Art auction house Christie’s fourth annual sale in India may have inadvertently coincided with an economy accommodating cashless compromises, thanks to demonetisation, but Sonal Singh, the London-based company’s specialist head for India’s classical, modern and contemporary division, is unperturbed.
“We’ve always been a very transparent platform,” she says in an interview at New Delhi’s Taj Mansingh, where the two-day preview was held earlier this month. “Anyone bidding at Christie’s usually pays via credit card, bank transfers or cheque, so our buyers won’t be affected.” Fluency of transaction aside, the lure of the upcoming India auction is a strong 70-lot selection of classical Indian art, most of them from the collection of Colonel R.K. Tandon and a modern and contemporary art offering of 41 lots from the Abhishek and Radhika Poddar collection.
“The discovery is always the most exciting part, also the chase,” Singh says, speaking of her strong involvement with the classical end of the sale that brought her the greatest joy. “I discovered Basholi painting,” she says, a reference to the 40 court paintings from Colonel Tandon’s collection. The Colonel began collecting art soon after joining the Army around 1944, and intensified his pursuit of miniatures after he was allowed an early retirement in 1968.
“It was a very good time to collect. The political turmoil of the years after the war meant that very substantial old collections were being dispersed; Colonel Tandon travelled around the princely states and elsewhere in India searching out old collections and antique shops from where he hoped to enrich his collection,” writes William Robinson in the Christie’s catalogue for the upcoming auction.
His eye was not an untrained one. The Colonel had grown up in Allahabad surrounded by art — his father R.C. Tandon was a renowned art critic and commentator, and frequent visitors to their home included the likes of painter Amrita Sher-Gil, poet Harivansh Rai Bachchan and Russian artist Nicholas Roerich.
Around the time the Colonel was collecting, miniatures were easily available and prices were low enough for a military officer with no inheritance, allowing him to amass at least 1,000 historically significant objects from 2 B.C. to 19 A.D.
“He collected sculptures in stone, terracotta, wood and bronze, together with decorative items in a number of different mediums. But his greatest interest was always the miniature or court paintings, and it is this area for which his collection is best known,” writes Robinson.
Christie’s decision to continue with a separate section on classical Indian art was premised on its unprecedented success at last year’s sale when it was first introduced, where a 10th century granite figure of a Dvarapala realised over Rs. 1.7 crore, and 99 per cent of lots were sold. The results for the 95 per cent lots sold from the modern and contemporary art section, totalling over Rs. 97 crore, proved record-breaking for the auction house, and a world record for auctions held in India.
The top lot was an untitled 1995 oil painting by Vasudeo Gaitonde, which sold for over Rs. 29 crore, well above its pre-sale estimate, breaking the previous record for the category set by Christie’s in September 2015, and for the artist himself set by Christie’s at their inaugural India sale in 2013.
A prized work among the 41 lots on offer now is a 1975 painting by Tyeb Mehta from his diagonal series that the Poddars bought from Gallery Chemould. Estimated between Rs. 10 crore and Rs. 15 crore, the work is one of 41 lots from the Poddar collection, the result of over three decades of acquisitions that includes Manjit Bawa, Jehangir Sabavala and Akbar Padamsee.
“In 1987, Abhishek arrived on the doorstep of Bawa’s studio in Delhi’s Garhi complex after reading about him in Nandy’s column, much to the artist’s surprise,” reads the anonymous note in the Christie’s catalogue. The visit apparently culminated in a lifelong friendship until the artist’s death in 2008. Many of the works in their larger collection have been the result of commissions, most notably a series based on the zodiac signs by Arpita Singh, and a “bouquet” of 25 flower paintings, each by a different artist, meant as a gift for Abhishek’s parents on their 25th wedding anniversary.
The most eye-catching in the modern lot is a 2002 Bhupen Khakhar Ratnagiri seascape (estimated between Rs. 70 lakh and Rs. 90 lakh), the moody blue of the sea only a few shades lighter than the sky, the horizon stretching far into the distance. The peculiar red-bordered frame with gold sketches adds a quintessentially Khakharesque touch of wry commentary on the kitschy nature of the landscape painting genre.
Another worthy contender is a large 1973 canvas by Akbar Padamsee featuring a deep crimson horizon, one of his earliest metascapes and estimated between Rs. 1.5 crore and Rs. 2 crore.)
An early Raza landscape from 1956 using gouache, ink and pencil on paper and featuring a white palette is another masterpiece on offer.
A 1974 painting with cipher-like symbols by Gaitonde claims an enviable provenance, having been acquired from the reclusive abstractionist by his contemporary Krishen Khanna, who sold it to the present, anonymous owner in the ’70s.
Rosalyn D’Mello is the author of A Handbook For My Lover.
