A rare portrait of Mahatma Gandhi will soon be up for sale in London.
The 1931 painting of Gandhi, a social reformist and a prominent leader of India’s movement for Independence, is slated to be auctioned at Bonhams from July 7 to July 15.
According to the auction house and the family of British-American artist Clare Leighton, who created the painting, this is believed to be the only oil portrait Gandhi sat for.
“Not only is this a rare work by Clare Leighton, who is mainly known for her wood engravings, it is also thought to be the only oil painting of Mahatma Gandhi which he sat for,” news agency AFP quoted Rhyanon Demery, Bonhams Head of Sale for Travel and Exploration, as saying.
Caspar Leighton, the artist’s great-nephew, termed the painting a “likely hidden treasure”, AFP reported.
Price of the Gandhi portrait
Up for auction for the first time next month, the painting is estimated to be sold for between £50,000 and £70,000 ($68,000 and $95,000).
Earlier displays
It was displayed in London in November 1931. The only other recorded public display of the painting was at a Boston Public Library exhibition of Clare Leighton’s work in 1978.
After Clare’s death, the artwork passed on to Caspar’s father and then to him. “There’s my family’s story but the story in this portrait is so much greater,” Caspar said. “I think it’d be great if it got seen by more people. Maybe it should go back to India — maybe that’s its real home,” he added.
Gandhi-Clare association
It was in 1931 when Clare Leighton met Gandhi, who was in London at that time for deliberations with the British government regarding India’s political future.
Clare, who was part of London’s left-wing artistic circles, was introduced to Gandhi by her partner, journalist Henry Noel Brailsford. “I think there was clearly a bit of artistic intellectual courtship that went on,” said Caspar, mentioning that his great-aunt shared a “sense of social justice” with Gandhi.
Painting attacked and restored
According to Leighton’s family, the portrait was attacked with a knife by a “Hindu extremist” in the early 1970s. Even as the attack has not been documented anywhere, a label on the back of the painting confirms its restoration in the United States in 1974.
Casting UV light on the painting, Demery showed a shadow of a deep gash running across Gandhi’s face. That is where the now-restored painting was damaged, Demery pointed out. “It feels very deliberate,” she said.
The restoration “add to the value of the picture in a sense… to its place in history, that Gandhi was again attacked figuratively many decades after his death”, AFP quoted Caspar as saying.
— with inputs from AFP
