JEHANGIR SABAVALA (B. 1922)

The artist has often painted the avian world, but never with such dramatic force as seen in this work, where the eagle is swooping down in action. The fierce expression; the weight and power of the tremendous wing span; and the helpless fish caught in its talons, tells its own story. The palette is somber: umbers, ochres and browns prevail, relieved by the play of light on the sands.

"The technique which he evolved quite slowly is based on transparency... This gives the surface of his paintings a glistening crystalline sheen. The individual hues and tones, being mixed separately in subtly but cleanly differentiated gradations, impart to the picture surface a cleanliness and clarity of hue... His mastery of light effects is based on a lifetime's study of natural Indian light without resort to banal naturalism." (Richard Lannoy, 'The Paradoxical Alliance', Pilgrim, Exile, Sorcerer - The Painterly Evolution of Jehangir Sabavala, Mumbai, 1998, p. 16.)