Osian's Auction Catalogue Indian Modern Fine Arts | June 2017

12 M.A.R. Chughtai (1894 – 1975) Figure of a Lady Watercolour on paper, nd Signed in Urdu l.l. 12.6 x 10.7 in (32.0 x 27.2 cm) Provenance Gifted by Lady Ranu Mookerjee to Shri Amitabha Niyogi at a Luncheon organized on 26th September 1973 while the latter was Chief Secretary to the West Bengal Government, in the presence of his family members. INR 600,000 – 900,000 USD 9,375 – 14,063 Chughtai completed his drawing course from Mayo School of Art, Lahore (1911-14) under the Principalship of Samarendranath Das Gupta and learnt architectural decoration and calligraphy from Baba Miran Buksh. He worked as a photographer for some time. Moreover, it was for his keen interest in photography, photo-lithography that he went to Calcutta in 1916 to learn commercial printing techniques. This adds a new dimension to approaching his works as Dr. Waheed Qureishi opines that his art was “indebted to photography because all his human images were posed.” Chughtai’s insistence on his independence from the Bengal School and the Tagores in terms of artistic influence remains a matter of debate among Art-historians. In his works one can notice his commitment to “the Persian Sufi and the Hindu Mystical tradition of art which saw Reality disguised behind the infinite veils of appearances” as Akbar Naqvi puts it. In the same vein his use of metaphors and similes suggest depth and work in a preconceived order of design, wherein each decorative and architectural detail adds to the mysticism of the figure/s captured in a timeless zone.