Page 257 - Eye of the beholder

I had started getting interested in the work of the Daniells almost from the same time I started developing an interest in art history. This was way before I had the means of buying any art of any sort. In those days, I used to be a student of Molecular Biology at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) in Mumbai. The TIFR was known for its vast and impressive collection of post-independence modern Indian art. The founding director of TIFR, Dr. Homi J Bhabha, under the patronage of Jawaharlal Nehru had amassed a substantial collection of the best of contemporary works from the 1950s to the 1970s. Paintings by Ara, Mehta, Gadre and Husain lined the walls of our corridors at a time when few knew about the paintings, and none of these artists had started commanding the prices they would start fetching in the next decade. Among these paintings was the biggest ever Husain that I have seen till date. This was a huge painting (about 20 feet long) lining the wall of the entire corridor of the mezzanine floor, leading to the central library. The few amongst us who had an interest in anything beyond the narrow confines of our own research only had modern art to turn to. Nor were any useful books available readily in those days to educate oneself about arts. Sadly, the situation hasn’t changed much for the better twenty years on.
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 Chowringee while it was still a hamlet of upcoming palladian mansions where bullock carts and horse drawn carriages competed for space with Victorian memsahibs taking a stroll. The images from the aquatints really did have such a mesmerizing effect on me. With time, I got into collecting some of the original aquatints, some of which are reproduced here (Figure 1). 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 Sothebys for a whopping figure of upwards of 50,000 dollars**. This news created a big impression on my mind, and I started looking around deliriously to lay my hands on the same book.
As an example of how chance favors the prepared mind, 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.
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