Osian's Auction Catalogue The Masterpieces and Museum Quality Series | October 2004

120 OSIAN ’ s–CONNOISSEURS OF ART 81 C. DOUGLAS [b . 1951, Tellicherry, Kerala] Untitled (Triptych) S/d in English t.r. Mixed media on cloth, 1999 284.0 x 90.5 cm (111.8 x 35.6 in) Rs. 275,000 – 350,000 $ 5,950 – 7,550 £ 3,250 – 4,150 ‘Douglas, for his part, stayed free of the plastered finish of oils on canvas, worked instead with chalk and crayons on crumpled and muddied paper glued on cloth. He stuck to unobtrusive colour; grays browns and blacks which kept thickening and receding as he worked his pictures to a finish. These detours helped him to arrive at an uneasy middle ground , an odd state of undifferentiated being where it night when it is day, where each part of the picture is outside as much as inside, where the figure, is as unresisting as the ground and possessively gone over and over again until the picture is exhausted and done.’ Josef James, rpt. in Works on Paper & Ceramic Sculpture 1996 EXC ‘C. Douglas, who paints in mixed media on paper, with Bauhaus ties, finds the heavy German expressionist idiom handy for invoking brooding, inward- looking images. He has a dark, muted palette-browns, greys, blacks and blues and employs variable textures to create a varied planar surface.’ – A.S.Raman, rpt. in Indian Art : An Overview 2003; p150.