Osian's Auction Catalogue India The Passionate Detachment | February 2001

SEEDS OF MODERNISM 127 96 PROSANTO ROY (1908 - 73) A Puppet Princess in Ceremonial Dress of Thai Poe Dance Signed in Bengali, l.l. Titled & dated on reverse. Tempera on paper, 1958 28.0 x 19.0 cm. (11.0 x 9.1”) Rs. 200,000 - 275,000 $ 4,255- 5,850 97 BISWANATH MUKHERJEE (1939 - 1983) a. Two Figures Seal, l.r. Watercolour & wash on paper, 1977 23.5 x 34 cm. (9.3 x 13.4”) b. Shivshakti Signed & seal, t.l. Watercolour & wash on paper, 1977 10.5 x 17.6 cm. (4.1 x 6.9”) “ He (Biswanath Mukherjee) had to understand the stern ‘dictates’ of every whiff of colourspread on the wet paper surface, he had to feel the varying grains of different kinds with the flat and tip of the brush, he had to analyse the bewidering range of wetness of the paper and its almost innumerable reactions of colours, their spreads, the subtle tonal values they create, and find out the closest emotional parallels to the colours and their tonal values. And all this he did all alone, with the technique and the medium dying out in the fifties and sixties…It is at this point, the artist searches for an impossible symbol for Life-in-Death and Death-in- Life, and finds it in the millenia — old Mother Goddess of this subcontinent. And the symbol and the technique changed each other beyond recognition. The ‘female principle’ and the old technique of watercolour-wash brought in a new vision and grimness for which no parallel can be found either in the traditional iconography of the image or in the technique of the Bengal School. Suddenly graded tones come out with individual expressiveness on the wet paper surface. The melting tones of the yesteryears were over.” (Milando, in Retrospective AIFACS ExC . 1939-1983 ). PAPR Lot 150 So.Lon/ 08.06.00 Stray Birds Wc-Wash on paper, early 1950s 32 x 25.5 cm. ASP: £ 4,800/Rs. 325,920 (£1 = Rs. 67.90) a b Rs. 85,000 - 125,000 $ 1,810 - 2,660 (Set of 2)