76-77 / 184
76
77
32
JEHANGIR SABAVALA
(1922 ‒ 2011)
Down To A Sunless Sea
Signed and dated 'Sabavala 62' (lower left); inscribed ''Down to a
sunless sea'/ By Jehangir Sabavala/ B'bay 1962' (on the reverse)
1962
Oil on canvas
39.25 x 29.25 in (100 x 74 cm)
Rs 50,00,000 ‒ 70,00,000
$ 79,370 ‒ 111,115
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, USA
Private Collection, UK
Inscription on the reverse of the painting
Titled
Down To A Sunless Sea
, Sabavala borrows a line from
Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s famous poem
Kubla Khan
.
"In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure‒dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea
.
So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round;
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense‒bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.”
The present lot is quite likely Sabavala’s pictorial (and
metaphorical) interpretation of this poem which presents the
imagery of the sunny dome, the icy caves and the tempestuous
river in Sabavala’s own unique interpretation of the Cubist
idiom. In the artist’s landscapes in the early 60s, “Man lives and
floats in a far more extended and larger world than we normally
envisage.” (Artist quoted in Ranjit Hoskote,
Pilgrim, Exile,
Sorcerer: The Painterly Evolution of Jehangir Sabavala
, Mumbai:
Eminence Designs Pvt. Ltd., 1998, p. 92) As he broke away from
Cubist formalism, the sharp angularities of Sabavala’s paintings
softened and became multi‒faceted, made sublime by strokes
of illumination.
Image courtesy of Shirin Sabavala