John’s valuation highlighted the importance of identifying the designer or maker. ‘If we can trace it to a maker, it’s worth in excess of £100,000. If we can’t, then I’m afraid it’s only worth £50,000.’ At this point the owner nearly fainted. Today, the valuation would be lower for this credenza, which while magnificent, is still anonymous, and so this is a classic reflection of changing tastes and fashions in the marketplace.
‘This painting by Souza hangs on the bedroom wall, so I have been sleeping beneath it for most of the past ten years. Certainly, if the place burns down, it was always going to be the thing I’d rescue first.’
One of the Roadshow’s more unusual London locations was the Dulwich College Picture Gallery, visited in 2008. Most of the filming was done in the garden, but several items were filmed inside the gallery, a sometimes daunting experience for specialists who found themselves in the shadow of a Rembrandt or a Gainsborough. Nevertheless, some interesting and unusual paintings appeared, not least one by the Indian artist, Francis Newton Souza, generally known as F. N. Souza.
Born in Goa in 1924, Souza was brought up as a Catholic and educated at St Xavier’s College, Mumbai. Later, he attended an art school there but was expelled for supporting Indian independence. In 1947, he joined the Communist party and, the same year, was one of six founder members of the Bombay Progressive Artists’ Group, which introduced Indian artists to international, avant-garde movements, such as Cubism and Expressionism, while retaining an awareness of India’s own art history. It was set up a few months after the 1947 Partition of India and Pakistan, an event seen by the group’s members as an impetus to create a new and contemporary art style for a modern India still dominated by conservative and traditional ideas and styles. Their aim was to paint with a new sense of freedom relating to content and technique, while acknowledging universal laws concerning aesthetics and colour composition. The group had largely dispersed by 1956, but its influence lived on, helping to shape the nature of modern art in India and, more importantly, giving it an international standing.
AN EXPERIMENTAL ARTIST
In 1948 Souza held his first exhibition in London, moving to Britain the following year. Other exhibitions followed and, by 1955, his reputation was established. His style, according to the critic John Berger, was an eclectic mixture of Expressionism, Art Brut and British Neo-Romanticism, often overlaid with eroticism. An experimental painter throughout his long career, and an artist who pursued his own particular sense of beauty in the human body (which he saw as wild, noble, fragile and corruptible), Souza was one of the first Indian artists whose work was widely appreciated in Europe and the United States. In 1967 he moved to New York, receiving the Guggenheim International Award and staying there until he returned to his native India shortly before his death in 2002. His obituary in the Times of India stated: ‘With a few slashing lines and a raw, expressive energy, Francis Newton Souza stripped away all subterfuge… the seamy side of life or the steamy, he laid it bare.’ He holds a unique place in the pantheon of India’s most important modern painters.
In 2010, a sale at Christie’s of paintings and drawings from Souza’s estate raised over
£5 million. His work is exhibited in the Tate Gallery, and in major collections in India, Europe, the USA and Australia. In 2015, a major work by Souza sold in New York for $4 million, establishing a new world record for an Indian painting and a reflection of Souza’s global importance.
Rupert Maas was very excited when he saw the painting – he recognised it at once as Souza’s work – but was surprised and delighted that such an unusual work should come to a Roadshow. The owner’s partner had bought it for £200 about ten years ago and it had been hung in his bedroom. Obviously attached to it, the owner said it would be the first thing he would rescue if the house caught fire. He knew about Souza, but was still surprised when Rupert valued it between £40,000 and £60,000. In 2008, the painting was sold at auction in New York for $75,000.
Over the years, many items brought to the Roadshow have offered rare insights into the great days of the British Empire, especially objects from India. From the eighteenth century onwards, many British families spent their lives working and living in India, as merchants, diplomats, civil servants and in the military, and when they returned to Britain they often brought with them treasures acquired during their period of service.
In 1995, an unexpected example was brought to John Benjamin, at Peebles, in the shape of a pair of richly enamelled gold bracelets dating from the middle of the nineteenth century. The family story was that the owner’s great-grandparents had lived in India while her great-grandfather worked as a civil engineer. As was often the case, the family had come into contact with one of the local Indian princes, and the bracelets had been a gift from the prince to her great-grandmother.
This type of bracelet, worn on the ankle or upper arm, was traditionally associated with a wedding and could have been part of a bride’s dowry. In this case, they took the form of confronting serpents, made from twenty-two carat gold, enriched with patterns of birds and flowers in red and blue enamel and studded with table-cut diamonds. Such jewels are associated with the Mughal period in Indian history.
Founded in 1526, the Mughal dynasty came to dominate many parts of India and had a long-lasting impact upon art, architecture, design and decoration until it ended with the death of Emperor Bahadur Shah in 1858. Jewellery was particularly important, with the wealth and status of both men and women reflected in the amount of extravagant jewels worn all over the body. In styles that bring together Mughal craftsmanship and Middle Eastern decoration, the jewels feature gold and silver metalwork in complex patterns, enriched with colourful enamelling and inset with diamonds and other gems. Mughal jewellery was designed to decorate the whole body, from the turban to the toe, and so the range included turban pins and ornaments, hair-pieces,ear-rings, nose rings, necklaces, bracelets, finger and toe rings, hand ornaments, amulets, belts, hip chains and much else besides. The actual weight of jewels worn and displayed underlined the wearer’s status. The great diversity of surviving Mughal jewellery reveals both its importance and the huge number of workshops that must have been kept busy making it all over several hundred years.
In 1995, John Benjamin valued the bracelets for £10,000 to £15,000. Today, that price would probably have increased considerably, thanks to the great interest now shown by modern Indians in their history and culture.
‘Had we lived I should have had a tale to tell of the hardihood, endurance and courage of my companions, which would have stirred the heart of every Englishman. These rough notes and our dead bodies must tell the tale.’
Robert Falcon Scott
There is something extraordinarily powerful and emotive about objects that tell the story of polar exploration, and over the years the Roadshow has been fortunate to find items that bring such stories to life. Some of the most notable have been those associated with expeditions to Antarctica led by Captain Scott and Ernest Shackleton. Some were objects carried, worn or used by members of the expeditions, but better known and generally more accessible are photographs taken on the journeys to and from Antarctica