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Lot 29

 

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Amrita Sher-Gil was one of India's most important 20th century artists. In a career spanning just about a decade, and with around 172 paintings made during her brief lifetime, she was able to evolve a new language for modern Indian art.

The present lot is one of the rare landscapes that Sher-Gil painted during the early 1930s when she mainly concentrated on the human figure. In an article for Marg, Vivan Sundaram writes,... Amrita Sher-Gil was one of India's most important 20th century artists. In a career spanning just about a decade, and with around 172 paintings made during her brief lifetime, she was able to evolve a new language for modern Indian art.

The present lot is one of the rare landscapes that Sher-Gil painted during the early 1930s when she mainly concentrated on the human figure. In an article for Marg, Vivan Sundaram writes, "Around 1930 she started working in oils for the first time, and during these three years produced over sixty paintings. Some of these are studies of models in the nude, a few are still lives and a handful are landscapes; but mainly they are portraits and self portraits." (Mulk Raj Anand ed., "Amrita Sher-Gil: Life and Work," Marg, Vol. 25, No. 2, Mumbai: Marg Publications, 1972, p.10)

Executed with the confidence of a well-established artist and displaying a maturity surprising for Sher-Gil's years, this landscape portrays a grassy path meandering along a thatched wall. While the light in the foreground is dappled, passing through a row of tall trees on the right, the sky beyond them is a bright, clear blue. It is likely that Sher-Gil painted this work en plein air during one of the many holidays she spent in the Hungarian village of Zebegeny on the banks of the Danube, over the course of her stay in Paris. "Besides the plein-air painting in blots and the use of bold colours, in Zebegeny in 1932, Amrita came face to face with the openness of the landscape, and questions of composition about landscape painting as opposed to interiors." (Keseru Katalin, Amrita Sher-Gil, Budapest: Ernst Museum, 2001, pp. 55-56)

Writing to her mother from Zebegeny in August 1932, Sher-Gil states, "Of late I've been working a great deal. I do nothing but paint the whole day??? I paint landscapes as well as still lifes in this terrible heat. As a result, I am completely exhausted and have to muster up as much energy as is needed to even write a letter." (Vivan Sundaram ed., Amrita Sher-Gil: a self-portrait in letters & writings, volume 1, New Delhi: Tulika Books, 2010, pp. 83, 85)

"Somebody, somebody is remembering me...
Because I am very teary
And the peaks of the dark Parisian street Are scraping the sky
Sad curtains of the sky.
Painful, sad diversions between
Two hills an open wound to the sky
I have come from peace and over the hills
I know peace is waiting for me peacefully."
- Amrita Sher-Gil, 4 April 1934, Hungary

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