The staple at the auction house

If auction houses dealing in 20th-century Indian art have a staple, that artist has to be Jamini Roy. There has yet to be an auction that has not featured works by this prominent artist who defined a new wave of art practice, unleashing the juggernaut of modernism in a country that had been previously stultified by academic realism. Roy broke those conventions to launch a movement that was populist for being folk-like but with the ability to evoke local sentiments.
 
That he was prolific is by now well known, but Roy also often painted the same simple scenes over and over again, sometimes not even bothering to vary the details, which has made any attempt at creating a catalogue raisonné of his work impossible. Old-time collectors recall how he would keep scribbles of his renderings at hand, so they could “order” customised works with the figures they wanted placed in a way they could choose. If, on the one hand, this has resulted in an instant recognisability of his work, on the other it has fed the market of fakes, for copying a Jamini Roy is almost the first thing aspiring artists, particularly in Bengal, do as part of their own prescribed training.
 
On the upside, this has meant that Roy has remained more affordable than others, and art buyers have not had to over-stretch their budget in an attempt to acquire his works. Till now, that is. Interestingly, despite the ban on taking his works out of the country (he is one of nine National Treasure artists), there has been a strengthening in his prices. Though he has yet to arrive at the commanding heights achieved by some of his peers, it now seems a matter of time before he breaches the Rs 1 crore benchmark that has become a catalytic point for artists as well as collectors
 
Hardening prices imply a growing interest in an artist, which can be on account of any of a number of reasons — from exhibitions and retrospectives at important institutions to rarity or historicity. In the case of Roy, it can best be ascribed to steadfast demand and unflagging interest in his works, which increasingly can now only be seen in auctions rather than in galleries. Both recent auctions — Christie’s in New York and Saffronart in New Delhi — featured works by him that far exceeded their lower estimates — one of them quadrupling it to Rs 33.6 lakh (over an estimate of Rs 8-10 lakh). Not that this is close to his benchmark, which rests at almost twice that figure.
 

Jamini Roy often painted the same simple scenes over and over again

Interestingly, Roy’s scribbles and drawings almost equal those of F N Souza’s, providing an interesting counterpoint to how much the former’s works might have been valued had he painted larger canvases. As for criticism that Roy repeated himself and that there is a profusion of his work in the market, punters point out that this has hardly been a reason for denting either the popularity or the market for one of America’s most expensive artists, Andy Warhol.
 
There are constants other than Roy, of course, who form the bulwark of auction houses, artists without whom a sale might appear impossible. Those that have featured without a break, and enjoy great popularity, include Souza and S H Raza, though record-setting artists V S Gaitonde and Tyeb Mehta are not as consistently represented for being harder to come by. But recent sales have seen a spike in the number of auctionable works of M F Husain. Clearly, his period of exile, when buyers were wary of even being seen acquiring his works with right-wing protesters threatening outside the venues, is over, and collectors can’t seem to have enough of him.

Kishore Singh is a Delhi-based writer and art critic. These views are personal and do not reflect those of the organisation with which he is associated