Raja Ravi Varma Steals The Show At Sothebys Auction
A mystery buyer startled the art world by paying £140,000 for six canvases by 19th century artist Raja Ravi Varma at an auction in London.
Ravi Varma was the star draw at an Sotheby's auction of over 120 paintings by India's top artists which fetched £753,000 (almost Rs 4.2 crore) on Tuesday.
Bidders from around the world battled for canvases by Varma, Jamini Roy, Rabindranath Tagore, M F Husain and other top artists. Says Patrick Bowring of Sotheby's: "This auction has confirmed that there is international demand for modern and contemporary Indian paintings."
The top-selling canvas of the day was Varma's "Woman is a White Sari", which sold for a record 25,300. Sotheby's had fixed an estimated price of 3,000-5,000 for the paintings. Two other Ravi Varma's sold for 24,150.
Nearly half the paintings were sold to bidders in the audience who included diamond merchants, real estate millionaires and Gayatri Devi, the ex-Rajmata of Jaipur.
Other canvases went to telephonic bidders from Bombay, Hong Kong, Singapore and the US.
Other best sellers of the day were "Woman holding a lotus with a songbird" by Ahmed Chughtai, which went for 17,250 and an untitled portrait by Rabindranath Tagore which was bought for 18,400 by an NRI who teaches at London Business School.
The auction included 17 paintings by Husain, including a celebrated painting of Mother Teresa and a much-talked-about painting of Sachin Tendulkar and Madhuri Dixit.
The painting titled Tendulkar and Madhuri fetched 12,000 less than half the expected price. Only one of the 17 Husain paintings fetched a higher than expected price - a set of five cut-out scenes from Indian epics.
Experts in the room said that the auction demonstrated the ever-growing popularity of the Bengal School which includes artists like Tagore, Jamini Roy, Ganesh Pyne, Jogen Chowdhury and Bikash Bhattacharjee. One Ganesh Pyne "The Encounter" fetched 16,100.
The auction hall was packed and many had to stand and bid.
Sothebys had to provide 15 lines in the auction hall for telephone bids.
The shock of the day was the poor showing by M F Husain who had to withdraw several canvases because they did not reach the reserve price. Husain's older works sold well.
However, the newer paintings including the Madhuri series appear to have declined in popularity.
Tuesday's auction was the fourth time that Indian art has been on sale internationally, it was the second auction in London.
Since last year, Sotheby's raised more than $ 1 million at two auctions of Indian art.
Sotheby's said later that the auction had been a runaway success. But art critics said that the performance had been mixed with a few artists attracting a strong response.
The identity of most buyers remained unknown.
However, there were at least half a dozen art dealers from Bombay and Delhi who bid for a number of canvasses. A diamond merchant from Antwerp also played an active role in the bidding war. May paintings were also bought by professionals from the UK.
One surprise winner of the day was Sri Lankan artist George Keyt who attracted a number of bidders for five canvasses. Keyt's "Woman Bathing which was expected to sell for around 4,000 was finally sold after a prolonged biding war for 8,000.
Works of artists from the Progressive Artists Group did well.
A painting by Anjolie Ela Menon titled Ritual at Kollengode that was expected to fetch about 7,000 sold for 10,500. But her paintings did not not fetch prices as high as they did at an auction at Christies last year.
Paintings by Bhupen Khakhar and Syed Haider Raza fetched prices that were lower or about the same as expected. Most of the paintings auctioned had been a part of the private collections of collectors in Europe for many years.