Osian's Auction Catalogue Masterpieces and Museum-Quality III | March 2004

99 MASTERPIECES & MUSEUM-QUALITY III 41 RAMKUMAR (b.1924 / Simla, Himachal Pradesh) Benaras Series Inscribed on verso: Ram Kumar 1982 Oil on canvas, 1982 91.5 x 68.5 cm (36.0 x 27.0 in) Minor creasing of canvas in the lower section of the canvas Rs. 700,000 – 800,000 US$ 15,550 – 17,800 GB£ 8,550 – 9,750 OSIANs S.I.R. ANALYSIS [1992–2003] Present Estimate 720.16 Previous Highs 4,515 [Ch.NY/17.10.01; work on canvas, 1959] 4,170 [Ch.HK/06.07.03; work on board, 1957] Previous Averages All 316.12 Works on paper 297.98 Works on canvas 316.61 Auction Average 289.84 Opinion Ramkumar has had a recent revival in his financial appreciation, especially works from his early figurative period. Nonetheless, it is his Benaras inspired landscapes which still command the highest prices viz- a-viz his later abstract-scapes. “ The details are not evident, for the spectator is in fact viewing paintings which portray nature in totality, her elements, her moods, her manifestations. The perspective built into the painting is a far far view in a physical sense, a vision of the world of flux and change, of movement and the interaction of contrary but compounding forces… You will feel the stir of a force within you, a search for some semblance of a reality you once lived, which has become a part of you and which is yet outside you because you are relating yourself to time and movement of change. What was positive experience, a series of sensations, will return as experience remembered, as memory. And before you can focus on an incident, or a point of view, before you can place the perspective, a world begins to happen in you. Out of the formless, inarticulate, static void, feeling formulates itself as vision and you see into the life of things. Ramkumar’s paintings postulate this process and project it perfectly.” (Richard Bartholomew, in ‘Landscape As Vision’, rpt. in Ramkumar: Recent Paintings 1978-80 EXC . Art Heritage, New Delhi, 1980.) Town Oil on canvas, 1957 Ruins Series Oil on canvas, 1964 Untitled Oil on canvas, 1969 Untitled Oil on canvas, 1974 Untitled Oil on canvas, late 1970s