A name to reckon with in the art circle, Amrita Shergil painted realistic art and became a well-known figure at a time when European painting was just in the initial stages. Besides she also portrayed Indian rural womenfolk with such natural beauty that her work was well recognised. In her brief life, she created such masterpieces that even decades after her death, her work remains much sought after. She started at a very young age and her work portrayed the talent of an inborn painter.
Amrita Shergil was the daughter of Umrao Singh Shergil of Majitha. She was born in Budapest, the capital city of Hungary. Her mother was a Hungarian. When Umrao Singh went to France, he made arrangements for his daughter’s education in Paris. Her uncle, Indologist Ervin Batkay, noticed her talent early and encouraged her to paint. At 16 she entered a famous art school in Paris, Ecole des Beaux Arts. Here she was influenced by the works of Cezanne, Modigliani and Gaugin. The description she heard about India from her relatives invoked a desire to visit the country.
In 1921, she graduated in painting from the city of Florence in Italy. In the test, she painted a nude woman. For this, she was asked to leave the school. She had by this time realised that her sole ambition in life was to become an artist. So she returned to Paris and began to pursue her painting classes again. Soon the influence of Hungarian art in her works began to diminish and her inclination towards realism grew. Her works clearly showed this infuence. Her famous paintings include A Boy with an Apple, and Banana Vendor, among others. The inspiration to paint Indian women came from her fans.
After coming over to India, she opened a studio in Shimla. She transformed herself in the Indian mould and began to paint with the Indian perspective in mind, gaining quick recognition. She wanted to invoke her Indian roots. In 1936, she toured the Ajanta and Ellora Caves and her paintings underwent a transformation. Instead of doing large paintings, she concentrated on doing small, realistic paintings. Thus, she gave a new direction to the Indian art scenario. She tried to fuse the aesthetics of the Ajanta and Ellora paintings with European oil painting techniques that she had learnt in Paris. Her style was a total contrast from the works of contemporaries like Abindranath Tagore, AR Chugtai and Nandalal Bose.
Many of her paintings have a peaceful and soulful expression. But in her own life, she was highly emotional as well as critical and abrasive by nature. Not many readers know that the nude paintings she did depicted reality. In one of her paintings, she portrayed two young girls in the nude, a common sight in rural India.
Her paintings showed diversity after she went on a tour to south India in 1937. This transformation can be seen in many of her works like Brahmacharis, South Indians Going to the Market and Bride’s Toilette. Her work was different from the realist watercolour mode of Indian painting prevalent at the time. This makes it evident that Amrita Shergil’s inclination was towards the depiction of modern India rather than being a part of the revival of ancient art that was taught at Shantiniketan.
In 1938 Shergil married a relative from her mother’s side, Victor Egan, who was a doctor by profession. She stayed in a small village in northern India. She turned to seventeenth century Mughal miniatures amalgamating their sense of composition and colour with the system she had developed from Ajanta oil paintings. But her marital life was cut short by the cruel hands of death. In 1941, at the young age of 28, she died in mysterious circumstances, having already achieved much recognition within a short span of time.