Untitled (Portrait of Indrani)

“[M.F.] Husain made a portrait of my mother in 1956. I had always heard about the painting which had become legendary, but it had been destroyed and lost. I found the negative of the portrait of her with the painting in my father’s archives and made prints in my New York darkroom. I gave Husain a copy. There had been no other record of the painting. He remade the painting in New York in 1998 and carried it over to her flat. When she died at the shockingly young age of 68 a few months later, he wrote emotionally about the episode in his hand written hindi autobiography ‘MF Husain Ki Kahani – Apni Zabani’ published by Vani Prakashan. She had been his first muse, long before Madhuri Dixit!!” (R. Rahman, ‘MF Husain’, Take on Art, December 2010, p. 29)

Throughout his career, M.F. Husain painted portraits of his closest friends and their family, capturing poignant moments in time. Without being a portraitist in the strictest sense, Husain successfully captures the spirit and character of his subject. Portrait of Indrani is one of Husain’s earliest portraits and epitomizes the statuesque elegance of Indrani Rahman, the classical dancer and the first woman to be crowned Miss India. Husain also revealed in an interview shortly before his passing that the letters in his masterpiece Between the Spider and the Lamp, 1956 were M for Maria, I for Indrani and S for Soraiya.