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拍品專文
One of India’s leading modern masters, Maqbool Fida Husain drew inspiration from popular culture, global art history, ancient civilizations and heroic epics among other sources, and broke away from traditional academic painting styles, while continuing to center India’s diverse art heritage and the energy and rhythms of the Indian people and landscape in his body of work.
In the present lot, a vibrant painting from the 1990s, Husain offers the viewer an opportunity to freely interpret a wide array of motifs drawn from multiple sources. While the elephant standing over the reclining woman and the lotus below her might allude to the dream of Maya, an episode in the story of the birth of Gautama Buddha, the addition of a hunter’s figure poised with a bow could evoke the story of Vishwamitra and Menaka. The cast of characters in this painting, however, most strongly recalls the love story of Shakuntala and Dushyanta, one of the chapters from the epic Mahabharata, laden with themes of destiny, virtue and the moral responsibilities of rulership.
Shakuntala, born to the sage Vishwamitra and the celestial nymph Menaka, is raised in the tranquil forest hermitage of Sage Kanva after her mother returns to the heavens. Surrounded by nature, she embodies purity, grace and quiet strength. In Kalidasa’s retelling, the hermitage is described as a gentle woodland realm rich with trees, lotus ponds and peacocks. One day, King Dushyanta arrives in the forest, where powerful animals like elephants roam, on a hunting expedition. In this painting, Husain seems to consciously separate Dushyanta’s world from Shakuntala’s gentler woodland atmosphere, which is the primary focus. Yet, their featureless faces appear to gaze at one another, suggesting the instant connection that bound them. After meeting and pledging themselves to each other, Dushyanta leaves Shakuntala with his ring, promising to return. But a curse born of a moment’s distraction causes him to forget her, and the ring, their token of love, slips into a river. When the lost ring is recovered, Dushyanta’s memory returns, and he seeks Shakuntala out, not as a king reclaiming his queen, but as a man humbled by the immensity of what he lost.
It seems appropriate for Husain to choose to depict this story with a strong female protagonist. As his biographers Richard Bartholomew and Shiv Kapur wrote, “The central concern of Husain's art, and its dominant motif, is woman [...] Man, in Husain’s view, is dynamic only in heroism. He is diminished by confusion and broken by unbelief, and these are unheroic and unbelieving times. Spiritually, woman is more enduring. Pain comes naturally to her, as do compassion and a sense of birth and death of things. In Husain’s work, woman has the gift of eagerness [...] and an inward attentiveness, as if she were listening to the life coursing within her” (R. Bartholomew and S. Kapur, Husain, New York, 1972, p. 46).
The story of Shakuntala remained with Husain, and a few years later, in 2000, he used it in the film Gaja Gamini, a musical tribute to womanhood that he wrote and directed. Inspired by the eternal feminine, the surrealist film stars one of Husain’s muses, Madhuri Dixit in various archetypal roles, including that of Shakuntala. It is likely that the female figure in this painting is also inspired by the actress, who featured in many of Husain's works during the 1990s and 2000s.
In the present lot, a vibrant painting from the 1990s, Husain offers the viewer an opportunity to freely interpret a wide array of motifs drawn from multiple sources. While the elephant standing over the reclining woman and the lotus below her might allude to the dream of Maya, an episode in the story of the birth of Gautama Buddha, the addition of a hunter’s figure poised with a bow could evoke the story of Vishwamitra and Menaka. The cast of characters in this painting, however, most strongly recalls the love story of Shakuntala and Dushyanta, one of the chapters from the epic Mahabharata, laden with themes of destiny, virtue and the moral responsibilities of rulership.
Shakuntala, born to the sage Vishwamitra and the celestial nymph Menaka, is raised in the tranquil forest hermitage of Sage Kanva after her mother returns to the heavens. Surrounded by nature, she embodies purity, grace and quiet strength. In Kalidasa’s retelling, the hermitage is described as a gentle woodland realm rich with trees, lotus ponds and peacocks. One day, King Dushyanta arrives in the forest, where powerful animals like elephants roam, on a hunting expedition. In this painting, Husain seems to consciously separate Dushyanta’s world from Shakuntala’s gentler woodland atmosphere, which is the primary focus. Yet, their featureless faces appear to gaze at one another, suggesting the instant connection that bound them. After meeting and pledging themselves to each other, Dushyanta leaves Shakuntala with his ring, promising to return. But a curse born of a moment’s distraction causes him to forget her, and the ring, their token of love, slips into a river. When the lost ring is recovered, Dushyanta’s memory returns, and he seeks Shakuntala out, not as a king reclaiming his queen, but as a man humbled by the immensity of what he lost.
It seems appropriate for Husain to choose to depict this story with a strong female protagonist. As his biographers Richard Bartholomew and Shiv Kapur wrote, “The central concern of Husain's art, and its dominant motif, is woman [...] Man, in Husain’s view, is dynamic only in heroism. He is diminished by confusion and broken by unbelief, and these are unheroic and unbelieving times. Spiritually, woman is more enduring. Pain comes naturally to her, as do compassion and a sense of birth and death of things. In Husain’s work, woman has the gift of eagerness [...] and an inward attentiveness, as if she were listening to the life coursing within her” (R. Bartholomew and S. Kapur, Husain, New York, 1972, p. 46).
The story of Shakuntala remained with Husain, and a few years later, in 2000, he used it in the film Gaja Gamini, a musical tribute to womanhood that he wrote and directed. Inspired by the eternal feminine, the surrealist film stars one of Husain’s muses, Madhuri Dixit in various archetypal roles, including that of Shakuntala. It is likely that the female figure in this painting is also inspired by the actress, who featured in many of Husain's works during the 1990s and 2000s.