Page 226 - Eye of the beholder

According to the collector Anirban Sadhu, “I had my first encounter with the first edition of ‘Oriental Scenery’ deep down under the earth in the fortified basement of Basel’s university library room specially designed for manuscripts and rare books. For me, it was a truly wonderful experience – almost transformational in its intensity – the likes of which I would never forget. As I stood in that dimply lit room, my gloved hands touching the folio sized pages containing the hand colored aquatints, I realized I was experiencing something many would wish for, but only few fortunate enough to have”.
He continues, “With wider availability of the internet and access to better literature, I gradually started developing a well rounded understanding of pre-modern Indian art after coming to Switzerland. For the first time, it became possible to see good quality images of important works by many of these artists. With time, as I developed an understanding of the immensity of the contribution of these artists and the conditions in which they had worked, in my mind the Daniells achieved a level of importance higher than their contemporaries and an aura of romance that I could not bestow to the same extent on anyone else. Every time I would look at an image of an aquatint of Calcutta, I would be subconsciously transported to that place in time and space. I could feel a sense of unearthly reality in walking the dusty streets of Chowringhee while it was still a hamlet of upcoming Palladian mansions. Bullock carts and horse drawn carriages competed for space with Victorian memsahibs’ taking a stroll. The images from the aquatints had a mesmerizing effect on me. With time, I got into collecting some of the original aquatints, some of which are reproduced here. While researching the aquatints, I understood better the different versions and editions of the books published by the Daniells and the reason behind the huge price disparity between them. This was around the time when a complete 6 volume set of the first edition of ‘Oriental Scenery’ was auctioned at Sotheby’s for a whopping figure of upwards of 50,000 dollars. This news created a big impression on my mind, and I started looking around furiously to lay my hands on the same book.”
“By now, I had a sizeable collection of books, monographs and catalogs of works by the Daniells. I also owned quite a few interesting aquatints published by them. Was it time now for me to move to the next level, and own an original work by the Daniells, I asked myself? For me at that time, the very aspiration to own an original work still seemed to verge on the border of temerity. The paintings were expensive, and rarely came to the market. The only times I had seen them so far were in museums – The national Gallery of Modern Art in Delhi, and the Victoria Memorial in Calcutta. But I had already started getting consumed by the idea by then. Though the possibility of owning a painting seemed too remote to be realistic, I started keeping a watch on the secondary market throughout the world just in case a work popped up somewhere. Luck favoured the prepared mind when, after about 6 months of patient watching, this monochrome painting by the Daniells came up for auction at a small provincial auction house in England.”
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