Bonhams 1793 : Francis Newton Souza (India 1924-2002) Night Landscape,

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3 Jun 2009 14:00 BST London, New Bond Street
Modern & Contemporary Middle Eastern & South Asian Art
Back to auction 17362

Francis Newton Souza (India, 1924-2002)

Night Landscape, oil on board, signed and dated 1961 upper left, inscribed on the reverse F N Souza/Landscape/Night Landscape/1961, framed, 121.7 x 60.7cm (47 15/16 x 23 7/8in).

Estimate:

£50,000 - 80,000
US$ 76,000 - 120,000
€59,000 - 95,000

Footnotes

Provenance:
Private UK collection: formerly the property of Liselotte Kristian Souza, the artist's second wife. The painting hung in her Hampstead home for many years.

This is a striking composition, with its vertical format (which naturally goes against convention in all landscape painting) and its bold contrasting bands of colour: the dark green and black of the earth, the yellow of the buildings, and the deep blue of the sky. There is less of the heavy impasto associated with Souza's 60s views. A night landscape is unusual too in his oeuvre, and it may be that this is reflected in his inscribing the reverse first Landscape, then (in bolder, larger writing) Night Landscape. (For a similar night landscape, also from 1961, and with two bands of yellow buildings, see Bonhams, Islamic and Indian Art, 12th & 13th October 2005, lot 290).

More typical of Souza is the motif of the rising and falling townscape, stepped against the sky, towers and roofs arranged higgledy-piggledy. It is seen in his depiction of London skylines, notably of Hampstead and Belsize Park. On occasion, and as the 60s went on, this arrangement becomes a depiction of something like an earthquake, the houses appearing to tumble down or keel over at precarious angles. Some have seen this as reflecting contemporary concerns about apocalypse and nuclear war. (For examples, see Edwin Mullins, Souza, London 1962, p. 77, Italian Landscape, 1960, and p. 99, Red Landscape with Houses, 1961 (where the houses look as if they are riding in a stormy sea); or the sale in these rooms, 21st May 2007, lot 59).

Here, though, the scene is calm beneath a starry sky, reminiscent of van Gogh's more famous portrayal of the starlit Provencal landscape. It is true that already in the late 50s stepped townscapes appear in Souza's work. Kurtha notes his tendency to depict buildings as if they were unevenly stacked boxes. (A. Kurtha, Bridging Western and Modern Indian Art, Ahmedabad 2006, p. 150). But it is tempting to suggest that the motif developed further as a result of looking at towns - which with their towers and domes rise and fall in this manner on hillsides especially in Tuscany and Umbria - on his visit to Italy in 1960 on an Italian government scholarship. The trip gave rise directly to the exhibition Twenty-Seven Paintings from Rome at Gallery One. But Souza was to return to it again and again in the 60s, and afterwards in the 70s when the townscape was Manhattan, where the skyscrapers begin to break down and meld together, verging on the abstract, and the palette becomes even more vibrant than the sandy yellow seen in the present work.