Indian art has been selling from websites for quite some time now. And Saffronart.com is one of the better-known websites. Its auctions too, are well-participated in. So its latest auction, slated for May 13-16, is of interest to us. There are 223 lots with works by 95 artists. So it should provide choice enough for the buyer.

The expected ones are all there. There is a charcoal drawing by Amrita Shergil (lot 1, authenticated by her nephew, Vivan Sundraram), with an expected price of between Rs 5.75 lakh and Rs 6.75 lakh. There is an oil-on-board landscape by NS Bendre (lot 2) priced between Rs 4.5 lakh and Rs 5.5 lakh, one of KK Hebbar’s tragedy series (lot 4) at Rs 5.75 lakh to Rs 6.75 lakh and two interesting Husain narratives, one that looks like the descent of the Ganga (lot 10) at between Rs 7.25 lakh and Rs 8.25 lakh and a modern narrative of a gathering of friends of his (lot 13) between Rs 8.75 lakh and Rs 9.75 lakh. Then there are gouaches on paper by KH Ara (lot 15) and HA Gadz, (lot 17), an excellent restrained Raza acrylic-on-canvas (lot 30) expected to fetch between Rs 2.50 lakh and Rs 3 lakh and two lithographs by VS Gaitonde expected to fetch between Rs 60,000 and Rs 70,000.

Then there are works of Ram Kumar, Krishen Khanna, FN Souza and J Swaminathan. Santiniketan is represented only by KG Subramanyan, with none of the masters such as Gaganendranath Tagore, Nandalal Bose, Ram Kinkar Baij, Benode Bihari Mukherjee and Gopal Ghosh. Their inclusion, in my view, would have lent more momentum to the bidding.

The artists who are associated with different cities, such as Tyeb Mehta, Nalini Malani and Akbar Padamsee from Mumbai; Ganesh Haloi, Shyamal Dutta Roy, Suhas Roy, Sunil Das, Jogen Choudhury and Ganesh Pyne from Kolkata; Satish Gujral, Manjit Bawa, Arpana Caur, Gogi Saroj Pal Rameshwar Broota, Anjolie Ela Menon, and Arpita Singh from Delhi; Bhupen Khakhar and Ghulam Shaikh from Baroda; A Ramachandran Akkitham Narayanan, Yusuf Arakkal and Surendran Nair from Kerala, Redappa Naidu, Laxma Goud and T Vaikuntam from Andhra Pradesh; V Vishwanadhan from Chennai, and important cosmopolitans: Jehangir Sabavala, Shakti Burman, Akbar Padamsee, SH Raza and FN Souza to name only a few. One would have been glad to see the work of Noni Borpujari from Assam, just as one is happy to see that the works of Somenath Hore and Paritosh Sen, both of whom are intellectual artists of great delicacy, are included in this sale.

Among the younger artists, there are, of course, Manisha Gera Baswani, Neeraj Goswami, Paresh Maity, Atul Dodija, Bose Krishnamachari, Nataraj Sharma, Owais Husain and Jitish Kallat. I would have liked to see the works of Atul Sinha and Neeraj Bakshi included from Delhi; Dharmendra Rathore from Rajasthan; Vasudha Thozhur from Chennai; and Debabrata De from Calcutta, to give the collection an edge.

Among the works one would like to possess are: the Gaitonde prints, Somenath Hore’s ‘Women and Violence’ series oil-on-canvas of 1957, which is priced between Rs 8.75 lakh and Rs 9.75 lakh. It is a work done over forty five years ago but still has relevance. Stylistically also, the ‘faceless’ women riot victims with white eyes remind one of a stylistic ploy that Hore seems to have used long before Bikash Bhattacharya made it his famous hallmark. This work is one that should not be passed over.

Similarly, there is an early oil-on-canvas of KG Subramanyan, (lot 47: Rs 1.25 lakh-Rs 1.75 lakh) that is a precursor of his later narrative works that should not be missed. Arpana Caur’s mixed media work of a girl looking at trucks (at only Rs 20,000-Rs 25,000) and her oil-on-canvas, ‘Time,’ which is already well-documented (at Rs 1.5 lakh-Rs 2 lakh) are good buys. Arpita Singh’s visual lexicon of women (lot 177) ought to sell above the price of Rs 2.75 lakh, and Bhupen Khakar’s ‘Two Men on an Elephant’ with its tongue in cheek presentation of the portrayal of the distortions of patriarchal society (lot 85) ought to fetch a price above Rs 4 lakh. Also, the Ganesh Pyne jotting of a gesticulating man ought to go at a price above Rs 1.5 lakh, while his pen and ink drawing of a faceless warrior should go at around Rs 6 lakh. I would recommend also Nalini Malani’s ‘Global Parasites’ (lot 166: between Rs 1.25 lakh and Rs 1.75 lakh) and Sudhir Patwardhan’s charcoal on paper of a woman with groceries in her hands (lot 169: between Rs 35,000-Rs 45,000).

There are, of course, many more works. But these, I feel, have something special about them. Anyway, it is obvious from the pricing that our best Indian artists are still largely below the $20000 mark, so it makes them eminently investible in. That is why I believe this particular auction ought to do well despite the gaps I have highlighted above.