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Lot Essay
Speaking about the Banwell family, of whose collection the present lot is part, Krishen Khanna recently recalled, “Of course, I met them first in Madras. I was with the bank, and he was with an oil company, you know. But, we met at the Club, and then we became very very fast friends. And we were family friends. And they came and stayed with my parents many times, and I happened to be there, and they spent quite a number of days with us at the Simla house, Ravensdale as the name was of the house. And it’s a very happy memory of them” (Artist statement, in conversation with Malati Shah, 11 January 2021).
Commemorating one of the happy summer afternoons that the Banwells and Khannas spent together at Ravensdale, this painting of the artist’s younger daughter Malati sitting under a tree in the garden with Martha Banwell perfectly captures the languid idealism of the young subjects. Their dresses dappled in sunlight, the girls represent a sense of bright optimism and hope for the future. Like his other works from the mid-1960s, this atmospheric painting is influenced by the work of American Abstract Expressionists that Khanna encountered on his travels in the United States earlier in the 1960s, and celebrates the artistic freedom he found after finally quitting his job as a banker with Grindlay’s after an unhappy stint with them in Kanpur, and turning to painting as a full-time profession.
“This was, you know, of our Simla house where our friends and so on used to come. Two pretty girls sitting there, near the garden outside. And, I thought this would make a very happy kind of a painting. I did it, I think, in Simla. Yeah, and I’m quite amazed that it’s now surfaced after so many years, but I still think it’s a very nice painting. Of course, I’ve changed myself as artists do, but a very nice painting” (Artist statement, Ibid., 2021).
Commemorating one of the happy summer afternoons that the Banwells and Khannas spent together at Ravensdale, this painting of the artist’s younger daughter Malati sitting under a tree in the garden with Martha Banwell perfectly captures the languid idealism of the young subjects. Their dresses dappled in sunlight, the girls represent a sense of bright optimism and hope for the future. Like his other works from the mid-1960s, this atmospheric painting is influenced by the work of American Abstract Expressionists that Khanna encountered on his travels in the United States earlier in the 1960s, and celebrates the artistic freedom he found after finally quitting his job as a banker with Grindlay’s after an unhappy stint with them in Kanpur, and turning to painting as a full-time profession.
“This was, you know, of our Simla house where our friends and so on used to come. Two pretty girls sitting there, near the garden outside. And, I thought this would make a very happy kind of a painting. I did it, I think, in Simla. Yeah, and I’m quite amazed that it’s now surfaced after so many years, but I still think it’s a very nice painting. Of course, I’ve changed myself as artists do, but a very nice painting” (Artist statement, Ibid., 2021).