Modern & Contemporary South Asian Art

Modern & Contemporary South Asian Art

View full screen - View 1 of Lot 99. Portrait of an Artist I.

Property from a Private Collector

Rameshwar Broota

Portrait of an Artist I

Auction Closed

March 21, 06:10 PM GMT

Estimate

50,000 - 80,000 USD

Lot Details

Description

Property from a Private Collector

Rameshwar Broota

b. 1941

Portrait of an Artist I


Oil on canvas 

Indistinctly inscribed lower right. Further signed, dated, titled and inscribed 'R. Broota / (RAMESHWAR BROOTA) / 1965 / PORTAIT (sic) OF / AN ARTIST (I) / NEW DELHI - 110001' on reverse 

26 ¾ x 18 ⅛ in. (67.9 x 46 cm.)

Painted in 1965

Acquired directly from the artist at Triveni Kala Sangam, New Delhi, circa 1984

Painted at the very start of his career, Rameshwar Broota’s portraits are among the artist's rarest works and considered gems within his œuvre. His portraiture has been compared with the self-portraits of Vincent Van Gogh, a comparison emphatically felt in the fluid brushwork, thick impasto and the figure’s earnest expression in the current lot.


‘Broota had excelled in portraiture right from his college days. He had painted a galaxy of portraits of self, friends and family, some in thick impasto and spontaneous brushwork, reminiscent of Van Gogh’s intense self-portraits, and others in which the strokes are more blended and subdued.’


(R. Karode, ‘Visions of Interiority: Interrogating the Male Body’, Rameshwar Broota, Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, New Delhi, 2015, p. 21)