PRINSEPS | Collector's Edition Winter 2025

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THOMAS DANIELL (1749 - 1840) - Dusasumade Gaut at Benares on the Ganges

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Dec 18

Lot location: Lower Parel, Mumbai

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THOMAS DANIELL (1749 - 1840) - Hindoo Temples at Bindrabund on the River Jumna

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Dec 18

Lot location: Lower Parel, Mumbai

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M. SURIYAMOORTHY (1944 - 2012) - UNTITLED (Portrait) (Set of 7)

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Dec 18

Lot location: Lower Parel, Mumbai

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M. SURIYAMOORTHY (1944 - 2012) - UNTITLED (Mother and Child) (Set of 9)

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Dec 18

Lot location: Lower Parel, Mumbai

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BISWAPATI MAITI (b. 1947) - UNTITLED (Sarangi Player)

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Dec 18

Lot location: Lower Parel, Mumbai

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MRINAL KANTI DAS (1928 - 1990) - ALINGAN

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Dec 18

Lot location: Lower Parel, Mumbai

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Dec 18

Lot location: Lower Parel, Mumbai

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GOPAL GHOSE (1913 - 1980) - UNTITLED (Landscape of a Farm)

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Watercolour on Paper 23 x 14 In. Signed & Dated Bottom Left Dated - 10/08/52 Gopal Ghose is remembered as one of the strongest colourists of post-Independence India. Trained first at the Maharaja’s College of Art in Jaipur and then at the Government School of Art & Craft in Madras, he absorbed two very different academic lineages before moving decisively beyond both. In the 1940s he became a founder member of the Calcutta Group , aligning himself with artists who argued that modern Indian art had to be “international and interdependent,” in dialogue with global modernism rather than confined to inherited styles. The 1940s were also the decade in which Ghose confronted history head-on. He travelled through Bengal in the years of famine, riots and wartime scarcity, sketching famine victims, demonstrations, and the violence of 1946 in a taut, nervous line. Some of these images were published in the CPI journal Swadhin . At the same time, he was already pushing his watercolours towards near-abstraction: twisted trees, burning horizons and agitated skies in which colour and brushstroke carry as much meaning as motif. From the 1950s onward, Ghose turned increasingly to landscape, flowers, birds and foliage, usually on paper, in watercolour, gouache or pastel. He travelled widely – from Shimla and Allahabad to Banaras and the countryside around Calcutta – with sketchbooks and a small kit of materials. Former students remembered him cycling out with them at dawn, bread and bananas in a bag, and demonstrating in a few rapid strokes how form, line and wash could condense a whole scene. Teachers and peers alike noted his ability to combine an almost calligraphic economy of mark with a saturated, luminous colour range that had few parallels in India at the time. Late works from the 1960s and 70s often reduce landscape to rhythm: bands of colour, quivering clusters of strokes, birds rendered as a few decisive marks on an atmospheric field. Critics such as W.G. Archer described him as a painter with the sensibility of a poet. The current lot is a sensitive example of Ghose’s enduring pursuit of chromatic abstraction, situating itself firmly within the vocabulary that made him one of Bengal’s most lyrical landscape painters.

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Dec 18

Lot location: Lower Parel, Mumbai

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NICHOLAS ROERICH (1874 - 1947) - LADAK 1940

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Dec 18

Lot location: Lower Parel, Mumbai

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RAMENDRANATH CHAKRAVORTY (1902 - 1955) - UNTITLED (Women)

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Dec 18

Lot location: Lower Parel, Mumbai

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SUDHIR KHASTGIR (1907 - 1974) - UNTITLED (Woman)

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Dec 18

Lot location: Lower Parel, Mumbai

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Dec 18

Lot location: Lower Parel, Mumbai

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Dec 18

Lot location: Lower Parel, Mumbai

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Dec 18

Lot location: Lower Parel, Mumbai

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DIPEN BOSE (1921 - 1964) - UNTITLED (Durga)

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Dec 18

Lot location: Lower Parel, Mumbai

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MRINAL KANTI DAS (1928 - 1990) - GOOD MORNING

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Watercolour on Paper 30 x 17.5 In. Signed & Dated in Bengali Lower Left Year - 1987 Mrinal Kanti Das was a Bengal painter rooted in Santiniketan’s post-Nandalal Bose generation. Born in Midnapore, he trained at the Government College of Art & Craft, Kolkata, graduating first in his class in 1948 . In the late 1960s, he joined Kala Bhavan, Visva-Bharati University as a lecturer, forming close working relationships with Binode Behari Mukherjee and Ramkinkar Baij , who arranged his exhibition at the Santiniketan gallery. From 1970 until his death, Das headed the art department at Ramakrishna Mission while commuting to Kolkata to administer teaching at the Indian Society of Oriental Art . His patrons included Jamini Roy , Sunayani Devi , and Suniti Kumar Chatterjee , situating him within a direct lineage of Bengal modernism and its institutional circles. Firmly identified with the Neo-Indian School founded by Abanindranath Tagore , Das worked in wash, transparent and opaque watercolour, ink and mixed media. Unlike many contemporaries, he avoided mythological themes , instead building a practice around observed life. His mature work is defined by attentive figuration — especially women in domestic or natural settings. Sandip Sarkar, art historian, described his style as “a deliberate programme of reality and imagination,” maintaining classical Indian pictorial sensibilities without overt reference to miniatures or Ajanta . This lot comes from Das’s late period, when the female figure became his primary subject. The painting reflects his time at Santiniketan, where he worked alongside Binode Behari Mukherjee and Ramkinkar Baij, but the approach is personal rather than narrative. The subdued palette, careful gradation, and quiet sensuality are typical of the works he made through the 1980s. Provenance - Bowrings European & Modern & Contemporary Indian Paintings, 20th November 2002, Lot No 174

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Dec 18

Lot location: Lower Parel, Mumbai

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Dec 18

Lot location: Lower Parel, Mumbai

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Watercolour on Paper 12.5 x 7 In. Sunayani Devi was a pioneering figure in early modern Indian art and one of the first Indian women artists to receive both national and international recognition in her lifetime. Born into the Tagore family in Calcutta in 1875, she began painting in her thirties without formal training, observing her brothers Abanindranath and Gaganendranath Tagore at work in the Bichitra Studio. Working primarily in gouache and tempera,she adopted a modified Japanese wash technique and painted with remarkable discipline. Her first exhibitions date back to 1915, when she participated in the Indian Society of Oriental Art's annual shows. By 1922, her work was shown in the Society’s landmark Fourteenth Annual Exhibition in Calcutta, which also included paintings by Paul Klee and Wassily Kandinsky—situating her alongside key figures of the international modernist movement. In 1924 art historian Stella Kramrisch presented her in her first book Jahrbuch der Jungen Kunst , writing that Sunayani’s images “sprouted like grass,” praising the spontaneity and inner clarity of her vision. In 1923, her works were exhibited in Berlin in one of the earliest showcases of modern Indian painting abroad. In 1927, they featured in a major U.S. touring exhibition organized by the India Society, opening at the Toledo Museum of Art. That same year, she participated in the Women’s International Art Club show in London, where Austrian painter Nora Purtscher-Wydenbruck described her women as “lotus-eyed” and monumental, likening their presence to frescoes. These moments positioned her not only as a domestic artist, but as an early global modernist voice. Thematically, Sunayani drew from devotional and folk sources—Radha and Krishna, Shiva and Parvati, women in repose—rendered in soft washes and lyrical outlines. As Partha Mitter has observed, her work merged “the modernist discourse of primitive simplicity” with the “nationalist discourse of cultural authenticity.” From the secluded zenana to Bauhaus-linked exhibitions, Sunayani Devi’s legacy lies in reshaping how India—and the world—understood modernism, femininity, and creative independence. The Chatterjee family was closely connected to the Tagore artistic circle, and early examples of Sunayani Devi’s work such as this lot are known to have remained primarily within such networks rather than entering public sale during her lifetime. Works traced to extended Santiniketan–Bichitra–Tagore relations represent some of the few verified channels through which her paintings have historically survived. Provenance - Originally acquired from Maitreya/Kishore Chatterjee Exhibited - Brunei Gallery, SOAS. Painting Freedom: Indian Modernism and Its Three Rebels. Curated by Dr Caterina Corni and Crispin Branfoot

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Dec 18

Lot location: Lower Parel, Mumbai

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SUNAYANI DEVI (1875 - 1962) - UNTITLED (Lady with Flower)

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Watercolour on Paper 10 x 8.5 In. Rendered in soft washes and minimal line, this work was likely executed in the 1920s or 1930s, Lady with Flower reflects her synthesis of pata folk traditions, Japanese wash techniques, and devotional iconography. The woman—clad in a light green saree and holding a lotus-like bloom—evokes what Devi once described as “pictures I have seen in dreams... the greater part of my paintings I have ‘found’ in my dreams.” Though her work drew on mythological themes, this painting belongs to a group of images representing women in poised introspection within domestic interiors; echoing her own confinement to the women’s quarters ( zenana ) during her early life. Their steady gazes and stylised profiles became hallmarks of her style. As Stella Kramrisch observed in 1927, “They are messengers from the world within... it is through these eyes, long and steady, yet alert like wagtails, that their thoughts and feelings are sent out and enliven the picture.” Devi’s technical approach—starting with red or black outlines, then washing pigment into the forms and dipping the paper into water—produced the soft tonalities visible here. This method, practiced in domestic intervals between supervising the household, gave rise to a body of work that was at once modern and intimate. In her own words: “ They [my brothers] work in the midst of the hustle of the outside world, and I work in an inner world. My pictures don’t reflect their influence—they are entirely different.” This distinction was both formal and ideological. Unlike the nationalist historicism of the Bengal School, her work distilled lived interiority—quiet, solitary, feminine. Though she exhibited widely, including at the Bauhaus-linked 1922 Calcutta show and in a major 1927 London exhibition, Devi’s practice remained deeply personal. Works such as Lady with Flower reflect not simply a revival of folk technique but a rare assertion of female authorship in the visual field of early 20th-century South Asia. Provenance - Originally acquired from Maitreya/Kishore Chatterjee Exhibited - Brunei Gallery, SOAS. Painting Freedom: Indian Modernism and Its Three Rebels. Curated by Dr Caterina Corni and Crispin Branfoot

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Dec 18

Lot location: Lower Parel, Mumbai

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KEREN SOUZAKOHN (b. 1956) - PORTRAIT OF SUSAN

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Dec 18

Lot location: Lower Parel, Mumbai

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Dec 18

Lot location: Lower Parel, Mumbai

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GOGI SAROJ PAL (1945 - 2024) - UNTITLED (Mother and Child)

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Dec 18

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S.G. VASUDEV (b. 1941) - UNTITLED (Portrait of a Man)

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Dec 18

Lot location: Lower Parel, Mumbai

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SUNDAR RAJU (b. 1951) - UNTITLED (Three Figures; Three Faces) (Set of 2)

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Dec 18

Lot location: Lower Parel, Mumbai

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PRAHLAD KARMAKAR (1900 - 1946) - HIMALAYAN BOY

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Dec 18

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Uma Gautam (b. 1962) - UNTITLED (Village Women And A Man)

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Dec 18

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Uma Gautam (b. 1962) - UNTITLED (Couple)

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Dec 18

Lot location: Lower Parel, Mumbai

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Dec 18

Lot location: Lower Parel, Mumbai

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M.K. PARENDEKAR (1877 - 1961) - HIMALAYAN 2

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Dec 18

Lot location: Lower Parel, Mumbai

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DEBABRATA CHAKRABORTY (b. 1959) - FLUTE PLAYER

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Dec 18

Lot location: Lower Parel, Mumbai

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YUSUF ARAKKAL (1945 - 2016) - UNTITLED (Seated Figure)

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Dec 18

Lot location: Lower Parel, Mumbai

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A.P. SANTHANARAJ (1932 - 2009) - UNTITLED (Maya and the Tusker)

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Dec 18

Lot location: Lower Parel, Mumbai

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RAVI VARMA Embellished Oleographs - UNTITLED (Figures) (Set of 6)

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Dec 18

Lot location: Lower Parel, Mumbai

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Dec 18

Lot location: Lower Parel, Mumbai

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ANAND MOHAN NAIK (b. 1937) - UNTITLED (Abstract)

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Dec 18

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NEMAI GHOSH (1934 - 2020) - SHAKHA PROSAKHA ; SIKKIM ; BALA (Set of 3)

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Dec 18

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LALU PRASAD SHAW (b. 1937) - UNTITLED (Two Figures)

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Dec 18

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Dec 18

Lot location: Lower Parel, Mumbai

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MRINAL KANTI DAS (1928 - 1990) - UNTITLED (Labourers at Sea / Gopalpur)

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Dec 18

Lot location: Lower Parel, Mumbai

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PARESH MAITY (b. 1965) - UNTITLED (Cornwall Seascape) (Set of 2)

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Dec 18

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J.M.S MANI (b. 1949) - UNTITLED (Girl And Kite)

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Dec 18

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KANCHAN DAS GUPTA (b. 1947) - UNTITLED (Buddha)

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Dec 18

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BIJAN CHOUDHURY (1931 – 2012) - UNTITLED (Couple with Sarangi)

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Dec 18

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PARITOSH SEN (1918 - 2008) - UNTITLED (Boy on Tricycle)

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Dec 18

Lot location: Lower Parel, Mumbai

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REBA HORE (1926 – 2008) - UNTITLED (Abstract)

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Dec 18

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MANISHI DEY (1909 - 1966) - UNTITLED (Priest)

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Dec 18

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Pastel on Board Year - Circa 1940 47.5 x 27.5 In. This portrait depicts Amal Chandra Home (1894–1975) — scholar, historian, editor and a recognised figure within the intellectual and cultural world of Bengal during the first half of the 20th century. Born into the Hom/Ray family of Sahila, Mymensingh (then East Bengal), he was the son of Gagan Chandra Home , and first cousin of historian Niharranjan Ray . His marriage to Ila Home of the Brahmo Dutta family of Joynagar–Majilpur linked him to another influential intellectual lineage, and it was Rabindranath Tagore who named their daughter Amalina , combining Amal + Ila — a detail preserved through family testimony. Home entered public life early — he later recalled attending the 1906 Calcutta Congress at age thirteen — and went on to be mentored by Ramananda Chatterjee , founder of The Modern Review and Prabasi . Chatterjee is known to have guided Home’s literary training and secured his first journalistic appointments in Punjab. He later served with The Panjabee and under Kalinath Roy at The Lahore Tribune , working through the turbulence surrounding the Martial Law period of 1919 . The Modern Review (Vol. LXXV) later cited how he “valiantly upheld the best traditions of our profession during the dangerous period of martial law in 1919.” Returning to Calcutta, he became Editor of the Calcutta Municipal Gazette , producing issues of lasting documentary relevance — notably the Tagore Birthday Supplement (May 1941) with a foreword by Hallam Tennyson , and the 23rd Anniversary & Independence Commemoration Number (Dec 1947) , later circulated within Santiniketan circles and bearing significant signatures. Two such issues have appeared previously with this platform, both demonstrating his editorial stature and network in the Tagore world. Home also held a position on the Executive Committee of the Academy of Fine Arts, Calcutta , as listed in the 1934–35 Second Annual Exhibition Catalogue , placing him among figures such as Percy Brown, Atul Bose, Johan van Manen and P.N. Tagore — firmly within the institutional art landscape of the city. Given the dispersal of much of his private correspondence — including letters of Rabindranath and Rathindranath Tagore, Amiya Chakravarty, Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay, Subhas Chandra Bose and Maitrayee D evi, all referenced in secondary sources — visual material relating to Amal Home is exceptionally uncommon. The present portrait is a rare surviving object connected to a figure who recorded, interpreted and, at times, shaped cultural life in Bengal during a transitional modern period. Works associated with Home surface infrequently. Only two notable examples — landmark documentary issues of the Calcutta Municipal Gazette from 1941 and 1947 — have previously appeared with this platform. This portrait stands as a valuable extension of that record, offering historians and collectors a visual anchor to a life now preserved largely in print.

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Dec 18

Lot location: Lower Parel, Mumbai

Auction currency	INR
Buyer's premium	25 %
Sales tax	5 %
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