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Lot 55

 

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The subject of bathers has a been a popular subject throughout art history, especially among the European modernists - Cezanne, Seurat, Matisse, Picasso, painting intimate scenes of the nude figure at leisure in various landscapes and naturalistic settings. In India, the sight of women bathing in the river would have been a common one to Husain, be it part of their daily cleansing routine or as an element of the Hindu ritual of purification. It... The subject of bathers has a been a popular subject throughout art history, especially among the European modernists - Cezanne, Seurat, Matisse, Picasso, painting intimate scenes of the nude figure at leisure in various landscapes and naturalistic settings. In India, the sight of women bathing in the river would have been a common one to Husain, be it part of their daily cleansing routine or as an element of the Hindu ritual of purification. It was a subject he returned to several times throughout his oeuvre (Morning Bath, 1948, Bathers, 1961 Banaras Bathers, 1963, and Untitled, (circa 1965).

"On the ghats of Banaras his bathers bathe in ancient lava, so thick and gray are the encrustations of his impasto, so acute his sense of the timelessness of the ritual he saw performed on those hoary steps on the river's edge." (discussing Husain's work Bathers, 1961, plate 86. R. Bartholomew and S. Kapur, Husain, Harry N. Abrams, Inc. Publishers, New York, 1971, pg. 41)

In the present lot, a group of nude women are semi submerged in waters close to the river bank. Husain uses a sophisticated natural palette of cool blues and contrasting warming browns and greys. The dominance of blue imbues the painting with a sense of serenity and spirituality.

Husain paints his bathers in graceful postures using strong sensuous lines. They are differentiated from one another by small changes in tone, pose and facial direction, making each distinct from the other. From the late 1940s, the female subject began to play a significant part in Husain's painting. His figures demonstrate an appropriation from Indian classical sculpture, dance and the traditional tribhanga pose of three broken movements. From the early mono chromatic, formal, structural studies of women that the artist executed in the early 1950s, the present lot is indicative of the more abstract, faceless and sensuous bodies that the painter developed in later years. Husain's depiction of women lies somewhere on the boundary between the realistic and the idealistic, "I see the woman not as a pretty face or a stunning body, I see her as an embodiment of womanhood, of purity and strength." (Khalid Mohamed, Where Art Thou, M.F Husain Foundation with Pundole Art Gallery, Dec 2002)

The use of a trio of females can often be found in Husain's works. In the present lot, their portrayal is ambiguous enough to allow for numerous readings. They may refer to the three ideals or typologies of the female gender referred to in the ancient Indian Shastras or scriptures, Padmini, Mohini and Shankhini. The manner in which the two outer figures turn towards the viewer and the central figure embraces her friends with her back to us has echoes of the Three Graces of Greek mythology, the three attendants of Eros and Aphrodite, namely Aglaia, Euphrosyne and Thalia, the goddesses of joy, charm and beauty. Husain's nod to these immortal women from ancient Greece, a theme depicted by artists such a Botticelli, Rubens and Canova, demonstrates his ability to seamlessly amalgamate indigenous and international influences, techniques and traditions into his distinctive style. As Richard Bartholomew comments "The dramatic is transmuted and becomes symbolic as each image is separated from its life-context and, unsupported by time and history, is given the freedom of an aesthetic environment" (Richard Bartholomew and Shiv S. Kapur, Husain, Harry N. Abrams, Inc. Publishers, New York, 1971, p. 20)

However, although grouped together, the bathers, with their contrasting distant gazes, appear self- absorbed, there is a still mysticism to them yet an emotive unity. "Husain's men and women, outwardly simple and unsophisticated, are highly conscious beings. They are conscious of being channels through which life runs its course. Very often they are caught listening and intent upon that flood within them, tense because of what they hear, with eyes of solemn curiosity and a mantle of silence around them. Even in groups sitting or standing together these men and women are supremely solitary. They do not communicate with each other. They remain locked in a binding passion, in a unity of colour and composition divided by wondrously understanding line. Husain does not only represent life, he annotates it, and the postulate of that annotation is the utter marvel of it all." (Shiv S. Kapur, Husain, Lalit Kala Akademi, India, 1961, p.V).

The female figure furthest to the right has her arms raised in a pose reminiscent of classical Indian sculpture, echoing the shape of the Pipal or sacred fig tree to her right with its distinctive extended tip. It is one of the most familiar trees in India and known as the 'tree of knowledge' or the 'tree of life'. It is believed to represent the divine Hindu Trinity or trimurti, the roots being Brahma, the trunk Vishnu and the leaves Shiva, and is traditionally worshipped daily after the morning bath. Set aloft within the tree is a small child, painted in blue, possibly a representation of Lord Krishna, said to be the eighth of Vishnu's ten avatars, and the narrator of the holy book, Bhagavad Gita.

The present lot underlines the manner in which Husain's works occupy the space between the contemporary and the historic, the Western and the Eastern. Husain's majestic bathers exhibit his exceptional sense of imagination and composition, and his ability to tell a narrative in a single image, what Richard Bartholomew called his 'poetic expressionism'.

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