Sotheby’s Auction Boosts Indian Art Sales

Courtesy of Sotheby’s A painting by Francis Newton Souza that sold for $36,250.

MUMBAI â€"The Indian art market appears to be on the rebound after Sotheby’s first international evening sale of Indian art in New York last month fetched nearly $7 million.

The works of the Amaya Collection, which included paintings by modern masters like Vasudeo Gaitonde, Sayed Haider Raza and Francis Newton Souza, were amassed by Amrita Jhaveri, a collector and gallery owner based in London. Sixty percent of the sale prices exceeded their high estimates, and the 43 lots brought in a total of $6,694,875, just under Sotheby’s pre-sale high estimate of $7 million.

“The sale is indicative of the market coming back,” said Peter Nagy, who runs the art gallery Nature Morte in New Delhi and Berlin.

Prices for modern and contemporary Indian art began to climb rapidly in 2000, but slumped in 2008 with the onset of the global recession. The last two years have been cautious, with collectors focusing on modern Indian art, rather than contemporary, believing the latter had too strong a run in the previous decade.

Nonetheless, the overall value of the Indian art auction market shot up from $3 million in 2000 to $100 million in 2010, according to Saffronart, an online auction house based in India.

Courtesy of Sotheby’s “The Black Devi” by Manjit Bawa that sold for $389,000.

The Amrita Jhaveri sale was the first single-owner sale by Sotheby’s in Indian art in well over a decade, and the most notable news in Indian art market so far this year.

Speculation was rife about why Ms. Jhaveri, 43, decided to sell off part of a collection that took decades to complete, and why she decided to go with Sotheby’s, given she and her husband were both employees of the rival auction house Christie’s for many years.

Ms. Jhaveri offered a simple, pragmatic explanation in a recent telephone interview.

“Auctions follow a regular schedule,” she said, speaking from London, where she resides with her husband, Christopher M. Davidge, the former chief executive of Christie’s. (Mr. Davidge was a key witness in the price fixing scandal that shook the auction world in 2001.)

“There was no auction of Indian art in March. Strategically, it was a very good decision because all the attention would be focused on the 40-odd works that I would be selling.”

Since prices fell after the global recession, Ms. Jhaveri said she has had “time to reflect on what I wanted to keep.”

“It’s never easy to do but I felt it was necessary to make the collection stronger,” she said.

“It was an easy decision to sell,” she said, “but what was going into the sale was complicated. How do you cull carefully but still have a catalog that represents the collection and your particular eye and your particular taste?”

The auction represented about a tenth of Ms. Jhaveri’s collection, she estimated, and she said she still owns 300 or so art works. A catalog containing three essays explaining the importance of Ms. Jhaveri’s collection was produced to accompany the sale, and the auction drew bidders from first time buyers of modern and contemporary Indian art from the United States, Britain and Southeast Asia.

Courtesy of Sotheby’s “The Crucifixion” by Francis Newton Souza that sold for $557,000.

“Amrita’s sale was a jolt to the Indian art market,” said Yamini Mehta, head of the Indian and Southeast Asian art department at Sotheby’s, in a telephone interview.

Ms. Jhaveri, who headed Christie’s in India from 1995 until 2000, said that her choice of Sotheby’s as cosigner was also purely a business decision.

(An interesting aside: Her former boss at Christie’s, Lord Mark Poltimore, is now deputy chairman of Sotheby’s Europe. He conducted the auction in New York, missing his red carpet moment at the London premiere of Danny Boyle’s latest film, “Trance,” in which he has a role.)

It is considered a gamble to hold an evening sale of Indian art in New York, which is early morning in India, but that did not seem to deter buyers.

Highlights of the sale included “Untitled” from Mr. Gaitonde, which sold for $965,000, above a high estimate of $800,000; “The Crucifixion,” by Mr. Souza, which sold for $557,000, besting a high estimate of $300,000; “The Black Devi,” by Manjit Bawa, which sold for $389,000, about double its estimate; and “Satsang,” by Bhupen Khakhar, which sold for $341,000, beating a high estimate of $250,000.

Ms. Jhaveri said that a portion of the sale’s proceeds would support a project space and lecture room at the Delhi-based nonprofit artists’ collective, KHOJ International Artists Association. She is also donating a Mrinalini Mukherjee hemp sculpture to the Tate Modern in London, “to ensure that good Indian art is represented at institutions outside India.”

Ms. Jhaveri, who was born and brought up in Mumbai, said she had an interest in art from childhood because her father, Dinesh, was passionate about art. Describing him as an “old-fashioned” collector with eclectic taste, Ms. Jhaveri said he bought everything from Kerala masks to Indian silver to bronzes.

The eldest of three sisters, Ms. Jhaveri said she never considered a career in art because when she was growing up there were no role models in the industry. After graduating from Brown University in 1991, where she majored in comparative literature, she said she couldn’t find a job in the United States. So she headed to London, on a scholarship, to study Indian and Islamic art at the School of Oriental and Asian studies.

After she returned to Mumbai, having completed her degree, she looked for something to do, and that’s when Christie’s came calling. The auction house was just getting started in India, and Ms. Jhaveri said she started the office out of her bedroom.

Since then, Ms. Jhaveri has become a prime mover in the Indian art world, dividing her time between homes in Mumbai and London. In addition to a two-decade collecting history, Ms. Jhaveri authored a book on Indian art, was instrumental in bringing a sculpture show by British-Indian sculptor Anish Kapoor to India three years ago. She also runs a Mumbai gallery, Jhaveri Contemporary, with her sister Priya.

Courtesy of Sotheby’s “Satsang” by Bhupen Khakhar that sold for $341,000.

Mr. Nagy of Nature Morte called Ms. Jhaveri a “a major player and very discreet.” “She’s upper crusty, extremely quiet and not flashy at all.”

Ms. Jhaveri said she felt both elation and relief after the sale and wants to reorient her collection to include art and artists who have been overlooked by the market.

“My collection follows my life and interest,” she said. “When I die, I want to have just 10 works on my wall in one home.”