Works by Sabavala, Husain set records

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M.F. Husain’s The Blue Lady

Indian painter Jehangir Sabavala’s painting, Vespers I, was sold for £253,650 at Bonhams annual summer sale of modern and contemporary South Asian art in London on Thursday.
The painting by Sabavala, who passed away in 2011, had been estimated to sell for £100,000-£150,000, but was auctioned for £253,650, including premium, after a saleroom tussle between two buyers in the room, Bonhams said. The two buyers competing to buy the painting were not identified. The sale price of the painting set a world record for Sabavala’s work.
The auction house described Vespers I as “one of Sabavala’s most important works, representing a key period of transition in the artist’s oeuvre.”
It was first exhibited at the Jehangir Art Gallery, Bombay and then at Sabavala’s solo exhibition at the Commonwealth Institute, London.
“Sabavala had a lifelong fascination with monastic life, and the figures of the monk and the hermit are central to his work. Indeed, he often compared his long, solitary and disciplined hours of work in the studio with a monk’s routine of study, prayer, retreat and meditation,” Bonhams quoted Ranjit Hoskote, an independent curator who written on art of Sabavala, as saying.
M.F. Husain’s The Blue Lady was the second highest sale at the auction and was sold for £97,250 compared to its pre-sale estimate of £70,000-£90,000.
The painting was sold from the collection of John Hay and had been presented to his mother Elizabeth Partridge by her sister as a wedding present in India.
The other highlights of the auction were the sale of Rabindra Nath Tagore’s Mukhush (Mask), ink on paper sketch dated 1900 and inscribed illegibly in Bengali, for £6,875; Manjit Bawa’s Untitled (Goat) for £67,250; and Francis Newton Souza’s Untitled (Lansdscape) for £67,250.