The Pitcher

This watercolour relates to a tempera titled The Pitcher painted in 1985. Almost always, Pyne works on pen and ink sketches and small watercolours such as this one which he later enlarges and transposes onto canvas. In the final tempera version of the work Pyne adds the skull of a predatory animal with its fangs bared in attack to the right of the woman, neatly juxtaposing the innocence of the woman with the menacing nature of the beast.

The tempera version of the work is illustrated in E. Datta, Ganesh Pyne his Life and Times, Calcutta, 1998, p. 62.