Osian's Auction Catalogue Indian Antiquities Modern Contemporary Fine Arts and Books | April 2017

57 M.A.R. Chughtai 1897-1975 Bathing Day (Kashmiri Girl Removing Her Dress to Take a Bath in Pond of Water) Watercolor on heavy paper, Late 1960s Signed in Urdu ‘Abdur Rahman Chughtai’ l.l. Signed lower left, titled, annotated and certified by the artist’s son, Arif Rahman Chughtai on 17th September, 2013; stamped by the Chughtai Museum Trust, Lahore, Pakistan on verso. 22.6 x 18.7 in (57.3 x 47.5 cm) Provenance Acquired from a Dallas, USA Auction in 2016; previously sold in Waddington’s Auction, 14th June 2014, Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Painting is Certified, titled and annotated on 17th September 2013 by Arif Rehman Chughtai s/o M.A.R. Chughtai who is also the founder of Chughtai Museum Trust, Lahore, whose stamp is on the verso on the painting; previously owned by an American collector. INR 2,000,000 – 3,000,000 USD 29,850 – 44,780 ‘He very soon became one of the most popular artists in India because of a sentimentally lyrical quality which characterize all his paintings. He handled his brush with remarkable felicity and his lines followed with the utmost ease and grace. A trace of Moghul influence was distinctly noticeable in all his works, which, coupled with the traits of the Bengal school, gave his paintings some quality, especially because of his care for detail. He has steeped himself in the spirit of Ghalib and Omar Khayyam, which has found romantic expression in his works.’ – R. Chatterji rpt. in Marg Vol.5 No.4 1949; p42. “To appreciate Chughtai in any high degree one must appreciate pure form, rhythmical proportions, the relations of parts, and extreme refinements in these relations. He hates the vague and uncertain…His paintings are in truth the geometry of beauty. “– R. Siraj-ud-din, p16. “He retains the distinctive mood and of posture, the Persian tradition but gives his pictures a special quality of his own in lovely colour combination, in delicious lines that seem to be less lines of paintings than of some inaudible poetry made visible, in folds of drapery that are never mere coverings to or discoverings of the human body, but best meant in the liturgy of beauty.” – James H.Cousins, quoted in Chughtai’s Paintings (Lahore: Jahangir Book Club, 1935). ‘Chughtai was a perfectionist who believed that imagination was of little use unless the artist possessed the requisite skills to capture its flight like an expert fowler. For him art was the test of adaab, the rulers of propriety and homage. His aesthetical ethos was that of a master craftsman, a maker in the true platonic sense of the word. He prided himself on his incomparable skill, but never claimed that he was above his art... It used to be said, when it was considered honourable to attribute original handling of Western ideas and techniques by Indian artists to someone or the other in England, that Chughtai copied Beardsley’s line. What was hard to admit was that, while he was impressed with Beardsley, he drew better than him from a different culture, and with a different purpose…. There were two other sources too. One was the Ajanta tradition of linear painting, to which he added his own expertise in European drawing. What he took from the latter source was the suppleness and naturalness of the line which captures the appearance, flexibility and spirit of life and nature. It was from this amalgam, and not from just one or two sources, that Chughtai perfected his line and its refined power. Overall, it was the Middle Eastern and Asian character, even though modified, that prevailed in his art.’ – Akbar Naqvi rpt. in Image and Identity Fifty Years of Painting and Sculpture in Pakistan . New Delhi: OUP 1998; p.67 & p.70. 122 | Osian’s–Connoisseurs of Art