Lot 100

 

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M F Husain’s paintings of Mother Teresa are some of the most poignant and deeply personal works of his career. He was profoundly moved by her boundless compassion for the destitute, which he experienced firsthand on the streets of Calcutta some years before the present lot was made. He found himself overcome with emotion and later recalled, “...I saw her angelic form, draped in a white sari, her head covered, her face suffused with tender love... M F Husain’s paintings of Mother Teresa are some of the most poignant and deeply personal works of his career. He was profoundly moved by her boundless compassion for the destitute, which he experienced firsthand on the streets of Calcutta some years before the present lot was made. He found himself overcome with emotion and later recalled, “...I saw her angelic form, draped in a white sari, her head covered, her face suffused with tender love and her posture discerning humility. She was comforting sick children and old people by holding their hands and praying for them. I felt that scene of love in every pore of my body. I just could not move away from there.” (Artist quoted in Rashda Siddiqui, M.F. Husain: In Conversation With Husain Paintings, New Delhi: India Today, 2001, p. 202)

Husain was among the crowds that gathered at New Delhi’s Palam Airport in 1979, hoping to catch a glimpse of Mother Teresa on her return to India after receiving the Nobel Peace Prize. He handed her an impromptu sketch, which she signed and inscribed the words “God bless you”, before returning it to him. Following this brief yet greatly affecting encounter, he returned to her image repeatedly and made her the subject of a significant body of work from 1980 onwards. “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 the street… 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,” he explained. (Artist quoted in Ila Pal, “The Mighty McBull”, Husain: Portrait of an Artist, New Delhi: HarperCollins, 2017, p. 99)

Mother Teresa devoted her life to serving India’s most vulnerable- the poverty-stricken, sick, and disabled who had been shunned by society and made to feel “unwanted, unloved, uncared [for]”. (Mother Teresa’s acceptance speech for the Nobel Peace Prize, 10 December 1979, nobelprize.org, online) In her Husain found the selfless, unconditional maternal love that had eluded him since the loss of his mother at the age of two. Deeming the verisimilitude of traditional portraiture inadequate to convey her tremendous presence, he chose to depict her faceless and modelled her form solely through the folds of her trademark blue-bordered white sari. In pursuit of this vision, Husain travelled to Italy where he studied pre-Renaissance paintings of saints and apostles, closely observing the treatment of drapery, which “seemed capable of covering, canopying and sheltering.” (Artist quoted in Pal, p. 100)

As in many of Husain’s representations of the saint, Mother Teresa is depicted in the present lot cradling an infant in her lap. The composition assumes a reverential, devotional quality, inviting comparison as a modern interpretation of the theme of Madonna and Child in European art. Her faceless presence transforms her into a universal symbol of motherhood and unconditional love, while the child represents those most in need of succor, and the plant at her feet suggests a promise of hope. On a more personal level, the artist also alludes to the void left by his own mother’s early death and his inability to remember her face. In his words, “My mother Zainab died when I was two years old. I had fallen seriously ill and her desperate prayer was that her life should be taken and mine spared. That is exactly what happened. Though alive I counted myself extremely unfortunate. Can anyone make up for the loss of a mother? I don’t even have a picture of her... Sadly I have nothing which remotely resembles or reminds me of my mother. She is just a name to me, not even a memory.” (Artist quoted in Yashodhara Dalmia, “A Metaphor for Modernity”, The Making of Modern Indian Art, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2001, p. 111)

“Her personality, her presence and her work are so great; I cannot depict it all in realistic form.” - M F HUSAIN

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