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Lot Essay
Located between the real and the ideal, the landscapes that Jehangir Sabavala created over the course of his career are intuitive and timeless. Paintings like this one, inspired by scenes he encountered on his extensive travels in India, are carefully planned and constructed based on meticulous linear schema and highly nuanced colour plans. The end results are images of land, sea and sky unlike any others, at once restrained and emotionally charged.
Sabavala remembers the Palani Hills as one of his favourite destinations on childhood travels with his family. He recalled, “One was truly privileged to indulge in pure travel...My brother Sharokh and I spent months in Matheran, the Sahyadris, the Nilgiris and the Palni [sic] hills...we spent time talking, trekking and looking, and meeting the local people. We went on magnificent walks into the valleys, tried to make contact with the people and gathered knowledge of the rich flora and fauna.” (Artist statement, N. Adajania, ‘Between the Plain and the Precipice: Jehangir Sabavala’s Art of Travel,’ Limited Edition Serigraphs: Jehangir Sabavala - The Complete Collection, Mumbai, 2008, p. 30)
In this 1994 painting depicting the deciduous forests of lower Palani Hills that spread across Tamil Nadu and Kerala, the interplay between light and shadow is particularly refined. A close-up perspective gives this landscape an immediacy that transports viewers to its tranquil, sun-dappled environs to share in the artist’s contemplative experience of nature. Underlining the complexity of Sabavala’s handling of light and colour, evident in paintings like this one, Richard Lannoy notes, “The individual hues and tones, being mixed separately in subtly but cleanly differentiated gradations, impart to the picture surface a cleanliness and clarity of hue which is very unusual. [...] His mastery of light effects is based on a lifetime’s study of natural Indian light without resort to banal naturalism.” (R. Lannoy, ‘The Paradoxical Alliance’, Pilgrim, Exile, Sorcerer - The Painterly Evolution of Jehangir Sabavala, Mumbai, 1998, p. 16)
Reading deeper meaning into Sabavala’s Palani landscapes, Nancy Adajania writes, “The rhythm of the slender boles of the trees echoes the dance of spears and horses’ hooves in Uccello’s famous war piece, ‘The Battle of San Romano’. The viewerly imagination may be excited but also disturbed to find this resonance of the choreography of combat in a painting ostensibly cast as a meditation on natural beauty, on the redemptive solace of the forest. On closer viewing, though, we realise that ‘The Woods, Palni Hills I’ is also a study in counterpoint. The plantation seems divided in its loyalties between sunlight and mist. The crispness of the boles is held in check by the soft handling of foliage. The splash and draggle of light passing through mist is registered in lively yellow dabs on pebbled green bark. An Impressionist freshness animates the compositional rigour of the painting.” (N. Adajania, Limited Edition Serigraphs: Jehangir Sabavala - The Complete Collection, Mumbai, 2008, p. 62)
Sabavala remembers the Palani Hills as one of his favourite destinations on childhood travels with his family. He recalled, “One was truly privileged to indulge in pure travel...My brother Sharokh and I spent months in Matheran, the Sahyadris, the Nilgiris and the Palni [sic] hills...we spent time talking, trekking and looking, and meeting the local people. We went on magnificent walks into the valleys, tried to make contact with the people and gathered knowledge of the rich flora and fauna.” (Artist statement, N. Adajania, ‘Between the Plain and the Precipice: Jehangir Sabavala’s Art of Travel,’ Limited Edition Serigraphs: Jehangir Sabavala - The Complete Collection, Mumbai, 2008, p. 30)
In this 1994 painting depicting the deciduous forests of lower Palani Hills that spread across Tamil Nadu and Kerala, the interplay between light and shadow is particularly refined. A close-up perspective gives this landscape an immediacy that transports viewers to its tranquil, sun-dappled environs to share in the artist’s contemplative experience of nature. Underlining the complexity of Sabavala’s handling of light and colour, evident in paintings like this one, Richard Lannoy notes, “The individual hues and tones, being mixed separately in subtly but cleanly differentiated gradations, impart to the picture surface a cleanliness and clarity of hue which is very unusual. [...] His mastery of light effects is based on a lifetime’s study of natural Indian light without resort to banal naturalism.” (R. Lannoy, ‘The Paradoxical Alliance’, Pilgrim, Exile, Sorcerer - The Painterly Evolution of Jehangir Sabavala, Mumbai, 1998, p. 16)
Reading deeper meaning into Sabavala’s Palani landscapes, Nancy Adajania writes, “The rhythm of the slender boles of the trees echoes the dance of spears and horses’ hooves in Uccello’s famous war piece, ‘The Battle of San Romano’. The viewerly imagination may be excited but also disturbed to find this resonance of the choreography of combat in a painting ostensibly cast as a meditation on natural beauty, on the redemptive solace of the forest. On closer viewing, though, we realise that ‘The Woods, Palni Hills I’ is also a study in counterpoint. The plantation seems divided in its loyalties between sunlight and mist. The crispness of the boles is held in check by the soft handling of foliage. The splash and draggle of light passing through mist is registered in lively yellow dabs on pebbled green bark. An Impressionist freshness animates the compositional rigour of the painting.” (N. Adajania, Limited Edition Serigraphs: Jehangir Sabavala - The Complete Collection, Mumbai, 2008, p. 62)