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Lot 48

 

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“Over the years, I have found myself irresistibly drawn to the still, solitary world of the bare landscape. Within which man, if present, is a notation, a lost fugitive or a pilgrim.”
- JEHANGIR SABAVALA

Contemplating the nature of his artistic practice, Jehangir Sabavala once remarked, “I suppose painting is my sadhana, a discipline that is strict and demanding in itself, and austere in its physical practice; it... “Over the years, I have found myself irresistibly drawn to the still, solitary world of the bare landscape. Within which man, if present, is a notation, a lost fugitive or a pilgrim.”
- JEHANGIR SABAVALA

Contemplating the nature of his artistic practice, Jehangir Sabavala once remarked, “I suppose painting is my sadhana, a discipline that is strict and demanding in itself, and austere in its physical practice; it is my way of seeking moksha.” (Ranjit Hoskote, “Adventures in Sensation (1959 ? 1962)”, The Crucible of Painting: The Art of Jehangir Sabavala, Mumbai: Eminence Designs, 2005, p. 91) True to this belief, he approached his work with rigorous discipline, subjecting his visual language to continuous scrutiny and refinement. This process of inquiry led to a crucial transformation in the 1960s, a defining period in his career. He broke away from the formal principles of Cubism, which he had studied under artist André Lhote, to create “visionary landscapes” that transcended genre and motif. (Hoskote, “From Landscape to Cosmos (1962 ? 1964)”, p. 101) Drawing inspiration from one of his three “gurus”, Lyonel Feininger, he softened his lines and palette and his paintings attained an ethereal inward luminosity. As he explained, “Through Feininger’s pure, precise and yet very delicate and personal renderings of cloud and boat and sea, I discovered the joys of extending form into the beauty and clarity of light. I became interested in the source of light, its direction, its effect. Through these experiments, gradually, my work changed” (Artist quoted in Hoskote, p. 95).

These landscapes, of which the present lot is an exemplar, became “a point of departure” from which Sabavala began to contemplate man’s place in relation to nature and the immensity of the universe. Having been classically trained in the academies of London and Paris, Sabavala’s understanding of form and composition were significantly influenced by European traditions of landscape painting. However, unlike the English and French Romantic painters who focussed on pastoral scenes or on taming the wilderness that was nature, his landscapes are sweeping vistas “characterised… by an intense solitude and imbued with the resonant vastness of a sphere beyond humankind’s dominion…” (Hoskote, p. 100–101)

In this painting, two shrouded figures are seated in an arid desert, their backs turned to the viewer. A dark, indistinct apparition hovers by a silvery surface in the distance. It remains uncertain whether this form is another being or a mirage conjured by the weary travellers’ imagination. Sabavala had begun to introduce such spectral figures into his compositions by 1963, though they rarely formed the main focal point of his canvases during this decade. Rather, they often appear to be dwarfed by the vastness of the landscapes that surround them.

Poet and critic Dilip Chitre observes, “...in the spiritual hierarchy of Sabavala’s universe nature’s suprahuman forms stand higher, and therefore his human figures are usually standing or walking away from the viewer, their faces turned towards the horizon. They always stand isolated in space, whether alone or in groups. They are in transit and there is a tragic air of loneliness about them. They are transcendental travellers, not of the joyous kind but of the ascetic variety.” He adds that while Sabavala may have predominantly been rational in spirit, “...he worships the immense range and sweep of nature’s laws. The world inhabited by man is infinitely small in nature’s total scheme. For that matter, all living things are a minority in it. Sabavala’s universe is not centred on man. Rather, Sabavala’s man—always off?centre in more than one sense—is trying to reach outwards towards it. Theist or atheist, Sabavala thus conveys a religious awe and reverence, a spiritual yearning or a meditative inwardness.” (Dilip Chitre, The Reasoning Vision: Jehangir Sabavala’s Painterly Universe, New Delhi: Tata McGrawHill Publishing Company, 1980, p. 11)

In light of his lifelong search for the sublime, the travellers may be read as projections of Sabavala himself, a solitary seeker, unaligned with contemporary artistic movements, in pursuit of the ideal of perfection that forever seems just out of reach. As the author’s biographer Ranjit Hoskote writes, “At the level of immediate sensation, we are struck by the obvious physical beauty of the painting as product, process and parallel reality. And as we enter Sabavala’s spaces, with trepidation, to inhabit them, we apprehend their disquieting melancholy and their restful tranquility; the paradox underscores the artist’s uncertainty about his place in the universe, his exploration of an infinity that can be measured only in mirages, illuminated only through mystery.” (Hoskote, p. 109)

Sabavala briefly draws the viewer into this journey, guiding their gaze towards the horizon through deliberate yet subtle tonal gradations that mimic the shifting desert sands and a cold, foreboding sky. The contrasting palette of warm ochre and cold greys lends the landscape a distant, hermetic quality that emphasises its metaphysical connotations. The exquisite surfaces and textures he produces—hallmarks of his style—bear witness to his classical training and the meticulous discipline he sustained throughout his career. Drawing attention to his distinctive technique, Chitre remarks, “Jehangir Sabavala’s career as a painter can be seen as a great arch connecting European oil painting with India [...] Sabavala has always painted oils and always used the time?honoured technique of his craft. He follows the elaborate method of the old masters, never painting directly but building up, layer by layer, monochromes superimposed on monochromes, carefully glazed. His brushwork has great subtlety and his palette itself, barring his very early impressionist exuberance, is extremely civilized.” (Chitre, p. 7)

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