Untitled (Family Portrait)

Tracing the history of portraiture, humans have been portrayed as omens and sacred fetishes, divine beings and historical personages, passionate individuals and part of a mass consciousness, subjects of experimentation and icons of self. Portraiture is the art that remembers a person at their most manifest moment, and relates their story to the world. M.F. Husain painted portraits of his closest friends and their family, capturing the most poignant moment in time, drawing all the family members together for life. In this portrait, Husain lovingly portrays the Gandhy family, almost within his famed paradigm of mother and child; Kekoo and Khorshed Gandhy with their four children Rashna, Adil, Behroze and Shireen. Husain charmingly renders Adil sitting on a horse - a playful inclusion of the animal that was so integral and iconic within his oeuvre.