of the saint in the early 1980s, he soon shifted toward a more allegorical mode of representation, as seen in the present lot. Here, he moves beyond likeness to evoke not only Mother Teresa’s spirit but also the boundless compassion associated with the archetype of the Universal or Divine Mother. Remembering another occasion when he witnessed her tending to the sick and destitute, he confided to his friend Rashda Siddiqui that the experience permeated his entire being. He resolved that very day to paint her, yet recognised that realism alone could not encompass the magnitude of her presence or her life’s work. (K Bikram Singh, “Two Women and a Cyclone”, Maqbool Fida Husain, New Delhi: Rahul & Art, 2008, p. 229)

To bring his vision to life, Husain travelled to Milan to examine depictions of saints in pre? Renaissance art, particularly their treatment of drapery. He later used these learnings in his portrayals of Mother Teresa’s iconic white cotton sari with its broad blue border. In works such as the present lot, he rendered her without facial features, transforming her individual likeness into a universal emblem of the ideal of motherhood. A child playing at her feet and a dove soaring above further reinforce this imagery, evoking unconditional maternal love and protection, while also alluding to the peace and hope to which the saint dedicated her life.

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