Revisiting the precious legacy of artist
Jehangir Sabavala in the centenary year of his birth
Geeta Doctor
In many of the luminous landscapes that dominated the painted world of Jehangir Ardeshir Sabavala, veiled figures appear in groups or as solitary seekers of distant horizons.
As we mark the centenary year of the birth of this very private of artists, we cannot but repeat the portrait that appeared in Parsiana ("Aristocrat of the spirit,” In Memoriam, Parsiana, December 7, 2011) at the time of his passing.
As we had declared: "He was an aristocrat of the spirit who embodied the best of what it means to be a Zoroastrian, a Parsi, an Indian and a citizen of the world of ideas that go beyond all these definitions.
"It was of course as an artist of contemporary India that he distinguished himself creating a vision that was as distinct as the man himself. In his tireless explorations of the world around him and perhaps those within his restless mind, he created canvases of austere elegance, seeking for a meaning beyond the immediate boundaries of color, content and compositions to lay bare images of haunting beauty.
Jehangir Sabavala's painting Rice-fields, Palni Hills, oil on canvas 2008
"The middle period of his life as an artist between the mid-60s and ’70s saw some of his most luminous canvases. Some of these were peopled with shrouded forms, prompting him to give them titles of lost tribes, or ancestors forever on the move searching for a permanent shore. Others like the delightful Green Thoughts in a Green Shade recorded a sudden encounter that the artist made when he chanced upon an ambush of white butterflies in a forest clearing and created that moment of intense joy.”
It made him, as he was to say often, an insider who was also the perpetual outsider, never belonging to any of the dominant groups whether they identified themselves as being progressive, regional or nationalistic. The term for him today would be that he was an "outlier”; a person defiantly treading his own path, consistent only in his fierce determination to exhibit his works in subtly different variations.
As the poet Adil Jussawala was to write in a 1972 exhibition catalog: "There are no sudden jumps in Sabavala’s career, no false starts, no infantile exhibiting of failed experiments...With Sabavala, the end of the journey is clearly in sight even as it is begun.”
Sabavala and his brother Sharoukh had spent their early years of schooling in Switzerland. For some time, Jehangir, with his striking good looks, aspired to be an actor. He was about to gain admission at the University of Oxford in the UK when, due to the outbreak of World War II, he returned to Bombay. He studied at the University of Bombay before finally deciding on a career in the arts. He joined the J. J. School of Arts which was in its heyday and received a thorough grounding in the academic art regimen of the era. He then went to the Heatherly School of Fine Arts in London and then moved to Paris. He attended the Academie Julien and the Academie Andre Lhote, at that time the leading spirit who had kept the spirit of cubism alive and flourishing after the war years. For most of the 1950s, Sabavala lived in Paris, gravitating between teachers and ateliers, the last of them being the Academie de la Grande Chaumiere. It would explain how thoroughly his art inheritance was steeped in the classical European mode.
He had by then married Shirin (née Dastur), a kindred spirit, vivacious companion in all his journeys and muse who often took on the role of organizer of his exhibitions in the later years after they had settled down in Bombay. Her father had been a renowned botanist with the family living in Nagpur.
During one of their visits to Madras in the late 1980s, while alighting at the home of Mala and Deepak Mukherjee, who had undertaken to take the three of us on a road trip to Pulicat Lake some 40 odd km north of the city, Shirin’s eyes lit up when she saw a small tree with delicate blue flowers standing close to the entrance of the house. "Lignum Vitae,” she announced, directing Sabavala to the tree’s Tiffany-window-like elegance as it stood there. Shirin’s interest and enthusiasm for the variety of flora and fauna that we found while floating very precariously on a country boat across the Pulicat Lake was what made the trip memorable.
Arun Khopkar, the film-maker has, in the 1993 feature Colours of Absence captured the precision with which Jehangir creates his canvases. Others have documented the meticulously annotated palette of paints that the artist lays out before approaching the canvas, as also the range of brushes, palette knives, tiny tools for engraving the surface of his layered work and the chemistry of oils and turpentine. It would not be wrong to compare him to a medieval watchmaker assembling the minute wheels and cogs that he intends to place on the flat surface of his canvas to re-create a moment in time.
Less baffling perhaps is the title that art critic Ranjit Hoskote gave to his superb study of the artist’s work and life: Pilgrim, exile, sorcerer. The painterly evolution of Jehangir Sabavala (1998).
"I think, I like the idea of being called a ‘sorcerer,’” Jehangir explained during an interaction with the public as seen in a video of the event. "It means I create a sort of magic with colors to bewitch the audience.”
In the centenary of his birth, the far horizons of the artist continue to beckon us with intimations of transcendence into his unique gaze.
Jehangir was awarded a Padma Shri in 1977 and the Lalit Kala Ratna in 2007. His reputation as an artist continued to soar during his last decade. The work entitled Vespers fetched Rs 2.1 crore (USD 264,292) at the Bonhams sale. Another work, Casuarina Lake fetched Rs 1.7 crore (USD 213,950) at Saffronart in 2010. In 2021 his painting titled The Embarkation sold for Rs 12.6 crores (USD 1,590,000).
"Ricorso” 2008 was the last exhibition of his works at the Sakshi Gallery.
Following his demise in 2011, Shirin started The Jehangir Sabavala Foundation to maintain his commitment to the arts.
Aafreed Sabavala, their daughter, is now the guardian of that precious legacy.
Memories of mother
Jehangir Sabavala’s mother Bapsy (pictured) was a famous hostess, a patron of the arts, in particular the theater, but also a suffragette; perhaps, in her own way, even a Gandhian. She made her own experiments with truth and these have now become the stuff of legend, not always related kindly. She traced her lineage to the aristocratic Cowasjee Jehangir family in the heyday of the Parsi merchant barons who ruled Bombay as it was then known. They left their mark on its architecture, as also most enduringly on its civic and mercantile society.
In an article written by me for Seminar publication 528 following a seminar entitled "City of Dreams. A Symposium of the Many Facets of Bombay” Jehangir revealed both his admiration and love for his mother. We can also get some idea of the extraordinary pre-Independence world in which Jehangir was raised.
"I speak of mother, widely known by her moniker ‘Bapsy.’ Christened Meherbai, she was the third and youngest child born to Sir Cowasji Jehangir (First Baronet) and Lady Dhunbai Cowasji Jehangir, in Bombay in 1892.
"The Raj rode astride the Indian Empire — and she was a Parsi Victorian. Born to an illustrious and wealthy Zoroastrian family, which was expanding its business interests (cotton mills, real estate, money-lending) and consolidating its fortune, it was also learning how to use its wealth wisely and well, through benefaction and philanthropy, thus amply rewarding the city for all that the latter had given to it.
"The tradition of charity started with Bapsy’s ancestor, her grandfather, the first Sir Cowasji Jehangir (KCIE) and was carried on into her day by her own extended efforts. The family endowed Bombay with schools, hospitals, the University Convocation Hall, the Elphinstone College, the Jehangir Art Gallery, the Cowasji Jehangir Public Hall, now the National Gallery of Modern Art — just to mention a few of the memorable landmarks that recall its munificence.
"As a pre-adolescent, she enjoyed nothing more than dressing up and playing roles. A passion for acting and drama was ingrained in her. Her favorite part was to emulate Lady Lawrence Jenkins, wife of the then Chief Justice of Bombay Presidency.
"Bapsy had the upbringing of an emancipated Indo-Victorian, given the typical Parsi upper class setting to which she belonged. Schooling was more private than public. There were the ‘mehtajis’ to oversee Gujarati, writing, and her calculation skills. And there were English governesses to teach her the language, the arts and correct etiquette — all a part of her curriculum. A love of music and the theater was induced under the tutelage of a Miss Schmuck (Bapsy became a good amateur pianist, and the theater was a consuming passion), and as a young person she was an accomplished horsewoman.
"It was one of her governesses, a Miss Dicky, who used to throw the little bundle of joy up into the air, saying ‘Babsy Wabsy darling baby’ and that is how her name Bapsy was coined, to remain with her for all of her life. The sedate ‘Meherbai’ got left behind, and was relegated to official and legal usage only.
"I remember travelling with mother as a boy, always an exciting happening. I especially enjoyed being taken to the theater, the more so as she had a penchant for demanding entrance to the dressing rooms of famous stars. She inevitably got her way. Dressed resplendently in flamboyant saris, and ornately jewelled, a young son in tow — she was indeed a rare sight in the London and Paris of 75 years ago.
"I recall the gracious Dame Sybil Thorndyke and Emyln Williams performing in The Corn is Green. And in New York, the glamorous Tallulah Bankhead, lead in The Little Foxes. Not only did we barge into the latter’s dressing room, but after the performance Tallulah escorted us home in her enormous, chauffeured limousine. Do you wonder that I, all of 17, was totally star-struck? The British actor and director Sir John Gielgud during a visit to Bombay was left speechless when mother invited him to our home, known as ‘Aewan-e-Rafiyat,’ on Malabar Hill. Her command — ‘Come and have lunch with me, my house is a symphony in stone!’ He did, and wrote about it in his autobiography.
"By the way, to let you in on a secret, her imagined name in ‘lights’ was Zita Lasa. Alas, never used, never marqueed! But she did become well-known on the local amateur stage of the Bombay of those days. She also produced and directed one of the first early films of the 1920s, entitled Darkness into Light, in which she starred as the ill-fated heroine.
"Later came several theater productions directed and produced by her. Dil-Pazir, which was designed by Karl Khandalawalla (lawyer, scholar, author of the Lalit Kala Academy series on Indian art), premiered at the old Capitol Theatre. He conceived marvelous living cameos reconstructed from ancient and modern Indian paintings. And again in 1940, Fantasy in a Mediaeval Indian Street was directed by Bapsy and scripted by Khandalawalla.
"She was considered a ‘bombshell for orthodoxy.’ She appeared on the stage to assert the right of the Parsi woman to act with members of the opposite sex, just when a controversy was raging in the newspapers on the subject.”
It was a remarkable legacy. G. D.