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"Drawing is the school of hard knocks the artist has to go through before he or she can come into the bright sunlight of colour."
- Francis Newton Souza, 1983, from Francis Newton Souza: Bridging Western and Indian Modern Art

Chart Francis Newton Souza’s course from paper to canvas with a selection of artworks in our forthcoming sale. A closer look reveals this Indian artist’s incomparable talent as a draughtsman, which provided what he called “the structure of my iconography”—a structure present in all his work, whatever the medium.

Proficiency on Paper
Souza’s drawings, which have art historically been compared to those of Picasso and Matisse, are widely considered independent, fully realized works of art in their own right. Souza’s brilliant abilities as a draughtsman are revealed to us through this extraordinary selection of drawings. Using the most limited tools to create works of great depth and emotion, his individual style and subjects were at once intimate and universal. These works evidence Souza’s myriad sources of inspiration, from early Old Masters and classical Indian painting to modern European artists.

The Painted Canvas
The bold outlines and cross-hatched depth of his drawings translate beautifully to the canvas with Souza’s towering masterpiece, Beasts of Prey (1963). Souza perfectly captures the resignation in the eyes of the wildebeest being attacked by a tiger and a lioness, while also touching on the more broad concept of the natural circle of life. The pared-down background, distinguished by its earth tones and a few scattered clouds hovering overhead, balances out the aggression of the beasts that occupy the center of the canvas. Harmonizing the compositional tension between force and restraint is one of Souza’s many artistic attributes.