Important Notice

Hungarian?born Amrita Sher-Gil displayed a prodigious talent for art from an early age, and spent a lot of time filling her notebooks with drawings and sketches. She got the chance to formally explore her talents in Florence and Paris at the Ecole Nationale des Beaux Arts before returning to India in 1934. "As soon as I put my foot on Indian soil my painting underwent a change not only in subject and spirit, but also in technical expression. It... Hungarian?born Amrita Sher-Gil displayed a prodigious talent for art from an early age, and spent a lot of time filling her notebooks with drawings and sketches. She got the chance to formally explore her talents in Florence and Paris at the Ecole Nationale des Beaux Arts before returning to India in 1934. "As soon as I put my foot on Indian soil my painting underwent a change not only in subject and spirit, but also in technical expression. It became more fundamentally Indian." (artsome. com, online)

Sher-Gil primarily focussed on feminine themes and was drawn to depicting women "in an emotionally charged and sensuous manner." (Artist quoted in Vivan Sundaram ed., Amrita Sher-Gil: A Self-Portrait in Letters & Writings, Volume 1, New Delhi: Tulika Books, 2010, p. xl) Her early works showcase an artist on the verge of realising her artistic strengths. Sher-Gil was yet to discover the synthesis of form and colour seen in the works of Post Impressionist artists such as Paul Cezanne, but nonetheless, her works from this time evoke a sense of haunting beauty, as seen in the present lot.

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