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

‘He returned to Bombay with a young wife in 1922, and visited Lala Ram Lal’s studio, which had fallen on bad days. The Lala borrowed ten rupees from Allah Bukhsh, so bad was his financial fortune, and went out to buy painting materials. When he returned, he found that Allah Bukhsh had completed an attractive oil painting of Lord Krishna on hardboard. The Lala disappeared with the painting and returned jubilant after five or six hours with the news that he had advance orders for the Krishna painting from one hundred customers who were willing to pay a thousand rupees a piece for copies…Thus began his fame as the painter of Lord Krishna and other mythological paintings in oil… The Ustad’s reputation was built on his Hindu mythological subjects in the grand manner of history painting... he painted Hindu religious myth as the historical consciousness of India... according to Khurshid Ahmed, the Ustad painted mythological pictures of Krishna and his gopis in the early years of his life. This made him famous in India as the ‘Krishna Artist.’ – Akbar Naqvi rpt. in Image and Identity Fifty Years of Painting and Sculpture in Pakistan OUP 1998; pp.105-116. “The Ustad did not use the eye like Monet or even Courbet, because he had not heard about them, nor could he have any need for them. Besides, he had learnt to make pictures according to the rules established in the bazaar studios of India. In this environment, nature was accepted with reverence as beautiful and sympathetic, but these values were perceived and articulated conventionally and not as subjects deserving scientific studies of light and life. He felt deeply for the subjects he chose to paint, and since they engaged his own deep feeling, he believed them to be real… The Ustad, who painted mythology and rural folklore, wanted to touch up nature with romance and poetry without minimizing authenticity.” – Akbar Naqvi, rpt. in Image & Identity: Fifty Years of Painting & Sculpture in Pakistan. Karachi: OUP 1998; p109-10. Indian Antiquities Modern Contemporary Fine Arts & Books | 79