Christie’s auction highlights the rise of India’s new art wealth

WITH Eastern Eye’s latest Asian Rich List due to be published on November 20, Christie’s auction of South Asian Modern & Contemporary Art in New York provides a useful pointer to where Indian wealth is now located.

The auction of 112 items, held last Wednesday (16), raised a total of $22.57 million (£16.85m), “more than three times the total low estimate”.

Everything was sold, with eight world records set during the sale.

Francis Newton Souza, an early British Indian, was undoubtedly the global star of the auction.

He was born in Goa, then a Portuguese colony in India, in 1924 and went on to become one of India’s most influential modern painters, the auction house said. He moved to London in 1949 and emigrated to the US in 1967.

Among the highlights were two early pictures by Souza. Woman with Lamp (1949) made $2.30m (£1.72m), almost six times its low estimate, while Building in Trafalgar Square (1955) fetched $1.12m (£836,000).

Untitled (Bull) by MF HusainChristie's

Among his other works, Rome, Church by Tiber realised $512,000 (£382,000) and Untitled (Head) $972,800 (£726,000).

There was a time when Indian foreign currency reserves were so low that people travelling to the west could take no more than £20 out of the country. In fact, as finance minister in 1991, Dr Manmohan Singh was forced to liberalise the economy as a condition of getting help from the International Monetary Fund.

At the Christie’s auction, bids were regularly coming in from India.

It is probably safe to assume that the majority of buyers were Indians dispersed across the diaspora. There were bids from the Gulf, especially the United Arab Emirates, India and the US, as well as some from Thailand. Once, there would probably have been more bidders from the UK, but thousands of entrepreneurs have been driven out of the country by the inheritance tax policies imposed by former Labour chancellor Rachel Reeves. They have taken their money to places such as Dubai.

Typically, with a work by Maqbool Fida Husain, for example, the auctioneer would say something like, “$180,000 in the UAE” or “$120,000 in the Gulf”.

The auctioneer’s comments, such as “India, it’s heading towards you”, suggest there are plenty of art collectors in the country able to bid hundreds of thousands of dollars for what they want, either for investment or to display in their homes or offices.

Ahead of the auction in New York, Eastern Eye was given a tour of about 30 of the 112 works on sale at Christie’s offices in King Street, London, by Damian Vessey, its international specialist and director for South Asian Modern & Contemporary Art.

Woman with Lamp by Francis Newton Souza Christie’s

Vessey said: “Souza wrote rather wonderfully in the first year of his arrival in London about the sort of nostalgia he was feeling towards not even just India, but specifically Goa, where he was from. He talked rather amusingly about getting lost on the London Underground and trying to navigate his way around London.”

Apart from the high prices achieved by Souza, other top results included A Progression of Sales, a sweeping 1969 landscape by Jehangir Sabavala, which made $768,000 (£573,000), and Ganesh Pyne’s The Slave, which made $1.15m (£860,000), more than four times its low estimate.

Other records included Meera Mukherjee’s work on paper Untitled (Woman with Bicycle), which realised $40,960 (£31,000); Benodebehari Mukherjee’s Untitled (Seated Figure), $128,000 (£96,000); Hari Ambadas Gade’s Experience - I, $83,200 (£62,000); Biren De’s work on paper August-Sept 1991, $57,600 (£43,000); Satish Gujral’s work on paper Untitled (Standing Figure), $61,440 (£46,000); Sri Lankan artist Ivan Peries’s The Well, $640,000 (£478,000); and another Sri Lankan artist Richard Gabriel’s Fisherman, $48,640 (£36,000).

Eastern Eye also took note of a number of other artists.

MF Husain will always be a favourite. His Untitled (Mother Teresa) realised $358,400 (£267,000); Untitled (Horse), $204,800 (£153,000); and Untitled (Bull), also $204,800 (£153,000).

Sayed Haider Raza’s Untitled (Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam) – Sanskrit for “The entire world is one family” – realised $371,200 (£277,000). Manjit Bawa’s Untitled (Woman with Bird) realised $396,800 (£296,000).

Untitled (Woman with Bird) by Manjit BawaChristie’s

Old House in Ahmedabad by Edwin Lord Weeks, an American painter noted for his Orientalist works, fetched $230,400 (£172,000); Untitled (Manchester Cotton Mills Series) by Bhupen Khakhar realised $61,440 (£46,000); and Jamini Roy’s Untitled (Mother and Child) $25,600 (£19,000). Vessey, who is based in London, said Indian art has “very much” been picking up and is “at an all-time high”.

He explained: “The previous peak before this was in 2006, 2007, 2008, pre-financial crisis. But it was a very different market to what it is now, when it is a much stronger, deeper, and sustained market.”

He went on: “No one has the crystal ball to know whether it’ll be sustained, but what we do have now is different to then. Then, you had people who had entered the market quite quickly, but weren’t necessarily invested in Indian art in the long term.

“What we have now – and it started since Covid – is people read very deeply around the subject. Existing and new collectors were looking for what was and wasn’t on their walls and devouring old catalogues. You had a much more discerning and informed collector base.

“Who are the buyers? Frankly, there will always be a bias towards south Asians or people of south Asian descent. But the more exhibitions we see coming up at institutions – like The Meeting Ground: Scenes from the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art at Christie’s – the more you start to engage with audiences and buyers around the world.”

He reckoned the buyers were in the UK, the Middle East, India and south Asia generally.

Rome, Church by Tiber by SouzaChristie’s

“We show a preview of the highlights for this collection in Mumbai and London and sell in New York. The auctions take place in March and in September.”

On India, Vessey said: “Wealth creation in India had put India in a particularly strong position. It’s all very well having a lot of wealth creation, but you need people to be engaged in the art as well, which they are.

“You’re able to go to collections and collectors and say the market is at an all-time high, now is the time to sell. You’re able to achieve record prices, because you’re bringing the topquality works to a strong market. That creates a sort of virtuous cycle that you’re then able to bring stronger and stronger artworks. And that’s what collectors are looking for.”

“Now there’s so much more transparency. The onus is on us to make sure that we’re doing as much of our research and due diligence and everything around each artwork to give it the best possible platform but also sourcing the most exciting and strongest works out there.”

Nishad Avari, head of Christie’s South Asian Modern & Contemporary department, said immediately after the auction: “Today’s auction continues the momentum we have built over our previous sales and exhibitions around the world this spring and summer. It was an honour to bring such strong works to the market, many of which have not been seen in public before, and to find them wonderful new homes.