HISTORIC RAJ PICTURE SELLS FOR WORLD RECORD £602,400 AT BONHAMS IN LONDON

HISTORIC RAJ PICTURE SELLS FOR WORLD RECORD £602,400 AT BONHAMS IN LONDON
Written by Ryan Engelhardt Sunday, 03 April 2011 04:08
 
London - A picture which speaks eloquently of the Raj, linking Buckinghamshire with Madras, painted by an Indian aristocrat of an English aristocrat, sold for the astonishing price of £602,400 at Bonhams Indian and Islamic Art Sale in London on October 25 – the auction made a total of £3.2m from 600 items in the sale.
The historic picture painted by Raja Ravi Varma in 1880, was bought by Neville Tuli of Osian’s Conoisseurs of Art in Mumbai, for India’s permanent collection which will be housed in Mumbai. After his successful bid Mr Tuli commented: It was very important to bring back to India part of its artistic cultural heritage.”
The price of £602,400 for the painting is a world record for this artist whose previous top price at another London auction house was £210,000. The painting’s seller was astonished at the price achieved as she had had no idea of its potential value.
In 1880 Raja Ravi Varma (India, 1848-1906), the leading Indian artist of his day, painted the image of the Maharaja of Travancore and his younger brother welcoming Richard Temple-Grenville, 3rd Duke of Buckingham and Chandos, Governor-General of Madras (1875-80), on his official visit to Trivandrum in 1880. The picture (measuring 106 x 146 cm.) was estimated to sell for £50,000-70,000.

As the most sought-after academic painter of colonial India who was an aristocrat himself, Ravi Varma was often invited to state occasions by British high officials and the Indian nobility, often recording their activities on his canvases.
Matthew Thomas of Bonhams’ Islamic and Indian Department comments: ‘This painting provides us with an almost intimate snapshot of the official contact between the British and the Indian princes Since the end of the last war, if not before, it has perhaps been orthodox to deride Varma's work as rather kitsch and unaccomplished, both as a result of nationalist, anti-colonial feeling, and the opinions of Indian modernist painters, whose style and artistic intentions were naturally very different. But as in the case of British Victorian painters the subject matter and its handling can often blind us to their enormous technical facility..”

The significance of the Bonhams auction of Indian and Islamic art is its clear indication that this sector of the art market is booming with prices still rising for the best works by leading artists.
Another very strong price, £311,200 was paid for lot 222, a painting by John Vinter a fascinating portrait of His Imperial Majesty Nasr al-Din Shah Qajar, the Persian Shah from 1848 to 1896 - painted during a State visit to England in 1889.
Estimated to sell for £15,000 to £25,000 the painting far outstripped expectations. The image painted by the British artist, John Vinter (1828-1905), a favorite artist of Queen Victoria, recalls an age when Britain’s relations with Persia (later Iran) were extremely cordial. This painting, commissioned at the time of the opening of The Imperial Bank of Persia (which became the Imperial Bank of Iran in 1935), remained the property of the bank, which was later known as HSBC Middle East, and hung in their Mayfair-based headquarters
Third highest price at the Bonhams sale was paid for lot 433, an album of 118 botanical watercolours of the Company School from 18th Century Northern India which sold for £72,000 against an estimate of £60,000 to £80,000. Works by Jamil Naqsh (Pakistanm born 1939) titled Pigeons sold for £52,800. This too is a record price for work by this artist.
Lot 324 Female Nude by Maqbol Fida Hussain (India born 1915 sold for £43,000, one of the top ten prices for works at this auction at Bonhams in London’s New Bond St..