Osian's Auction Catalogue Creative India Series 1 Bengal | December 2011

H emendranaTH m azumdar 19 September 1894 – 22 July 1948 abandoned (Parityakta) (Later Version) Oil on canvas, c. 1939 24.0 x 31.7 in (60.4 x 80.4 cm) Condition Good, previously restored (full lining given and paint layer consolidated). Provenance Acquired from the Collection of Mr. Subrato Dutta, zamindar of North Bengal and son-in-law of the eminent zamindar Mr. B.K. Paul, after whom B.K. Avenue in Kolkata is named. According to the consignor the artist briefly stayed with the Paul family in 1939. ` 2,000,000 – 3,000,000 US$ 40,000 – 60,000 61 1780 1800 1820 1840 1860 1880 1900 1910 1920 1925 1930 1935 1940 1945 1950 1955 1960 1965 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 2000 “The disturbing power of Mazumdar’s women lay in their palpability and immediacy: his subject a young Bengali woman enacting an everyday village scene of returning home after her daily bath. A critic put it well: at a time when women were behind purdah, it was daring to represent someone from the respectable middle class, someone unapproachable in real life. In short, the beholder experienced the frisson of spying on a respectable housewife, the proverbial girl next door. The artist’s tantalizing silence about the identity of the model heightened the mystery surrounding her. (However, Mazumdar’s widow did finally confirm that she had sat for his paintings [Fn.27]” [Mitter, Partha [2007]. The Triumph of Modernism: India’s Artists and the Avant-Garde, 1922-1947. New Delhi: Oxford University Press; p.129 [Cast Out (Version 1), c. 1921] & pp.131-140.] Illustrative references Hemendranath Mazumdar, Parityakta (The Abandoned Woman) (2). Illustrated in Shilpi Hemendranath (Trans: Hemendranath, The Artist ) Kalyankumar Dasgupta. Sundaram, Vol.2 (2 & 3); Bhadro and Aswin 1364 (1957), pp.123-132. Mitter, Partha [2007]. The Triumph of Modernism: India’s Artists and the Avant-Garde, 1922-1947. New Delhi: Oxford University Press; p.129 [Cast Out (Version 1), c. 1921] Parimoo, Ratan & Sandip Sarkar [Eds.] [2009]. Historical Development of Contemporary Indian Art. New Delhi: Lalit Kala Akademi; p.108, Fig.086 [Seated Nude, c.1925] Creative India BENGaL | Hemendranath Mazumdar & the Western Academic Style in Bengal 143 142