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

124 OSIAN ’ s–CONNOISSEURS OF ART 84 J. Sultan ALI [ 1920-1990/ b . Bombay, Maharashtra] Sea Goddess S/d in English, l.c. Oil on canvas, 1964-5 76.0 x 89.0 cm (29.9 x 35.0 in) Preservation work has been carried out by Kayan Pundole (Mumbai) in June 2004. Rs. 325,000 – 400,000 $ 7,000 – 8,650 £ 3,850 – 4,725 “Mr. J. Sultan Ali has been praised in these columns for the last eight years or more; he is a painter and graphicist of considerable originality and his powerful individual style is growing better from year to year, by some organic development, dictated by an inner logic of his work. His new exhibition at Kumar Galleries is an eloquent testimony of a fine painter, searching for great means to express his strange intimations. There is a suggestion of the supernatural and the cabalistic; astrological symbols, mystic syllables in Devanagari lettering, auguries, signs and portents, enrich his images, in an expressionist-abstract manner in which bulls, suns, men and women play part, as in some medieval mystery play... His impasto is often splendid... fantastic, hauntingly beautiful both in subject matter and in treatment.” – Art Critic, rpt. in The Statesman , 10 November 1964.