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

73 MASTERPIECES & MUSEUM-QUALITY III “ His landscapes are not topographies of particular places nor is he content in celebrating the external beauty of nature. His landscapes grow out of the imagination, memories of forms, colour and incidence of light. His landscapes present the essence of nature and all its fleeting moods…. On learning of his urge to know the Indian Landscape in all its variety, Rabindranath Tagore remarked ‘You have set out to see India through the eyes of an artist. I hope the world will someday see its grandeur through your work’…” (Sebanti Sarkar Chakravarty rpt. in Gopal Ghose: The Pre-Independence Years EXC. ; Birla Academy of Art and Culture, Calcutta 1997.) OSIANs S.I.R. ANALYSIS [1999-2002] Present Estimate 599.63 Previous Highs 1,398.81 [Ch.NY/20.09.00] 1,260.92 [Os.Mum/24.02.01] Previous Average 398.68 For works on paper Opinion Gopal Ghose’s market has been relatively quiet and steady. His works in pastel on paper, especially during the 1950-60s, are consistently of a high quality and will slowly and surely inch up in significance and value. “ Gopal Ghose’s art unfolds a whole gamut of colours in all possible nuances and shades. Little wonder then that nature, that vast repository of all colours, should inevitably play a dominant part in his art. Again, he loves nature not for any superficial or ‘easy beauty’ that has been the undoing of many an artist and tied down their art to pedestrian levels but as the source of formal expression. His quest has been to capture the fleeting mystery of colour that results from the incidence of light on nature. His landscapes are thus not the topographies of particular places, but contemplations of the varying moods of nature.” (‘Indian Art in Retrospect: Gopal Ghose’ rpt. in Bombay Art Society’s Art Journal, Vol. 3, No. 3, 1974 ; p.9.)