{"id":122611,"date":"2024-03-13T10:59:11","date_gmt":"2024-03-13T09:59:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conceptualfinearts.com\/cfa\/?p=122611"},"modified":"2024-03-14T19:00:33","modified_gmt":"2024-03-14T18:00:33","slug":"howard-hodgkin-indian-art-collection","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conceptualfinearts.com\/cfa\/2024\/03\/13\/howard-hodgkin-indian-art-collection\/","title":{"rendered":"The Howard Hodgkin collection of Indian court paintings"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

According to the records, Howard Hodgkin devoured Agatha Christie\u2019s novels. He couldn\u2019t resist an elephant. And, when it came to buying whatever he longed for his private collection, he wouldn\u2019t take no for an answer. The late British artist has explained that much of the motivation behind a collection can be attributed to a single concept: desire. But once that stage is surpassed and the collection’s character is formed in the owner’s mind, the pieces must be acquired “out of necessity, as well as passion.” During a talk that Mr. Hodgkin gave in 1992, he announced flatly: “A great collection often seems to be the result of one very rich man going shopping. It isn\u2019t. It is really partly illness, an incurable obsession.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Howard Hodgkin’s compilation of Indian court paintings was acquired in 2022 by the Met Museum in New York. The exhibition that followed, “Indian Skies: The Howard Hodgkin Collection of Indian Court Painting<\/a>“, offers a comprehensive look at a group of artworks that spans Mughal, Deccan, Rajput and Pahari pictures dating from the 16th to the 19th century. There are epic and court scenes; portraits of maharajas and dervishes; botanical and zoological studies; hunting, bathing, weddings; and a room devoted entirely to elephants, many depicted with the same introspective approach human beings’ representations typically take. Also, it seems that the artist loved to identify with elephants.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Attributed
Master Elephant Fight Rajasthan, Kota, ca. 1655\u201360. Opaque watercolor, ink and gold on paper 34.2 \u00d7 69 cm, Howard Hodgkin Collection, Purchase, Gift of Florence and Herbert Irving, by exchange. Courtesy of The Met, NYC.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Attributed to the Kota master, \u201cElephants Fight” (ca. 1655-60), a finely brushed drawing with watercolor on paper, is one of Howard Hodgkin’s first finds shown in the exhibition. While, according to the artist, one of his best discoveries was the unique composition “Rawat Gokul Das at the Singh Sagar” (1806), recording a hunting excursion around a lake. He thought it was like having a piece of the Subcontinent in his home. Another highlight is the intricately painted Persian-style masterpiece “Mihrdukht Aims her Arrow at the Ring” (ca. 1570), a folio from the Hamzanama manuscript, depicting the adventures of the legendary Amir Hamza.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\""Mihrdukht
“Mihrdukht Aims her Arrow at the Ring,” Folio from the Hamzanama (The Adventures of Hamza) Basawan (Indian, active ca. 1556\u20131600) ca. 1570. Country of Origin: India. Opaque color and gold on cotton cloth 67.8 x 52 cm, Howard Hodgkin Collection, Purchase, The Mossavar-Rahmani Fund for Iranian Art.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

There are some small, exquisitely detailed pieces. The majority of the figures were conceived as illustrations for sacred books or, in any case, intended for folios to be passed from hand to hand. Yet he preferred to \u2018rescue\u2019 larger and architectural works, and he wouldn\u2019t mind if they were damaged, as long as the original character survived. He liked to frame them and possibly hang them on the wall, unlike how they used to be displayed in museums (on cream-coloured mounts).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Marriage
Marriage procession in a bazaar; from a Ramayana or Bhagavata Purana Series Mandi, Himachal Pradesh, ca. 1640\u201350. Opaque watercolor and gold on paper, 32 \u00d7 49 cm, Howard Hodgkin Collection, Purchase, Gift of Florence and Herbert Irving, by exchange. Courtesy of The Met, NYC.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

While the habit of collecting was probably sparked by his eccentric Irish grandmother, Florence Hodgkin, the fancy for Indian art blossomed because of his art master at Eton, Wilfred Blunt \u2014 \u201ca dilettante collector\u201d, as the artist described him, \u201crather in the tradition of my great-grandfather\u201d (collecting run in the Hodgkins). Those were the years when Indian illustrations could be purchased cheaply in England, and that accessibility attracted to London a great connoisseur, such as the scholar and curator Stuart Cary Welch. The two were introduced to each other over lunch in a famous Polish restaurant in South Kensington in 1959 by Robert Skelton, curator at the V&A and an authority in the field. \u201cThe upshot of the meeting was that Howard\u2019s hunting instincts were thoroughly aroused,\u201d noted Bruce Chatwin, one of Hodgkin\u2019s best friends.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[Here is the link<\/a> to our page dedicated to Utz, the seminal novel that Bruce Chatwin wrote about art collecting, published in 1988. Ed].<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Attributed
Attributed to The Stipple Master (Indian, active ca. 1690\u2013 1715) Sangram Singh Hawking Rajasthan, Udaipur, ca. 1705\u201310. Opaque watercolor, gold and ink on paper Image: 31 \u00d7 43.5 cm, Howard Hodgkin Collection, Purchase, Gift of Florence and Herbert Irving, by exchange. Courtesy of The Met, NYC.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Mr. Hodgkin was a man with a broad \u2018general knowledge\u2019, yet he showed little interest in conventional categories or classifications. By his own admission, his approach to collecting had nothing to do with art history. What mattered to him was how each piece looked and affected him emotionally. The same is true of the rest of his vast, eclectic collection \u2013 he collected across the board \u2013 that was sold at auction in 2017.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On that occasion, Antony Peattie, Mr. Hodgkin\u2019s partner for the last four decades of his life, has written a text unveiling some of his routines. According to Peattie, \u201cHe marked auction catalogues with an MH for \u2018must-have\u2019 when wanted something really badly.\u201d \u201cIf he attended in person he would hold up a pencil to signify he was continuing to bid.\u201d And he often paid \u2018too much\u2019 for pieces that were much less than masterpieces. Nevertheless, Howard Hodgkin believed masterpieces were impossible to live with because they were too ‘demanding’. He tended to hide, lend or otherwise remove the most important works from his sight. \u201cSo he did not shy away from buying works that were easier to live with.\u201d He had a soft spot for elephants, chairs and fragments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After all, it was \u201call grist to the mill\u201d, as the artist would say \u2013 a necessity for his own life\u2019s work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Manaku
Manaku (Indian, active ca. 1725\u201360) Attributed to Nainsukh (active ca. 1735\u201378) The disrobing of Draupadi Guler, Himachal Pradesh, ca. 1760\u201365. Opaque watercolor and gold on paper 24.6 \u00d7 34.2 cm Howard Hodgkin Collection, Purchase, Gift of Florence and Herbert Irving, by exchange. Courtesy of The Met, NYC.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Howard Hodgkin approach to collecting had nothing to do with art history. What mattered to him was how each piece affected him emotionally<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":122614,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1796,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-122611","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mapping-the-artscape","category-senza-categoria"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conceptualfinearts.com\/cfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122611","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conceptualfinearts.com\/cfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conceptualfinearts.com\/cfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conceptualfinearts.com\/cfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conceptualfinearts.com\/cfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=122611"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conceptualfinearts.com\/cfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122611\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conceptualfinearts.com\/cfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/122614"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conceptualfinearts.com\/cfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=122611"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conceptualfinearts.com\/cfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=122611"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conceptualfinearts.com\/cfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=122611"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}