Lot Essay
Known as an exemplary draughtsman, Abdur Rahman Chughtai was also a master printmaker, and by 1928 he had founded his own printing press. This delicate print is one of the most refined of Chughtai’s repertoire of etchings, which were printed in small editions and rarely numbered. Referencing tradition in his aesthetic while enacting his subjects as profoundly modern figures, Chughtai was a decisive force in the creation of a national consciousness and identity to resist the dominant colonial culture of his time.