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Lot Essay
Landscape painting was an important component of Francis Newton Souza’s oeuvre. Fellow artist Jagdish Swaminathan has described Souza as a "painter of cityscapes and religious themes. While in the latter he is loaded with a troubled presentiment, in the former he is singularly devoid of emotive inhibitions [...] Souza's cityscapes are the congealed visions of a mysterious world" (J. Swaminathan, 'Souza's Exhibition', Lalit Kala Contemporary 40, March 1995, p. 31). Souza began to paint landscapes at the outset of his career, including several Goan vistas and views from his home in Bombay near Crawford Market in the 1940s.
In this scene from 1989, Souza embraces nature, painting a landscape that is more impressionist than cubist in its essence. This is a celebratory scene, painted in a vivid palette that imbues the composition with vibrancy and a sense of jubilation. Bright sunlight streams through the branches of the tree tops and gradually cools to light blue as it rises through the sky. Painted more than two decades after he moved to the United States, the rolling woodland Souza portrays here is likely inspired by a scene he recalls from one of the many road trips he took across North America on Greyhound buses.
Untitled (Landscape) combines the iconic format and subject of Souza's earlier works with the characteristic technique he developed later in his career. The bright, joyous palette and dynamic application of paint epitomize this late style, most notably in the thinly applied background. A large, horizontally-formatted work painted when Souza was 65, this landscape represents the culmination of close to fifty years of practice of a revered painter confident of his oeuvre, and is every bit as poignant as the body of work that preceded it.
In this scene from 1989, Souza embraces nature, painting a landscape that is more impressionist than cubist in its essence. This is a celebratory scene, painted in a vivid palette that imbues the composition with vibrancy and a sense of jubilation. Bright sunlight streams through the branches of the tree tops and gradually cools to light blue as it rises through the sky. Painted more than two decades after he moved to the United States, the rolling woodland Souza portrays here is likely inspired by a scene he recalls from one of the many road trips he took across North America on Greyhound buses.
Untitled (Landscape) combines the iconic format and subject of Souza's earlier works with the characteristic technique he developed later in his career. The bright, joyous palette and dynamic application of paint epitomize this late style, most notably in the thinly applied background. A large, horizontally-formatted work painted when Souza was 65, this landscape represents the culmination of close to fifty years of practice of a revered painter confident of his oeuvre, and is every bit as poignant as the body of work that preceded it.