Painting of Tagore to be auctioned in NY

A rare painting by the great Indian poet, Rabindranath Tagore, is being auctioned in New York by the Sotheby's on September 19.

Drawn on a handmade paper, the painting depicts a duck. It is signed and dated by Tagore in Bengali.

Robin Dean from Sotheby's told NDTV.com that the painting is the property of a private Swedish collector. It was acquired in Calcutta by the present owners' parents sometime between 1930 and 1938.

Sotheby's has priced it between $15,000-20,000. Sized 10 by 14 and half inch, the rare painting would go under hammer along with 117 other miniatures and modern Indian paintings.

The paintings include those of eminent Indian painters M F Hussain, Akbar Padamsee, V S Gaitonde, F N Souza, Ram Kumar, S H Raza and R Broota.

The first Indian to get Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913, Tagore took up painting at a very later stage of his life. His first exhibition was in Paris in 1930 followed by the one in Calcutta (now Kolkata) in 1931.

His early paintings were rendered in monochromatic schemes, followed by two-toned and three-toned drawings.

The style of the present painting - scheduled to be auctioned - suggests that it was painted in the mid-30s, which coincides with the period when the current owner's parents lived in India.

Though at the face of it, the painting is a duck, which appears to be swimming in a pond, Tagore normally did not describe/explain his pictures.

''People often ask me about the meaning of my pictures. I remain silent even as my pictures are. It is for them to express and not to explain,'' Tagore wrote.

Sotheby's said the entire auction of about 118 Indian paintings on September 19 is expected to fetch between $6.4 to $9.4 million.

Two days later on September 21, Sotheby's would again put to hammer some paintings from Indian under the banner of Contemporary Art South Asia: India and Pakistan.

This includes some 84 lots of paintings, sculpture, photographs, video art and installations by artists Subodh Gupta, Ashim Purkayastha, Mrinalini Mukherjee, Jyothi Basu and Atul Dodiya. It is expected to bring $1.9-2.6 million.

As late as June this year, the Indian government had stepped in to stop the auctioning of a rare letter written by Mahatma Gandhi some 19 days before his assassination. The letter was to be auctioned by Christie's in London.


Source: NDTV