Untitled (Artist and Muse)

Lauding George Keyt’s paintings, W.G. Archer once remarked, “Keyt is the living nucleus of a great painter. In all his works, there is the moderation of maturity. Magically though he places his colours, and carefully though he distributes plastic volumes, Keyt’s pictures nevertheless produce a dramatic effect. These figures take on a strange expressive grandeur and radiate an aura of intensely profound feeling” (W. G. Archer, India and Modern Art, London, 1959, p. 124).

Keyt’s paintings often take cues from European modernist movements like Cubism and Fauvism, combining their styles with imagery inspired by the frescoes of the Ajanta caves in India and temple paintings in Sri Lanka. Adopting Cubist techniques such as the use of multiple viewpoints, distorted perspectives and an abstraction of spatial planes, Keyt successfully places his figures into dynamic and evocative settings.

In the present lot, part of a series of paintings portraying artists and their models, Keyt reflexively depicts an artist painting en plein air with his muse by his side. Writing about another painting from the series, Nihal Rodrigo notes, “In The Artist and his Muse [1963], two boldly contrasting styles are juxtaposed as in a diptych and linked with the single brilliant graphic nexus of the artist’s brush symbolizing the creative impetus that is the theme of the painting” (N. Rodrigo, ‘George Keyt: Incentives and Influences’, George Keyt: A Centennial Anthology, Colombo, 2001, p. 37). The present lot has a similar structure, with the artist seated on the right with one arm around his partially nude muse and the other stretched out to a canvas on the left, on which he paints what appears to be an abstract image of her. Between the artist’s figure and the canvas he is painting, Keyt offers a spectacular vista with a sailboat on calm, crimson waters under a correspondingly tinted sky.

Through his insertion of a painting within a painting, Keyt allows himself to cleverly showcase two different styles within a single canvas. The bold geometric lines, vibrant use of color, and effortlessly painted sinuous forms make this work an exceptional example of Keyt’s abilities. Here, these elements come together seamlessly to reflect the artist’s “attainment of a highly personal curvilinear rhythm, contrasting graceful or agitated movements, delineation of round and flat forms on the same picture plane and a feeling of highly intense sensuality” (L.P. Sihare, ‘Keyt – Asian Painter’, George Keyt: A Centennial Anthology, Colombo, 2001, p. 31).