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

19 N.S. Bendre (1910 – 1992) Still Life Oil on canvas pasted on board, 1944 S/d in Devanagari ‘Bendre 44’ t.r. Inscribed ‘This painting is done by Narayan S. Bendre in 1944 in Baroda. Mona Devi Bendre’ on verso 14.4 x 11.3 in (36.5 x 28.8 cm) Provenance Acquired directly from Artist by eminent Mumbai based Collector. INR 600,000 – 900,000 USD 9,375 – 14,063 20 Jamini Roy (1887 – 1972) Untitled Tempera on cloth, nd Signed in Bengali ‘Jamini Roy’ l.r. 34.3 x 55.5 in (87.0 x 141.0 cm) Provenance Acquired directly from the Jamini Roy Family Collection by Mumbai based Collector in the late 1990s. INR 1,200,000 – 1,800,000 USD 18,750 – 28,125 National Art Treasure Non-Exportable Item Full double-spread image on pp. 56-57 ‘wander lust’ took Bendre to many parts of India, even working on many jobs including the one in the tourist Department of Kashmir. His selection of sites for his landscapes like Har Ki Pauri, Hardwar, Banaras ghats, Omkareshwar, near Indore (1932) are typical…Prior to these ‘pleine aire’ landscapes of Bendre, there is hardly an Impressionist phase in any Indian painter in whose work one could observe the combining of atmospheric effects (generally of sunshine) with the break up of colour in terms of the spectrum. The so-called Indore school of landscape was characterised by opaque water colour applied in prominent brush strokes always subduing the hues and generally preferring wet monsoon effects… With the exaggeration of the hues and even the inclusion of the black colour which are Expressionist traits, Bendre rather successfully attempted a sort of telescoping of the late nineteenth century French Impressionist style with the German Expressionist style of second decade of the twentieth century. Here the presence of Walter Langhammer and other Central European émigrés in Bombay since the 1930s is relevant. Langhammer brought into India the Austrian-born Expressionist painter, Kokoschka’s style of panoramic landscapes of the great European cities in pure hues. Similar hues of colour were employed by Bendre to replace the mellow colour scheme of the existing Indore school as if to usher in the celebration of the Indian sunshine. Interestingly, the new approach was soon to be picked up by the young S.H. Raza toward the end of the 1940s. Such landscapes could be executed on coloured or toned paper with colour specs and brush storkes standing for human head, body, limbs or figures in movement since water colour was used in thick opaque storkes called ‘gouache’ Rpt. In Lalit Kala Contemporary #37 ; p.73-4. Referring to his art during the early 1940s (Bendre won the Bombay Art Society Gold Medal in 1941). “With the inclusion of the hues and even the inclusion of the black colour which are Expressionist traits, Bendre rather successfully attempted a sort of telescoping of the late nineteenth century French Impressionist style with the German Expressionist style of the second decade of the twentieth century….Langhammer brought into India Kokoschka’s style of panoramic landscapes. Similar hues of colour were employed by Bendre to replace the mellow colour scheme of the existing Indore school as if to usher in the celebration of the Indian sunshine.” Ratan Parimoo in ‘Indian Art Exhibition’ rpt. in N. S. Bendre: Indiviuals Cultural Centre ExC.1992. The very nature of Jamini Roy’s work precludes a generality of appeal. He cannot be easily appraised by laymen, particularly as the entire trend in his life, both as an artist and as a man, has been in the direction of evading popular approval. At the same time, together with Nandalal Bose, he has been enthusiastically admired and discussed by those who are interested in the handicraft of painting and in the forms of our cultural renaissance. He is pre-eminently an artist’s painter… His pursuit so undauntedly followed, is after expressive form shorn of uncoordinated irrelevancies, a seeking like Cézanne’s, after the inherent idea of the object distilled from its concreteness… No artist in India of our day has been so obstinately and consistently obsessed with the fundamental problems of art. Shahid Suhrawardy rpt. in Marg V2.1.1949; p68-9. Interestingly, Bendre’s work, beginning from the 1930s and continuing through the 1940s, largely aligns itself with the nineteenth century British artists who were fond of painting picturesque scenes from far off places in the exotic countryside as well as people of different ethnic and caste types. This necessarily required wide traveling and this Indian Modern Fine Arts | 55