Important Notice

The present lot reflects Souza's preoccupation with the Roman Catholic church and the strict religious upbringing of his childhood. "As a child I was fascinated by the grandeur of the church and by the stories of tortured saints my grandmother used to tell me. As far as I can recollect, strange fancies always occupied my mind... The Roman Catholic church had a tremendous influence over me, not its dogmas but its grand architecture and the... The present lot reflects Souza's preoccupation with the Roman Catholic church and the strict religious upbringing of his childhood. "As a child I was fascinated by the grandeur of the church and by the stories of tortured saints my grandmother used to tell me. As far as I can recollect, strange fancies always occupied my mind... The Roman Catholic church had a tremendous influence over me, not its dogmas but its grand architecture and the splendour of its services... The wooden saints painted with gold and bright colours staring vacantly out of their niches.??? (F N Souza, Words & Lines, London: Villiers Publications Ltd., 1959, pp. 9-10)

Souza keeps some of the gold and overall colour scheme associated with the iconography of Catholic medieval paintings, but denies the figure any sense of compassion typically befitting a saint. The present lot, like many of Souza's paintings of Christ and similar religious figures of that time, "retained a dual streak-on the one hand the thick bounding lines, the frontal images and the stiff demeanour were iconic. On the other hand, these were harshly, even malevolently subverted without any redeeming features." (Yashodhara Dalmia, The Making of Modern Indian Art: The Progressives, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2001, p. 80)

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