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47
PROPERTY OF A GENTLEMAN,
BANGALORE
24
N S BENDRE
(1910 ‒ 1992)
Untitled
Signed and dated in Devnagari and
signed again ‘Bendre’ (lower right)
1976
Oil on canvas board
29.25 x 23.5 in (74.6 x 59.7 cm)
Rs 40,00,000 ‒ 60,00,000
$ 59,705 ‒ 89,555
PROVENANCE:
Saffronart, 6‒7 December 2006, lot 81
Bendre’s artistic career began at the State School of Art in Indore in 1929. A
contemporary of Nandalal Bose, he was the Dean of the Faculty of Fine Arts
at M S University of Baroda from 1959 and a member of the committee of
artists who set up the Lalit Kala Akademi. As an artist, Bendre was equally adept
at portraits, landscapes and still‒lifes. Over six decades, he experimented with
Cubism, Expressionism and Pointillism to express classically Indian themes such
as birds and animals, figures, and landscapes of Indian villages.
The present lot was painted in 1976 at a time of great creativity after he had
settled in Mumbai in 1966, after extensive travels through India and Europe.
The subject of women in the landscape tending to their goats draws references
from miniature painting and mythology, and pays homage to Raja Ravi Varma
in addition to incorporating influences from traditional Japanese painting in
the use of flat paint and the rendering of the flowering trees. In the latter half
of his career, Bendre “gives prime importance to his visual experience, but he
does not resort to naturalistic representation. He interprets it on his canvas
in his own terms and offers what he has seen and enjoyed...” (Ram Chatterji,
Bendre: The Painter and the Person
,
Mumbai: The Bendre Foundation for Art
and Culture & Indus Corporation, 1990, p. 61) Bendre’s complete mastery over
form, technique and composition is seen in this charming rendition of a village
landscape.
Shakuntala’s act of picking a thorn from her foot
is immortalised in Raja Ravi Varma’s painting. In
the present lot, Bendre references this archetype
of female sensuality.
Source: Wikimedia Commons
Bendre painting
en plein air
Image courtesy of the Bendre family