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

139 THE MASTERPIECES & MUSEUM-QUALITY SERIES 99 Sayed Haider RAZA [b .1922, Babaria, Madhya Pradesh] Hawa Mahal Chowk in Jaipur Signed (later) in English l.c. Watercolour on paper, c .1946 27.5 x 35.5 cm (10.8 x 14.0 in) Provenance The present owner acquired it from the famous artist Ramgopal Vijaiwargiya, to whom S.H. Raza had sold the work during his trip to Jaipur in the mid 1940s. Rs. 300,000 – 400,000 US $ 6,500 – 8,650 GB £ 3,550 – 4,725 ‘This was the period of the student, the learner who explored not only into the unending aspects of nature but with equal curiosity into the infinite facets and possibilities of his medium, the manners of painting and the unfolding powers of his own imagination. There were travels into the South, with its luscious greens of the Malabar coast… into Rajasthan with colourful cities in white and ochre springing out of empty white and ochre deserts… the attitude to painting and nature was impressionist.’ – Rudi von Leyden, rpt. in Raza. Bombay: Sadanga Series 1959. 100 Sayed Haider RAZA [b . 1922, Barbaria, Madhya Pradesh] Village S/d in English t.r. & signed on verso Oil on canvas, 1956 48.2 x 97.5 cm (19.0 x 37.6 in) Rs. 4,500,000 – 5,000,000 $ 97,200 – 108,000 £ 53,250 – 59,175 ‘Shelters perched on the edge of the volcanoes are swept by flames of hell… An orgy of colour is unleashed against a chimeric background of gulfs and crevasses. The mind boggles before this tornado of incandescent tones. Here are the ruins of little alpine towns, dead towns, deserted by their population. The church steeple, with its leaning tower, the cross outlined against a firmament of lead or basalt…. Calvaries rise up like gibbets in a landscape of winter and crystal. Raza’s palette is made up of powdered gems, molten metals and embers in which the fire still lives.’ – Waldemar George, rpt. in LKC 16, Sept. 1973; pp35-6.