“Husain’s horse swept across continents, amalgamating
various influences into a composite form...[They], however,
are singularly his own.”
(Yashodhara Dalmia, “A Metaphor for Modernity: Maqbool Fida Husain”, The Progressives: The Making of Modern Indian Art, New Delhi: Oxford University
Press, 2001, pp. 107?108)

The horse is M F Husain’s most iconic subject, one that has galloped and pranced across his canvases... “Husain’s horse swept across continents, amalgamating
various influences into a composite form...[They], however,
are singularly his own.”
(Yashodhara Dalmia, “A Metaphor for Modernity: Maqbool Fida Husain”, The Progressives: The Making of Modern Indian Art, New Delhi: Oxford University
Press, 2001, pp. 107?108)

The horse is M F Husain’s most iconic subject, one that has galloped and pranced across his canvases throughout his decades-long artistic career. The powerful creature was a constant muse, embodying power, grace, and freedom, which he immortalised in his work as both a universal and personal symbol of expression. Describing his distinctive portrayal of the animal, Rashda Siddiqui, a close friend of the artist writes, “Husain’s painted horses do not just bear majestic stateliness and striking beauty but also come alive in every mood, situation and form. Their forceful movement conveys so much that it carries us away with it.” (Rashda Siddiqui, In Conversation with Husain Paintings, New Delhi: Books Today, 2001, p. 112)

While seemingly simple in concept, Husain’s horses were shaped by a wide range of Eastern and Western influences. As a child, he often accompanied his beloved grandfather to the local farrier who would tend to the stately tonga horses of Yeshwant Rao Holkar II, the then Maharaja of Indore. Yet his most formative influence came when he was 15 years old, when he witnessed processions of mourners carrying the Duldul or tazia, the effigy of Prophet Muhammad’s grandson Imam Hussain’s horse, during Muharram. Shiv Kapur observes, “[...] the earliest icon that he had a part in creating was the apocalyptic horse of the tazias. He was to remain loyal to that icon; it never strayed far from his imagination in his subsequent paintings.” (Shiv Kapur, Husain, Richard Bartholomew and Shiv Kapur, New York, 1971, p. 32)

As Husain began travelling across India at the start of his career in the 1950s, he imbibed influences from the country’s numerous folk and cultural traditions, including the Bankura horse of West Bengal, the horses pulling the chariot of the Sun God at the Konark temple in Odisha, and the Ashwamedha, the legendary stallion from the Mahabharata. His renderings of the horse also gained further nuance from exposure to diverse cultures while travelling abroad during his early years as an artist. Critic Geeta Kapur notes, “Upon the initial image of the Duldul horse, which as a child he had seen in the processions of Muharram, he has superimposed many varieties of horses; the horses from Chinese paintings which he saw during his visit to China in 1952; the big-rumped horses of Paolo Uccello; the horses of Marino Marini with their phallic necks; the shy, dream horses of Franz Marc. These contrary varieties resolve themselves with Husain into an image of a wild horse, a beautiful noble creature of vast spaces.” (Geeta Kapur, “Maqbool Fida Husain: Folklore and Fiesta”, Contemporary Indian Artists, New Delhi: Vikas Publishing House Pvt Ltd, 1978, p. 138)

The horses in the present lot convey the same dynamism and vigour with which Husain painted them. He harnesses their immense power through a virtuoso use of line and colour and yet they are never static but charge forth with wild, untrammelled energy. “[Husain’s] horses are rampant or galloping; the manes, the fury, the working buttocks, the prancing legs, and the strong neighing heads with dilated nostrils are blocks of colour which are vivid or tactile or are propelled in their significant progression by strokes of the brush or sweeps of the palette knife. The activity depicted is transformed in the activity of paint.” (Richard Bartholomew, Husain, Richard Bartholomew and Shiv Kapur, New York, 1971, p. 20) While three horses surge forward, a fourth appears to turn back, the opposing motions creating a counterpoint that heightens the sense of restlessness in the painting. Husain once remarked, “Horses are beautiful animals-I see them in two parts-the front, which is forceful and triumphant, and the back graceful like a woman. It could be regarded as a mix of power and grace; that is how I depict my horses-charging like a dragon in the front and graceful and elegant from the back.” (Artist quoted in Marguerite Charugundla, “In Conversation With M F Husain”, Sarina Charugundla ed., Lightning by M.F. Husain, New York: TamarindArt, 2019, pp. 107?108) Set against a flat green background and rendered on a monumental scale, the painting possesses a theatrical quality, likely shaped by Husain’s lifelong love of cinema and his early background as a billboard painter.

As a founding member of the Progressive Artists’ Group, which came into being in Bombay on the cusp of Indian independence, Husain sought to recast the country’s artistic traditions while simultaneously taking in contemporary developments in Western modernism to forge a new artistic language that would be reflective of India’s own journey towards modernity. This philosophy shaped his artistic style, as is evident in the present lot. Art historian and collector Daniel Herwitz explains, “Husain took the hard-edged and rigid planar construction of cubism and rendered them cinematic by splitting his canvas into planes with the angular breaks of Gupta sculpture. He sent those forms dancing by crowding his canvases with the intensity of the Indian street corner, by applying orange, yellow and purple in the manner of paint splashed onto the gods of the byways in Rajasthan, the garish cinema hoardings of Bombay, the strident clashes of the Meenakshi temple in Madurai, by setting them in motion in the manner of the horse.” (Daniel Herwitz, “Like Thunder and Lightning”, Sarina Charugundla ed., p. 50)

Notably, the composition of the present lot is similar to Lightning, an iconic mural-sized painting of horses that Husain made a few years earlier in 1975. The monumental work depicts his idea of a rising nation with references to the construction of an India poised to become a global power in its own right. Herwitz adds, “...Husain’s horses early became his icon. For they were beings always catapulted into action, beings whose every response was dynamic, whose power was that of fateness into motion [...] The horse is the place where freedom, contortion, control, and the fact of headlong immersion into a shifting landscape towards the unknown, become human.” (Herwitz, p. 50)

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