Page 116 - Eye of the beholder

worked at a rapid pace in order to capture the essence of the landscape or the characteristics in portraits. About Langhammer’s portrait painting style, Pegge Hlavacek says in her memoirs, “Walter exerted all his powers to get a subject’s whole face down on canvas at the very first sitting. The rest of the posing was simply to enhance, trim, daub and finish up background, work on shoulders or hair, or an arm”. The stunning effect in his paintings was consequent to an engagement with a palette of primary colours, working on it, resulting in subtle nuances of tints and shades, which became the hallmark of his style. Langhammer’s compositional structuring did not mandate him to make preliminary sketches or drawings, working directly on paper or canvas. This approach and process established the artist’s acute perceptions and internalizations of memorable vivid experiences that he was able to bring forth when he confronted the tabula rasa of the support.
The oil painting in the Sadhu’s collection is that of the “Houseboats on Dal Lake” marking Langhammer and Kathe travels to Shimla and Kashmir. Indeed an impressionist work, in the manner of the rough and sweeping rapid broad brush strokes. The paint has been applied directly on the canvas in layers of thick impasto. The artist has clearly executed the painting alla prima on the site, capturing the scene as he experienced and witnessed it. The painting has the dominant hue of green with touches of blue to increase the intensity of light. The work has an emphatic Cezannesque character of ‘flat depth’, having engaged with colours that were both warm and cool, apparently producing effects of depth as well as of flatness. When seen at a glance, the beauty of the picture and the masterly composition is clearly impressive with the thick impasto of the color applied to the canvas creating an ambient tranquility and sunshine.
Langhammer was commissioned by the Tata’s to do a series of art works for the Jamshedpur steel plant in the late 1940s. This was definitely among the pioneering series of industrial artworks commissioned in any era. Langhammer stayed put in Jamshedpur for about three months to complete these works. Illustrative in nature, they reflect a high order of execution. The impressionistic style of painting, which leans on bold strokes while eschewing fine details, also lends to this series an aura of nostalgia. Walter Langhammer died in 1977, 20 years after he left India.
SELECT REFERENCE
Yashodhara Dalmia, The Making of Modern Indian Art: The Progressives, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2001 https://www.saffronart.com/auctions/PostWork.aspx?l=31141
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