Footnotes

A SIGNIFICANT EARLY SKETCH BY S.H RAZA

Provenance:
Property from a private collection, UK

Note:
The following work will appear in the forthcoming volume of the SH RAZA Catalogue Raisonné

The Raza Foundation has confirmed that this is a drawing relating to the watercolour Flora Fountain, circa 1940's sold at, Saffronart, Winter Online Auction, 1st - 4th December 2003, Online, Lot 17.


On his arrival in Bombay in 1943 to continue his art education, Raza was not able to register at Sir J. J. School of Art right away because his government scholarship was delayed. Instead, he began work at Express Block Studio, a print and design shop in the heart of the city's business district, and painted in his spare time. To Raza, the sights, sounds, and pace of Bombay were overwhelming and inspirational. The city's busy streets, as he saw them from his window at work, became a favorite subject of his watercolours. Through the urban landscape, Raza explored all the opportunities that this medium offered him, plumbing the depths of his own creativity in the process.

"The face of the city became an obsession with the young painter and he tried to recapture it in a hundred and more different moods; at twilight, in the blaze of an Indian summer sky, or in the flooding rains of the monsoon" (Rudolf Von Leyden, Raza, Sadanga Publications, 1959, p. 3). Flora Fountain, the central business district where the studio was located, is depicted with its Victorian buildings in many of Raza's works from this period. In this watercolour, the artist portrays the eponymous fountain and its surrounding streets in one of Mumbai's famous monsoon deluges. From his unique elevated perspective, Raza depicts both the fury of the weather and the persistence of life and work in the city despite it. The Times of India art critic Rudy von Leyden remembers the piece "...in which the whole universe seemed to dissolve in pouring rain and the artist's fluid colors washed out all firm shapes of houses and prodding elephantine buses" (Ibid.). Here the office buildings, and even Bombay University's imposing architecture, are dwarfed by an angry sky, reminding viewers of nature's omnipotence, even in a city like Bombay.