Rare, record-worthy lots at Saffronart's annual spring auctions

If the confidence generated by the market in modern and contemporary Indian art at the recently concluded auctions by Sotheby's and Christie's in New York is anything to go by, then the upcoming annual spring auctions by Saffronart - live in Mumbai on 6 April and online on 6-7 April - are likely to break and set some new records.

It's worth remembering here that the record of the most expensive Indian painting ever was set at the Saffronart Spring auction last year, in March 2021, when an Untitled (1961) work by VS Gaitonde had sold for Rs 39.98 crore.

The most talked about work at the upcoming Spring Live Auction is Tyeb Mehta's Untitled (Bull on Rickshaw), 1999, estimated at Rs 29.6 crore – Rs 37 crore ($4 m – $5 m). According to Saffronart, this rare and unparalleled work depicts a trussed bull set upon a rickshaw, caught in an endless downward spiral, highlighting the potency of Mehta's subjects.

Dinesh Vazirani, Saffronart co-founder and CEO, said, "We are looking forward to opening our auction calendar with this exciting collection of modern and contemporary art as well as antiquities in our Spring Live and Online auctions. One of the leading lots of our live auction is Tyeb Mehta's Untitled (Bull on Rickshaw), painted in 1999 - a powerful work that brings together several of the iconic and recurring subjects and elements that have been part of the artist's oeuvre, giving it the quality of a retrospective contained within a single canvas."

Masters of Academic Realism

While the works by modern masters such as Mehta, Gaitonde, SH Raza and MF Husain, to name some, always hog the lion's share of the limelight, two other works are likely to generate a lot of interest amongst the buyers at this auction. These are the works on the same theme - Draupadi Vastraharan - by two of India's greatest masters of academic realism - Raja Ravi Varma (1848 - 1906) and MV Dhurandhar (1867 - 1944). While Varma was the most popular academic artist of his time and even in the decades after his passing, courtesy his mass-produced oleographs that caught the imagination of the entire subcontinent, Dhurandhar followed in his footsteps, becoming the second most popular artist in the genre.

Varma's Draupadi Vastraharan, an oil on canvas made between 1888 and 1890, is estimated at Rs 15 crore – Rs 20 crore ($2m – $2.7m). It is a National Art Treasure, and therefore, non-exportable. On the other hand, Dhurandhar's 1934 oil on canvas, Untitled (Draupadi Vastraharan), is estimated at Rs 4 crore – Rs 6 crore ($540,545 – $810,815).

Even lay admirers of Indian art are familiar with the name of Raja Ravi Varma, the first Indian artist to successfully blend the overarching European artistic influences of his time with Indian themes. Born in the princely state of Travancore, Varma was largely self-taught. Observing European court painters, he created a unique style of his painting by using the western medium of oil to create works on Indian subject matter featuring gods, goddesses, popular mythological characters, and royal portraits. His unique contribution to Indian painting lies in humanising the Hindu gods and goddesses - he created portraits of the divinity in human likenesses, making them instantly relatable and popular, which he then mass-produced through his oleographs to great success, finding eager buyers across the country. As one fellow journalist once said to me: 'We owe our imagination of our gods and goddesses to Raja Ravi Varma.'

Dhurandhar, two decades younger than Varma, was a prodigy who became the first Indian to win the Bombay Art Society's prestigious gold medal at the start of his career. He went on to teach at his alma mater, Sir JJ School of Art, Bombay, eventually becoming its first Indian head of the institute towards the end of his career. A highly prolific artist like Varma, Dhurandhar has left behind a huge corpus of his work, featuring gods, goddesses, mythological characters, as well as his chronicles of contemporary society through paintings and popular postcards.

Meera Mukherjee and Pilloo Pochkanawala

Besides the masters of academic realism, the other highlights of the Saffronart Spring Live auction bring focus on unsung masters who have recently begun to find favour in the market. The top amongst this list is Meera Mukherjee (1923-1998), the pioneering woman sculptor for whom the long-awaited due seems to be coming now. Balance, her 1995 bronze work, a four-sided rectangle with figures in relief on two sides, is estimated at Saffronart between Rs 4 crore and Rs 5 crore ($540,545 - $ 675,680). Her signature recently tasted success at the Sotheby's auction of Modern and Contemporary South Asian Art in New York on 21 March, where her unique bronze work, Untitled (Mango Orchard), sold for nearly double its high estimate, fetching $226,800 or Rs 1.7 crore.

Besides the top four works as mentioned above, the other prized lots on offer, in order of their estimates, are: an Untitled oil by Tyeb Mehta (1966), Rs 3.5 crore - Rs 4.5 crore ($472,975 - $608,110); a 1919 oil on canvas by Nicholas Roerich, titled St. Mercurius of Smolensk, Rs 3 crore - Rs 4 crore ($405,410 - $540,545); an oil on canvas by Jehangir Sabavala, titled A Blue Lake, A Leafless Tree, Rs 1.85 crore - Rs 2.59 crore ($250,000 - $350,000); an Untitled oil on canvas by Akbar Padamsee (1962), Rs 1.48 crore - Rs 2.22 crore; Twenty-seven ducks of memory, a 1996 oil by Arpita Singh, Rs 1.5 crore – Rs 2 crore ($202,705 – $270,275); and Cumberland, a 1964 oil on board by F. N. Souza, Rs 1.3 crore – Rs 1.8 crore ($175,680 – $243,245).

Besides this set, an artist to watch out for is Pilloo Pochkanawala (1923-1986), another pioneering woman sculptor like Mukherjee who has not received her due as yet. Her Untitled wood sculpture, featuring a graceful, lyrical form that could either be a woman's figure or a gently swaying tendril, is estimated at Rs 30 lakh – Rs 50 lakh ($40,545 - $67,570).

The Spring Online auction will follow the live auction and will feature an antiquity section and a contemporary section. The latter is led by an oil on canvas by Surendran Nair titled Mohini: An Actor at Rehearsal, (Epiphany) Cuckoonebulopolis (2014-2015). It is estimated at Rs 20 lakh – Rs 30 lakh ($27,030 – $ 40,545).

(The writer is a New Delhi-based journalist, editor and arts consultant. She blogs at archanakhareghose.blogspot.com)