Osian's Auction Catalogue The Masterpieces Series | March 2010

37 The Masterpieces SerieS 13 A BALAL r AhimAn (1860 – 1931) Landscape Watercolour and gouache on paper, nd Signed in English ‘A. Rahiman’ l.r. Inscribed in Devanagari ‘Abalal Rahiman’ on verso 9.8 x 13.4 in (24.9 x 34.0 cm) Provenance THE OSIAN’s COLLECTION. INR 600,000 – 900,000 US$ 12,500 – 18,750 Abalal Rahiman was one of the Maharashtrian painters who focused on the Western Academic realistic style – others were M. V. Dhurandhar and S. L. Haldankar. “Though relatively unknown, Abalal Rahiman of Kolhapur was much ahead of his time, and by sheer intuitive knowledge and aesthetic judgment, he developed an innovative rendering technique which was similar to that of the nineteenth century English painter, John Constable as well as the French painter, Alfred Sisley.” - Prof. Baburao Sadwelkar,rpt. in Story of a Hundred Years The Bombay Art Society 1888-1988, ExC, 1988. “It was his mother’s sudden death in 1887 that removed him from cosmopolitan Bombay. All he carried back to Kolhapur was his brief painting experience with Griffiths…The importance of this pioneer Muslim painter lies less in his few surviving works than in his romantic personality and a transcendental commitment to art.” – Partha Mitter, Art and Nationalism in Colonial India 1850-1922, Cambridge University Press, 1994, p.86.