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Photos below: courtesy, Karamvir Singh Sibia.

Art

The Amritsari Sisters Who Posed For Amrita Shergil’s Iconic ‘Three Girls’

NIRUPAMA DUTT

 

 

 

 

 

Legendary painter Amrita SherGil (1913-41), whose self-portrait sold for a whopping Rs 1.82 billion in an art auction this year, began her series of paintings at Majithia House in Amritsar, Punjab.

Amrita’s first painting, ‘Group of Three Girls’, also referred to as ‘Three Girls’, was painted in 1935 after her return from Europe in 1934.

It has come to light some 80 years later that the models for this much-celebrated painting were the granddaughters of landowner-politician Sunder Singh Majithia. He was the younger brother of Umrao Singh SherGil Majithia (1870-1954), father of the Sikh artist, Amrita.

The ‘Three Girls’ were sisters named Beant Kaur, Nirvair Kaur and Gurbhajan Kaur, daughters of Mahinder Kaur, who was married to Mangal Singh Mann of Kot Shera near Gujranwala, Punjab (now, since 1947, in Pakistan).

The siblings, still in their teens and just a few years younger than the painter, were to become the subject of Amrita’s first painting on the subcontinent. Amrita died at the age of 28, leaving behind a rich legacy of art, but the three sisters lived on to see their grandchildren.

The ‘Three Girls’ won the gold medal in the annual exhibition of the Bombay Art Society in 1937. The award launched Amrita, who was to be celebrated later as the first lady of painting in the subcontinent and influence generations of modern painters.

Although family memory has treasured this work, it came out only in the public domain when Karanvir Singh Sibia, Beant Kaur’s son, recently brought out a coffee table book, ‘A Life Well Lived’, celebrating the family traditions, and wrote about the three sisters who had modelled for the iconic painting along with their pictures with Amrita.

“My mother and her two sisters were models for this work,” says Karanvir. “My mother was a very gentle and kind lady. She always covered her head, as in the painting, for she was nurtured in times when modesty and shyness were virtues for girls. She rarely talked about herself but treasured the group photograph with the artist till the end.”

Karanvir’s octogenarian maternal aunt Inder Pal Kaur Mann had often heard the story of the making of this painting from her husband’s sisters. She recounts, “The painting was done in March 1935 on the tennis court of Majithia House in Amritsar, with repeated sittings over two to three weeks.”

Amrita’s mother was Marie Antoinette Gottesmann, a Jewish opera singer from Hungary who had come to live in Lahore as a companion to Princess Bamba Sutherland, eldest daughter of Maharaja Ranjit Singh’s son, Maharaja Duleep Singh.

Amrita was very dear to her grandparents because of her beauty and talent. They had virtually sponsored her education and painting career when she was sent to Paris to study art first at Grande Chaumiere with Pierre Valliant and later at Ecole des Beaux-Arts (1930-34).

Inder further reveals, “Amrita was visiting her grandparents’ home for a holiday with her younger sister Indira when the three sisters went to meet her. The artist was so fascinated by the charm and innocence of her Punjabi nieces that she decided to paint them.”

She adds that her husband Charanjiv Singh Mann was by Amrita’s side when the latter breathed her last in 1941 in Lahore. This is also mentioned in Yashodhara Dalmia’s biography of the artist, ‘Amrita SherGil: A Life’.

PAINTING REVISITED

In a critique of the painting, ‘Three Girls’, art historian Yashodhara Dalmia writes: “The lines and forms were a continuation of her years abroad, as the figures stood together in a studio pose, but their grave expressions, their sense of being at once together and isolated, would become the key motif of all her paintings.”

Some years ago, a Delhi-based curator asked some 50 contemporary woman artists of the country to re-interpret the painting through their own art. This experiment with the painting led to many interesting interpretations, with several artists daring to incorporate a critical note in their version of the ‘Three Girls’.

In her work, well-known contemporary painter Gogi Sarol Pal regrouped the painting to suggest interaction, which has been the tool of Punjabi women for survival. Flowers were scattered on the clothes of the three girls and the hand of one of the girls left out in the original was restored.

Gogi comments, “Amrita was exuberant in her own self-portraiture, but when it came to Punjabi subjects, she could well have been painting still life.”’

True enough, the charm and ebullience of the three sisters seen in their photographs of that time is missing in the painting. Nevertheless, it is a priceless work of art by an artist who left her own indelible mark on the subcontinent’s canvas.


[Courtesy: Hindustan Times. Edited for sikhchic.com]
December 17, 2015
 

Conversation about this article

1: Sangat Singh  (Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia), December 17, 2015, 6:18 PM.

I have the book or was it a chapter by Malcolm Muggeridge where he wrote about his torrid affair with wayward Amrita. I will die trying to find that book in my library now. Khuswant Singh’s brief encounter is easy to find and would just add a few more grey hairs. What a wonderful painter ... and called back so early to paint her masterpieces in heaven.

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