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Lot 9

 

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KH Ara made an astounding entry into the Indian art world in the 1940s, defying the difficult circumstances of his childhood, as well as the limitations from his lack of formal training in art. Born to a Dalit bus driver in a village in Andhra Pradesh, Ara ran away to Mumbai at the age of seven, began working as a car cleaner, and later discovered that he could paint. Using an apropos metaphor for the still life paintings that Ara eventually... KH Ara made an astounding entry into the Indian art world in the 1940s, defying the difficult circumstances of his childhood, as well as the limitations from his lack of formal training in art. Born to a Dalit bus driver in a village in Andhra Pradesh, Ara ran away to Mumbai at the age of seven, began working as a car cleaner, and later discovered that he could paint. Using an apropos metaphor for the still life paintings that Ara eventually became famous for, critic Jagmohan compares the artist’s evolution as a painter to “a flowering plant that manages to shoot out from under the boulder to tantalize us with its colours. For in spite of the socio economic burden of his people and his initial venture as a car cleaner, he emerged as a self taught painter who had dazzled the eyes of innumerable people with his colourful, imaginative, expressionist paintings.” (Quoted in Yashodhara Dalmia, “The Stillness of Life: Krishnaji Howlaji Ara,” The Making of Modern Indian Art: The Progressives, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2001, p. 131)

While Ara would later dedicate his artistic career to painting his much celebrated still lifes and sensuous nudes, some of his earliest artistic experiments were with academic realism. The present lot is an early portrait by Ara. With strong attention to detail, this realistic rendering is a rare work, markedly different from the still lifes and nudes of his oeuvre characterised by their “rough, uneven, jagged look.” (Dalmia, p. 134)

The present lot depicts Marianne Dahlin, the great-aunt of the present owner, whose travels took her to Bombay (present-day Mumbai) during various points in the first half of the 20th century. She married a gentleman named Robert Dahlin, an engineer at the Matchstick Company in Bombay in 1936. Marianne’s travels to and from Sweden and India during this period was even documented in a news article. While Robert passed away in Bombay in 1945, Marianne possibly visited India again in later years with Sture, who she married in 1946 and whose work took the couple to various countries. The collector inherited the present lot as well as lot 8 from her father, who in turn inherited the paintings from Marianne and Sture.

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