Authenticity of Indian works in university exhibition questioned

The withdrawal of 4 heaps from a Christie’s sale in New York earlier this 12 months has renewed scrutiny on a latest exhibition in London to which they had been loaned. The 4 works—listed on the public sale home’s web site as by Abanindranath Tagore, Gaganendranath Tagore and the Early Bengal Faculty—had been proven in Portray Freedom: Indian Modernism and its Rebels (11 April-22 June) at London’s Faculty of Oriental and African Research (Soas). A Christie’s spokesperson tells The Artwork Newspaper that the works had been faraway from the public sale home’s South Asian Fashionable and modern sale, held in New York on 18 September, for “additional analysis”, with out elaborating additional.

The Soas present surveyed Indian Fashionable artwork via three of its main figures: Jamini Roy, Rabindranath Tagore and Hemen Mazumdar, alongside different Nineteenth- and Twentieth-century artists and actions from the subcontinent. “There may be a number of dialogue round ‘fakes’ in Indian artwork,” said a wall textual content within the exhibition. “Sadly, there isn’t any rigorous scholarship documenting the output of those artists.”

Round 85% of the greater than 100 works within the present, virtually all work, are owned by Nirmalya Kumar, a Kolkata-born enterprise administration professor and artwork collector primarily based between India, Singapore and Switzerland. Round a dozen different non-public lenders offered the remaining works within the exhibition, in accordance with a Soas spokesperson. Kumar has been gathering artwork because the mid-Nineteen Eighties, he tells The Artwork Newspaper, amassing one of many largest collections held outdoors India of works by Roy, Mazumdar and related faculties. “I’m a devotee to this discipline,” he says, including: “There may be not sufficient experience on these artists.”

A number of specialists on these artists are expressing considerations over the authenticity of a variety of works within the Soas exhibition, together with three who’re going public with their misgivings. Amongst them is Charles Greig, a British educational and skilled in Indian artwork. Having considered the present, Greig estimates that “no less than 15” of the works are copies. He cites supplies, kinds, signatures and conditioning, in addition to lack of shading and total flatness, as his key causes for believing so.

Essentially the most severe authenticity points encompass a subset of the dozen items within the exhibition attributed to Mazumdar, Greig says: “A side-by-side evaluation of many of those works with the originals exhibits they’re copies, and unhealthy ones at that.” He claims that no less than ten different works by unnamed artists, each credited to both the Early Bengal Faculty (late Nineteenth century) or the Kalighat Faculty (round 1850s-Thirties), are additionally copies made at later dates.

Greig offers for example the work Cat and Lobster, date unknown, saying of its situation: “It’s too pristine. Kalighat works had been made utilizing the most cost effective paint and on newspaper or one other flimsy materials. A piece made in Kolkata within the early 1900s can be flaking and weathered, and never so nicely preserved.”

Greig’s points with these works are counterbalanced by his enthusiasm for others within the exhibition. He says many are “real, and of fine high quality”, together with “many of the Roys”, a few of that are “among the many greatest” he has seen. Nonetheless, he says: “I’ve by no means earlier than seen so many copies which might be absolutely attributed to the artist displayed in a public gallery.”

Shared considerations

Greig’s considerations are shared by Hemen Mazumdar’s grand-nephew, Samendranath Mazumdar, who works to protect his nice uncle’s legacy. (His spouse, Anuradha Ghosh, is a Mazumdar scholar and the writer of a 2017 e book on the artist.) Though Samendranath Mazumdar didn’t attend the Soas exhibition, images he examined confirmed a few of what he calls probably the most “identifiable indicators” of a Mazumdar copy within the signatures of the works purportedly made by his nice uncle. “Firstly, the artist at all times signed his final title ending in ‘dar’, not ‘der’, as is the case of most of the works within the Soas present,” he says. “Additionally, the scale of the signature in Mazumdar copies is way larger and [more] ostentatious than within the originals.”

A lot of the works within the Soas present look like copies of well-known works which have appeared at main public sale homes. An oil portray attributed to the Early Bengal Faculty, labelled as Untitled (Parvati and Ganesh) and dated to between 1850 and 1910, appears practically equivalent to Untitled (Ganesh Janani), an Early Bengal Faculty oil portray dated to the late Nineteenth century that the collector Kiran Nadar purchased from a Christie’s sale in New York in September 2021. Nadar confirmed to The Artwork Newspaper that she nonetheless owns this work and didn’t lend it to Portray Freedom. One other piece displayed at Soas, titled Daydreamer and absolutely attributed to Mazumdar, intently resembles an untitled Mazumdar work bought in a 2012 Sotheby’s public sale in London.

“I’m assured within the authenticity of the work that featured within the Sotheby’s public sale in 2012,” says Yamini Mehta, an impartial adviser who was Sotheby’s worldwide head of Indian and South Asian artwork between 2012 and 2020. “It was well-researched on the time and displayed the age, situation, signature and delicacy of method one would affiliate with Mazumdar’s works.” She says the corresponding piece within the Soas exhibition, which she considered in individual, “is a parody and value evaluating side-by-side”.

Mehta has intently dealt with quite a few works by the artists within the present. “There are a number of artwork historic opinions about these works, however this exhibition does certainly elevate questions, particularly as a variety of works featured appear to be copies of works which have been beforehand revealed or are in public collections. It behoves an academic establishment comparable to Soas to carry out their requisite due diligence on the works and the collections they show, particularly when there are sturdy opinions and potential controversies at massive.”

Different commerce professionals have raised doubts anonymously, as nicely. The Artwork Newspaper understands {that a} main supplier of Indian Fashionable artwork contacted Soas within the lead-up to Portray Freedom to ask the establishment to rethink staging the present.

Lender’s defence

Chatting with The Artwork Newspaper at Soas, Nirmalya Kumar asserted that the artists on this present made quite a few copies of their work. Furthermore, as a “stickler for situations”, he says he has “painstakingly restored” the works that seem unweathered. He cites a variety of main establishments which have borrowed from his assortment, together with Tate Britain and the Nationwide Gallery Singapore, as proof to assist the authenticity of his complete assortment. (Kumar additionally provided to have a scientific evaluation carried out on a piece from his assortment at a “lab of our alternative”.)

Kumar added by way of e mail: “Each Roy and Mazumdar would repeat lots of their hottest works in several sizes and media” in “an opportune, market-based response”. He continued: “I’m not completely certain what is supposed by ‘unique’ on this content material­,” persevering with, “definitely I’m not saying that I believe they’re both distinctive/one off, or the primary of their type. Roy, Mazumdar and the Kalighat and Early Bengal Colleges repeated the identical picture and barely dated the work, and works in my assortment are attributed to these artists on that foundation, the place the proof means that such an attribution is justified. As Howard Hodgkin as soon as jibed about Jamini Roy, ‘You could possibly have the picture in any measurement: small, medium or massive.’”

Samendranath Mazumdar, nonetheless, contests the notion that his nice uncle ceaselessly made replicas or a number of variations of his items. “I can let you know from my expertise that he might need made one or two copies of his only a few well-known works in oil,” Mazumdar writes to The Artwork Newspaper. “However it can’t be ‘many copies of his many works’. I’ve by no means come throughout such a factor in my life.”

As for provenance, Kumar says he acquired many of the Mazumdar items within the Soas present from “one princely dwelling in India the place Mazumdar had a studio”. He provides that many of the Bengal Faculty and Kalighat works had been purchased at public sale abroad and haven’t been in India because the mid-Twentieth century, “which explains why their situation is so good”.

Kumar says he didn’t financially compensate Soas in alternate for staging Portray Freedom. For this presentation, Kumar labored with two curators: Crispin Branfoot, a lecturer at Soas, and the impartial curator Caterina Corni, who has staged a variety of exhibits drawn wholly or partly from Kumar’s assortment. Though each curators defended the exhibition to The Artwork Newspaper, their feedback additionally acknowledged that uncertainties persist concerning the provenance and authenticity of no less than a number of the objects included.

Curators’ rebuttals

Branfoot says that the works on this present have been via an authentication course of that features “a triangulation of provenance, skilled eye and technical evaluation. The gathering is well-catalogued and largely, if not wholly, beforehand revealed. Scientific evaluation of pigments is pricey and never sensible for works which aren’t comparatively worthwhile or watercolours. However we did conduct Raman spectroscopy for consultant work on one Hemen Mazumdar and one Early Bengal oil portray from the identical provenance. The pink within the Hemen signature and the inexperienced within the early Bengal oil examined as coming from Britain and the Netherlands, respectively. They had been accessible from a single artist provides retailer in Kolkata. Each these paints had been discontinued within the Seventies”.

Branfoot provides: “Given the curiosity and significance of the interval, there’s identified scepticism for the authenticity of some artwork from this era. As it’s possible you’ll know, debates on authorship are a frequent incidence on the planet of lifeless artists. We have now been specific about inviting additional feedback and analysis. As a tutorial establishment with no industrial pursuits in artwork, we are able to take a analysis perspective.”

Based on Corni, a variety of Mazumdar works supposed to be included within the Soas present had been eliminated earlier than it opened attributable to doubts about their authenticity. Corni says that she doesn’t need to proclaim that she is “completely certain concerning the authenticity of the Mazumdar works” that stay within the exhibition, as “she shouldn’t be a specialist on Mazumdar”. Nonetheless, she is cited as a “Hemen [Mazumdar] skilled” in a 2021 e book revealed for an earlier model of the Soas exhibition, which was held that 12 months on the Leicester Museum and Artwork Gallery with the identical title.

The identical publication additionally incorporates a 16-page chapter on authenticity, written by Kumar, that takes goal on the “whispered conspiracy theories associated to the ubiquity of fakes in Indian artwork”.

There isn’t any suggestion of wrongdoing by an house owners or exhibitors of the disputed works. The doubts raised communicate to the authenticity points have lengthy plagued the sphere of Fashionable Indian artwork. Such points intensify when these markets warmth up—and costs for Indian trendy artwork are at the moment skyrocketing.

“Copies proliferate when there’s worth,” Mehta says. “Particularly in a poor nation like India, which has an amazing quantity of inventive expertise.”