Pilgrim's Progress

JEHANGIR Sabavala is one of those people who seem elegant in casual clothes, which for him include a carefully knotted cravat. He is by nature courteous and can, on occasion, be dryly witty. The more civilised aspects of western culture are embedded not only in his manners but in his mind; he abhors carelessness and unpunctuality, and believes that one should be concerned for other people. He is now 75, and has been painting for most of that time. The statements and observations made by his paintings are achieved by echoes of experience, by hints and whispers from his palette, by understatement. He is completely unlike any other Indian painter.

Sabavala is also, to my mind, the most distinguished of all living Indian painters. Many poets have been fascinated by his work. At his best, he creates a world and a mythology of his own, as some good poets do. He presents us with nearly barren landscapes, cloud formations above them that admit a white sear of light; in this light, dunes, serrated by wind, spread out towards unclear horizons or mountains that look as though they have never been visited. Somewhere in these landscapes are human figures, hooded and in shroud-like cloaks, who embody the beautiful biblical phrase, "men like trees walking." One cannot really judge whether they are moving at all, and if they are, whether they have a destination, or a reason for their movement. Towards what? And away from whom? None of the canvases will tell you.

Many of his landscapes—even they are devoid of human figures and, with austere emptiness, deny any human existence—are mysterious in that they become alive under his brush: rock becomes flesh, veined with water, eyes open in petrified wood. Sabavala's imagination in recent years has also been inhabited by robed, alopecic figures, squat or elongated, which are recognisably human. Gentleness and bereavement appear in their movements, in their expressions. They seem, in some way, to be on a mission, to be healers or carriers of important information.

Sabavala's studies of trees, living or petrified, contain an identical quality of stillness and sadness. All these figures and landscapes belong to the same world. Sabavala has always been an artist who looks inside himself for his sources. In this he resembles European rather than other Indian painters. And for this reason, he has stood slightly apart from the others in this country. I wouldn't say that this was a matter of choice. His work deserves to be evaluated according to high standards; no high critical standards exist here, and some Indian critics and fellow painters have denigrated him for no reason except that he seems to come from another world. The trouble is, of course, that he does.

He was born into a wealthy Parsi family, spent his childhood in travel through several countries and, for some time, at school in Switzerland. In early manhood he studied in Paris at the feet of Andre Lhote. After his return to India, he lived quietly and painted. Unlike many other Indian painters, he has never known severe financial hardship.

But when his critics assert that Sabavala comes from a world different from theirs, these aspects of his life are mainly what they mean. I agree with them that he does, but not for those reasons. His growth has been, like that of any good artist, secreted within himself, silent, and unaffected by external circumstances. Out of this a fully conceptualised vision has emerged, of a world that is not our world but which reflects it intensely and closely, a world in which grief, suffering, loss, and endurance are constant factors. No other Indian painter, to my mind, has been able to concretise his personal vision of what it is like to be alive as Sabavala, over many years, has done.

So far as I know this book, subtitled The Painterly Evolution of Jehangir Sabavala, is the first biography of any Indian painter. Ranjit Hoskote, a young poet and art critic, has written it. To produce the biography, subtitles of a living person is, as I know from experience, a very difficult and usually thankless task. Hoskote has carried it off brilliantly. He has found the correct balance of style in relating the subject and his work, which is particularly hard in a biography, and he writes with an authoritative and crisp elegance. He is also exceptionally well-read, with strongly developed views of his own. Since Hoskote himself has an interesting mind, the text is full of ideas, and maintains its movement and flow to the end. The well-known English writer and photographer Richard Lannoy, an old friend of Sabavala's, has contributed an informative and affectionate preface.