Maqbool Fida Husain

Acquired directly from the artist in the 1960s
Thence by descent

R. Bartholomew and S. Kapur, Husain, Abrams Publishers, New York, 1972, pl. 90

Good overall condition, as viewed. Recently cleaned and lightly varnished.
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The current and exceptional work from 1961, Jhoola, is a profound example of Husain’s unique amalgam of post-Independence and post-Impressionist painting: powerfully evocative of classical Indian plastic traditions and distinctly Modern at the same time.  

Illustrated in Husain, the 1972 monograph by Richard Bartholomew and Shiv S. Kapur and published by Harry N. Abrams, the current work depicts two women atop a swing (or jhoola) which hangs from a verdant tree. A dark sun, a familiar theme from Husain’s early work, dominates the background.

In 1948, Husain visited the India Independence Exhibition with Francis Newton Souza, where they admired medieval stone sculpture and traditional miniature painting from the Rajput and Pahari courts. This experience served as a catalyst for the evolution of Husain’s unique visual vocabulary—combining the palette of the Indian miniature with the voluptuous curves and fluid postures of early and medieval Indian sculpture.

Husain notes: “[Souza and I] went to Delhi to see that big exhibition of Indian sculptures and miniatures which was shown in 1948 … it was humbling. I came back to Bombay and in '48 I came out with five paintings, which was the turning point in my life. I deliberately picked up two or three periods of Indian history. One was the classical period of the Guptas, the very sensuous form of the female body. Next was the Basholi period, the strong colors of the Basholi miniatures. The last was the folk element. With these three combined, and using colors very boldly as I did with cinema hoardings, I went to town. That was the breaking point … to come out of the influence of the British academic painting and the Bengal Revivalist School.” (Husain re-printed in Nandy, The Illustrated Weekly of India, December 4-10, 1983)

Husain’s classical treatment of the female figures in Jhoola is reminiscent of sculptural depictions of the salabhanjikas and yakshis of ancient India. The symbolism of the female figure in conjunction with fruited foliage has its roots in ancient Indic fertility imagery, wherein the touch of a woman was believed to cause the vegetation to respond and proliferate. These voluptuous nymphs represented not just the principles of earthly fertility but also the generative power of the divine. 

Husain’s modernism then contends even in its earlier period with an understanding of Indian aesthetics at a fundamental level. In the present work, the triple axial posture of the five figures draws upon the tribhanga or thrice-bent postures of classical sculpture, and the tight overlapping forms of the central figures are reminiscent of the frieze panels of North Indian temples. Over the years, these tensile figures have provided the essential vocabulary of Husain’s women.

Husain concludes: “One reason why I went back to the Gupta period of sculpture was to study the human form … when the British ruled, we were taught to draw a figure with the proportions from Greek and Roman sculpture … in the east, the human form is an entirely different structure. The way a woman walks in the village, there are three breaks, from the feet, hips and shoulder ... they move in rhythm.” (Ibid.)

Husain’s inimitable synthesis of these classical forms remains a hallmark of Bombay Progressive-Era paintings.