Maqbool Fida Husain

Acquired in India by Pearl S. Buck

Acquired from a second-hand store, USA, circa 2000

Gifted from the above circa 2012

Pearl Comfort Sydenstricker Buck (1892-1973) was an American writer, and the first American woman to win both the Pulitzer and Nobel Prizes for literature. Buck was born in West Virginia but her family moved to China when she was a baby, where she was raised by her missionary parents. Her Pulitzer Prize winning book was The Good Earth (1931), a story of an early 20^th-century farmer’s family in China. Buck returned to the US in 1935, where she continued writing and became involved in activism for women’s rights and racial equality. Buck spent time in India, and authored Mandala: A Novel of India (1970). Indian diplomat K. Natwar Singh describes taking Maqbool Fida Husain to visit Buck, and him painting a portrait of her (K. Natwar Singh, ‘M. F. Husain, Indira Gandhi and a portrait’, The Hindu, 5 March 2010, https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/M.F.-Husain-Indira-Gandhi-and-a-portrait/article16514642.ece).

The current lot bears an indistinct inscription by Pearl S. Buck on the reverse:

This painting, THE WILD HORSE, / I give, will, bequeath to Theodore F. Harris, / I bought it on a visit to India, when I was working on a film. The artist is […] / […] I think Husain. / The … to this painting is our horseman, / …. / Late May … 1971 / Pearl S. Buck