Maqbool Fida Husain (b. 1915)

Canvas relined, otherwise good overall condition.
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The main influences on Husain's early works are the rural Indian landscape, the classical arts of India and the contemporary culture of urban India. Husain's paintings throughout his career reflect an ongoing dialogue between the artist and these influences. The strength of his vision is that he can blend such divergent stimuli into coherent and immediately tangible forms that are neither too cerebral nor superficial.  Between 1960 and 1965 Husain created several paintings of Rajasthan, the region was also the inspiration for his first film Through the Eyes of a Painter. 'It'll be shot in three cities of Rajasthan. It'll be about the bathing nymphets of Bundi lake, the brave Rajput warriors of Chittor Fort, the golden by lanes and the caravanserais of Jaisalmer,' (M F Husain with Khalid Mohammed, Where Art Thou, Mumbai, 2002, p. 104.) The current work from a similar period is also clearly influenced by the landscape forts and walled cities of India.

Husain was different from his contemporaries F.N. Souza and S.H. Raza in choosing to remain in India. Even so he traveled widely within the subcontinent, from the Himalayas to Kerala, to experience the landscape and various cultures of India first-hand. During his travels he was attracted to the varying landscapes of India, the different peoples he encountered and the stories and artistic traditions that they had inherited. 'He drew from the classical, the miniature and folk and attempted to meld it into a language which formulated the present. It allowed him to express a perceived reality which while being seamless, mythical and vast was at the same time hurtling towards industrialization and modernization.' (Yashodhara Dalmia, "M. F. Husain: Reinventing India," introductory essay to M. F. Husain, Early Masterpieces 1950s - 70s, Asia House, London, 2006).

Although the Indian landscape is a common subject for Husain, semi-abstracted landscapes in the current style are comparitively rare.  The current lot appears to belong to a small group of such paintings that Husain created in the mid 1960's, that also includes Chittore Fort and Red Desert. The appearance of this group at this stage in his career is interesting for it was a period when his paintings came under increased scrutiny from his critics. Many felt that his obstinate reluctance to move away from figurative painting was limiting his scope and standing as a true artist of the modernist movement. This small group of more abstracted paintings may have represented in his own mind an answer to his critics, for they demonstrate his skill as a colorist and can be more closely compared to the 1950's landscapes of Raza, who by the early 1960's was coming to be recognized as one of the leading abstract artists of India. However, unlike Raza, whose works became increasingly abstract and gestural, Husain soon reverted to his interest in the human figure. Even here in the lower right of the canvas a ghostly figure in green emerges from under the boughs of the yellow tree, perhaps an echo of earlier paintings like Musicians (1959) and Three Figures (1962) where figures appear under a tree.  The symbolism of such figures is not lost on Husain for it relates to compositions common in classical Indian temple sculpture.  Yakshis or fertility goddesses are depicted standing beneath a flowering tree, typically holding a branch in one hand and touching the trunk with a raised foot.  The composition relates to an ancient belief that the natural fertility of a young maiden was so powerful, she merely had to kick a tree with her foot to make its branches blossom.

'Behind every stroke of the artist's brush is a vast hinterland of traditional concepts, forms, meanings. His vision is never uniquely his own; it is a new perspective given to the collective experience of his race. It is in this fundamental sense that we speak of Husain being in the authentic tradition of Indian Art. He has been unique in his ability to forge a pictorial language, which is indisputably of the contemporary Indian situation but surcharged with all the energies, the rhythms of his art heritage.' (E. Alkazi, M. F. Husain, The Modern Artist and Tradition, New Delhi, 1978, p. 3).