Important Notice

"Mother Teresa was a true reflection of love for humanity." - M F HUSAIN

Husain's meeting with Mother Teresa, a year before this painting was made, had a profound impact on the artist, and she has been a subject of his works several times in the years that followed. "I have tried to capture in my paintings what her presence meant to the destitute and the dying, the light and hope she brought by mere inquiry, by putting her hand... "Mother Teresa was a true reflection of love for humanity." - M F HUSAIN

Husain's meeting with Mother Teresa, a year before this painting was made, had a profound impact on the artist, and she has been a subject of his works several times in the years that followed. "I have tried to capture in my paintings what her presence meant to the destitute and the dying, the light and hope she brought by mere inquiry, by putting her hand over a child abandoned in a street. I did not cry at this encounter. I returned with so much strength and sadness that it continues to ferment within. That is why I try it again and again, after a gap of time, in a different medium. To translate that pain in my paintings, I think I will have to die of it." (Artist quoted in Ila Pal, Beyond the Canvas: An Unfinished Portrait of M F Husain, New Delhi: Indus, 1994, p. 166)

According to critics, Husain's preoccupation with Mother Teresa may have been rooted in the loss of his own mother during infancy and his yearning for a maternal figure. Husain's Mother Teresa is a faceless figure, more representational than realistic. She is a vehicle for conveying compassion, caring, and motherly love. In the present lot, unusually composed as a diptych, Husain depicts Mother Teresa as formless, in the Islamic tradition of not representing the divine other than through symbols. Here, he suggests her presence by her iconic white saree with a blue border, surrounded by orphaned children and the destitute men and women whom she cared for all her life. "Perhaps the manifold yards of cloth could hold the lost and yearning child in Husain forever." (Yashodhara Dalmia, "A Metaphor for Modernity," The Making of Modern Indian Art: The Progressives, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2001, p. 116)

To further his understanding of his vision of the saint, Husain travelled to Italy to study pre-Renaissance paintings of saints and apostles, and learned how to capture the folds of their robes, which according to him, "seemed capable of covering, canopying and sheltering." (Artist quoted in Pal, p. 166) "Husain saw in her the artist's concept of motherhood hallowed both in Indian and western art... the spiritual dimension of Mother Teresa was as important to him as an artist, as her more obvious manifestation of motherhood." (K Bikram Singh, Husain, New Delhi: Rahul & Art, 2008, p. 229)

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