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拍品專文
Following her training with Lucien Simon at the École Nationale des Beaux-Arts in Paris, Sher-Gil felt a strong urge to return to India in 1924. Despite her election as an associate of the Grand Salon there, a rare honour at the time for a young, foreign artist, she noted, "Towards the end of 1933 I began to be haunted by an intense longing to return to India, feeling in some strange inexplicable way that there lay my destiny as a painter." ('Evolution of My Art', reproduced in The Usha, Vol. III, No. II, Lahore, 1942, p. 99)
It was in India that the painter came into her own and produced her most mature works. The critic Gaston Derys noted, that in her works produced in India, "her powerful and individual talent seems to have found its climate" (R.C. Tandan, The Art of Amrita Sher-Gil, Allahabad, 1937, unpaginated). Unfortunately Sher-Gil's time in India, along with her career as an artist, was cut short prematurely by her abrupt death in 1941 at the age of 28. "Regarded by some as the greatest painter of modern India, Amrita Sher-Gil did not have world enough, nor time enough, to realize in full her rare aesthetic vision. She was a realist at heart. Her integrity brooked no dilly-dallying with art. Her almost hieratic devotion to her profession was never tainted with desire for easy lucre or ephemeral recognition." (R. de L. Furtado, Three Painters, New Delhi, 1960, p. 17)
The preparatory drawing for Camels, from the artist's last sketchbook, underlines the clarity with which Sher-Gil treated structure, form and composition, understanding its importance from the work of Post Impressionists like Cézanne, whom she studied during her student days. Additionally, it reflects the "new coherence of her draughtsmanship" that Mulk Raj Anand noted emerging in Sher-Gil's work in the late 1930s following her visits to Ajanta and Cochin, where the ancient Buddhist and Hindu frescoes had a profound effect. (Amrita Sher-Gil, New Delhi, 1987, p. 39)
Writing to her mother Marie Antoinette Sher-Gil on 29 August 1941 from Saraya, she briefly alludes to this sketch among others. "I am doing a lot of drawings of animals. Camels, horses, buffaloes etc. And even propose to paint a picture or two in the short time at my disposal." A few days later, in a letter to her friend Badruddin Tyabji, she elaborates, "I am beginning to get interested in animals. Elephants of course first and foremost, camels and buffaloes. I have done some pictures with elephants and I am working just now on a canvas with camels. Very amusing. There is a curious rose coloured Indian saddle on one of the animals which I find exceedingly lovely." (Reproduced in V. Sundaram ed., Amrita Sher-Gil, A Self Portrait in Letters and Writings, New Delhi, 2010, pp. 741-745)
In 2001, six decades after Sher-Gil's premature death, Vivan Sundaram, her sister Indira's son and renowned multi-media artist, produced the Re-take of Amrita series from the photographic archive of her father, his grandfather, Umrao Singh Sher-Gil. Sundaram has reworked the images and created photomontages, each re-take exploring a facet of the complex personality, relationships and creative practice of his aunt. There is a sense of poignancy that radiates from each of these photomontages, of a bygone era. The viewer is confronted all at once with multiple emotions in relation to the central subject herself, the choice of media and expression by the artist, as well as the relationship between the original photographer, the subject and Vivan Sundaram, the artist himself. A similar confrontation occurs in Sundaram's earlier canvases The Sher-Gil Family (1984-85) and Easel Painting (1989-90, lot 48), where the viewer catches glimpses of family members including Umrao Singh and Amrita.
It was in India that the painter came into her own and produced her most mature works. The critic Gaston Derys noted, that in her works produced in India, "her powerful and individual talent seems to have found its climate" (R.C. Tandan, The Art of Amrita Sher-Gil, Allahabad, 1937, unpaginated). Unfortunately Sher-Gil's time in India, along with her career as an artist, was cut short prematurely by her abrupt death in 1941 at the age of 28. "Regarded by some as the greatest painter of modern India, Amrita Sher-Gil did not have world enough, nor time enough, to realize in full her rare aesthetic vision. She was a realist at heart. Her integrity brooked no dilly-dallying with art. Her almost hieratic devotion to her profession was never tainted with desire for easy lucre or ephemeral recognition." (R. de L. Furtado, Three Painters, New Delhi, 1960, p. 17)
The preparatory drawing for Camels, from the artist's last sketchbook, underlines the clarity with which Sher-Gil treated structure, form and composition, understanding its importance from the work of Post Impressionists like Cézanne, whom she studied during her student days. Additionally, it reflects the "new coherence of her draughtsmanship" that Mulk Raj Anand noted emerging in Sher-Gil's work in the late 1930s following her visits to Ajanta and Cochin, where the ancient Buddhist and Hindu frescoes had a profound effect. (Amrita Sher-Gil, New Delhi, 1987, p. 39)
Writing to her mother Marie Antoinette Sher-Gil on 29 August 1941 from Saraya, she briefly alludes to this sketch among others. "I am doing a lot of drawings of animals. Camels, horses, buffaloes etc. And even propose to paint a picture or two in the short time at my disposal." A few days later, in a letter to her friend Badruddin Tyabji, she elaborates, "I am beginning to get interested in animals. Elephants of course first and foremost, camels and buffaloes. I have done some pictures with elephants and I am working just now on a canvas with camels. Very amusing. There is a curious rose coloured Indian saddle on one of the animals which I find exceedingly lovely." (Reproduced in V. Sundaram ed., Amrita Sher-Gil, A Self Portrait in Letters and Writings, New Delhi, 2010, pp. 741-745)
In 2001, six decades after Sher-Gil's premature death, Vivan Sundaram, her sister Indira's son and renowned multi-media artist, produced the Re-take of Amrita series from the photographic archive of her father, his grandfather, Umrao Singh Sher-Gil. Sundaram has reworked the images and created photomontages, each re-take exploring a facet of the complex personality, relationships and creative practice of his aunt. There is a sense of poignancy that radiates from each of these photomontages, of a bygone era. The viewer is confronted all at once with multiple emotions in relation to the central subject herself, the choice of media and expression by the artist, as well as the relationship between the original photographer, the subject and Vivan Sundaram, the artist himself. A similar confrontation occurs in Sundaram's earlier canvases The Sher-Gil Family (1984-85) and Easel Painting (1989-90, lot 48), where the viewer catches glimpses of family members including Umrao Singh and Amrita.