Important Notice

"Mystery and beauty are essential to me... I love mist and rain, sunshine through great banks of clouds-the power and poetry of an incredibly beautiful world-God-made but enriched by man." - JEHANGIR SABAVALA

The universal and timeless art of Jehangir Sabavala has earned him a distinguished place in modern Indian art, and among peers, critics and collectors alike. The art critic S V Vasudev once said, "There are a few artists... "Mystery and beauty are essential to me... I love mist and rain, sunshine through great banks of clouds-the power and poetry of an incredibly beautiful world-God-made but enriched by man." - JEHANGIR SABAVALA

The universal and timeless art of Jehangir Sabavala has earned him a distinguished place in modern Indian art, and among peers, critics and collectors alike. The art critic S V Vasudev once said, "There are a few artists who in the course of a generation of the contemporary movement in India, have made an indelible impression on the mind and have also revealed in their progress the nature of the artistic quest... Today Jehangir Sabavala's paintings reveal the refinement of a poetic mind, the abstract sign posts of a philosophical search for values, the painterly technique realized after years of experience, and, above all, the singular note that keeps alive the wonder in creation." (Pria Devi, Jehangir Sabavala, New Delhi: Lalit Kala Akademi, 1984)

From his first solo show in 1951 at the Taj Mahal Hotel in then Bombay to the paintings he made right up till the end of his artistic journey, Sabavala's work continued to evolve and mature through the decades. Over a career of more than sixty years, which he likened to a pilgrimage, Sabavala pushed forward in his quest to find lyricism and serenity in a seemingly irredeemable world. "Painting for me grows more personalised, more difficult. Movements, styles, the topical moments, all lose out to the attempt to reach deeper levels of interpretation. Horizons widen and recede, and I see myself as a pilgrim, moving towards unknown vistas." (Artist quoted in Ranjit Hoskote, The Crucible of Painting: The Art of Jehangir Sabavala, Mumbai: Eminence Designs Pvt. Ltd., 2005, p. 216)

Working often with oils, Sabavala preferred a quiet palette, with veiled light and middle-tones appealing to him more than pure colours and loud imagery, as seen in the present lot. As an artist practicing in the modernist style with a deeply ingrained classical influence, Sabavala created almost geometric wedges out of paint, which he put together to form vast, tranquil scenes. These 'receding planes' give each canvas an illusory sense of depth, illustrating Sabavala's mastery over light, colour, and texture.

The present lot from 1991 continues Sabavala's preoccupation with painting solitary landscapes which offer a space for contemplation. His work is aesthetically sublime, as well as intrinsically laced with philosophical thought. "Sabavala's paintings have preserved an introspective, melancholy lyricism, as well as the ache of the Sublime. These paintings are tinted with nostalgia, as for moments once possessed, for homelands once known and now forever beyond the horizon of what can be known." (Ranjit Hoskote, Pilgrim, Exile, Sorcerer: The Painterly Evolution of Jehangir Sabavala, Mumbai: Eminence Designs Pvt. Ltd., 1998, p. 99)

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