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"Lost is the passage of sound In my jungle. Today the burnt bamboos Have scratched The heart of silent sky, And greens sucked In elephant jugs. White tusks daggered Inside the stomach of black mountain. They say: For seven days The passage of sound was lost." - M F HUSAIN

Animals recur frequently as motifs in M F Husain's works, possessing graceful, energetic forms. Depictions of the elephant and horse - both of which are... "Lost is the passage of sound In my jungle. Today the burnt bamboos Have scratched The heart of silent sky, And greens sucked In elephant jugs. White tusks daggered Inside the stomach of black mountain. They say: For seven days The passage of sound was lost." - M F HUSAIN

Animals recur frequently as motifs in M F Husain's works, possessing graceful, energetic forms. Depictions of the elephant and horse - both of which are revered in Indian mythology - reference various qualities such as strength, energy, and fertility in their myriad postures and moods. "When we look at these creatures we must remember that the animal is not the subject of Husain's painting; it is the demonic principle that he depicts which is neither good nor bad. The... horses and elephants have become symbols of power and pursuit, or of mysterious encounters." (Richard Bartholomew in Rati Bartholomew, Pablo Bartholomew, Carmen Kagal and Rosalyn D'Mello eds., Richard Bartholomew: The Art Critic, New Delhi: BART, p. 153)

Husain's travels deeply impacted his works of the late 1960s, whether it was his first experimental film Through the Eyes of a Painter - a journey through the ancient towns of Rajasthan, which won the Golden Bear for Best Short Film at the Berlin Film Festival in 1967 - or the paintings he created following his visit to Iraq. Husain first visited Kerala in 1967, and his fascination with the state inspired many subsequent visits and multiple paintings over the years. Husain's Kerala paintings feature the people, wildlife and arts of the state. Elephants are "everywhere in Husain's extraordinary evocation of Kerala... The elephants cavort by the waterside, drink, play, gambol, lurk. They are the animal form of the grandeur and gaiety of "God's Own Country." Elephants are indispensable to every Kerala celebration, from weddings to religious festivals... [and] infuse the Kerala consciousness; they feature in the state's literature, dance, music, films and art... And in their strength the elephants capture, too, the resilience of Kerala, its defiance of the Indian stereotype, its resolute determination to progress and, above all, its empowerment of women." (Shashi Tharoor, Kerala: God's Own Country, New Delhi: Books Today, 2002, pp. 3-4)

The present lot portrays an elephant protectively grasping her baby, likely fleeing a hostile situation. The artist heightens the emotion using fluid brushstrokes and bold lines. Husain was a colourist who often devised unique colour schemes based on the themes he dealt with - here, he uses various shades of brown and earth tones to situate the scene within a forest, but blurs the edges so that "the dramatic is transmuted and becomes symbolic as each image is separated from its life-context, and unsupported by time and history, is given the freedom of an aesthetic environment." (Richard Bartholomew and Shiv S Kapur, Husain, New York: Harry N Abrams, Inc., 1971, p. 20)

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