Beschreibung:

Abdur Rahman Chughtai (Pakistan, 1897-1975) Untitled Signed and dated in Urdu indistinctly lower left Watercolour on paper 35 x 24cm (13 3/4 x 9 7/16in). Fußnoten Provenance: Sotheby's, Indian & Southeast Asian Art, New York, 29 March 2006, Lot 8; Christie's, South Asian Modern + Contemporary South Asian Art, New York, 16 September 2009, Lot 586; Private Collection, U.K. In 1911 Abdur Rahman Chughtai joined Mayo School of Art (now known as the National College of Arts, Lahore) where he was taught by Samarendranath Gupta, a pupil of Abanindranath Tagore Tagore was seen as the founder of the Calcutta based, Bengal School of art. The tendency to group Chughtai together with the Bengal school of painters was contested by the artist, who stated that contrary to Bengal art, which "favoured gods and goddesses and was full of pessimism and gloom, ... his art was radically different because it inculcated hope and faith in life." (Akbar Naqvi, Image and Identity: Fifty years of Painting and Sculpture in Pakistan, Karachi, 1998, pp. 51-54) Chughtai had a very distinctive style, incorporating the art nouveau, Indo-Persian miniature technique and Indian folklore. Hailing from a family of artisans and craftsmen, Chughtai used only the finest materials for his work, and so with each drawing or painting he created a leaf of quality and importance - a homage to the Mughal and Persian miniature traditions he was so heavily influenced by. The artist chose to paint Mughal, Iranian, Hindu, Punjabi, Kashmiri and Brahman subjects and later expanded to incorporate a 'pan-Persianism'.