At the start of his career, Ram Kumar worked a full-time job at a bank, eventually quitting in 1948 to devote his life to art. He convinced his father to buy him a one-way boat ticket to Paris, the centre of the art world at the time. Brave, young and spirited, Kumar began his artistic career with a sense of rebellion and enthusiasm. Whilst in Paris, Kumar studied under artists Fernand Leger and Andre Lhote, two groundbreaking and important artists of the time. He experienced the complex social, political and economic effects of post-World War II Europe, especially in the artist community. This is where Kumar became interested in the human condition and the precarious future of post-Independence India.

This commentary on the despair of middle-class, urban India was both pictorial and literary for Kumar. Mirrored in his first fictional work from 1953, Ghar Bane Ghar Toote, Kumar’s figures are deeply affected by upheaval and displacement. They are the working class of post-independence India who bore witness to the unfulfilled promises, growing economic disparity in the country and sharp population increase in the city. Kumar depicts the anonymous man in this new, often undesirable situation while imbuing them with a gleam of hope for the future. 'Somewhat marionette-like and angularly stanced with half gestures that seem to clutch at something precious, the boldly but starkly portrayed people [are] related to one another because of the pervading quality of introspection, of a searching for meaning, purpose, release which is written large on their countenances.' (R. Bartholomew, 'Attitudes to the Social Condition: Notes on Ram Kumar,' Lalit Kala Contemporary 24-25, 1981, p. 31).

The current work is one of relatively few of these figurative, politically engaged works that Kumar painted in his career. Composed of three figures, there is a stillness to their poses, both arms crossed and hands behind their back, clothed in short and long-sleeved collared shirts. Perhaps shown against a warm, setting sun, Kumar may depict the end of the workday, when India’s working class, those who are forging a new path for the country, can finally return home. The figures in the current lot each look in a different direction, their doleful stares reflecting the mood of Ram Kumar's earlier figurative canvases, while the style of the work reflects the austerity of colour and line that would become a hallmark of Ram Kumar's landscapes in the 1960s. The geometric forms contained within the bodies of the figures serve as a precursor to the colliding shapes that appeared in his Varanasi series and later landscapes.