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 and the South Pole. All the major expedition teams included photographers and their names are well known: Frank Hurley travelled with Shackleton and Herbert Ponting with Scott, and their remarkable images tell their stories with great clarity and timelessness.
A GREAT ANTARCTIC EXPLORER
Robert Falcon Scott joined the Royal Navy in 1881, aged thirteen, and pursued a conventional, if unremarkable, naval career which was somewhat overshadowed by family and financial difficulties. In 1899, a chance meeting with Clements Markham, President of the Royal Geographical Society, resulted in Scott’s appointment as leader of the British National Antarctic Expedition, better known as the Discovery expedition, after the name of the ship commanded by Scott. This sailed in August 1901, finally returning to Britain in 1904, after a challenging voyage during which great discoveries were made, although the expedition did not actually reach the South Pole. One major legacy of the voyage was the enduring rivalry between Scott and Shackleton, a member of the Discovery team. Back in Britain, Scott made the most of the expedition’s achievements and the boost it had given to his career. In 1910 he was given command of the second British Antarctic Expedition, generally known as the Terra Nova expedition, again after the ship. After various setbacks, Scott and his chosen team finally set off for the South Pole in November 1911, in the full knowledge that the Roald Amundsen, the Norwegian explorer, was already ahead in the race to the Pole. The outcome is well known. When Scott reached the Pole on 17 January 1912, he found that Amundsen had beaten him by five weeks. He wrote in his diary: ‘The worst has happened. All the day dreams must go. Great God, this is an awful place.’ During the long return journey from the Pole, Scott and his four companions died in March 1912, just eleven miles from a stores depot that would have saved them. Their bodies and all the records were finally recovered in November 1912.
PICTURED AT THE BOTTOM OF THE WORLD
Also discovered was their camera, and with it what came to be one of the most famous of all exploration images. As Hugh Bett, the Roadshow’s book specialist, said when he found the photographs at Bolton in 1997: ‘This is the most famous of all images, found undeveloped in the tent with the bodies. It was taken by Birdie Bowers, seated front left, and you can see by his hand the string he pulled to release the camera’s shutter.’ This extraordinary and evocative photograph shows the five members of the team at the South Pole and, although not composed by Herbert Ponting, it is always included among the many expedition photographs taken by him. As the expedition’s official photographer, Ponting took over 1,700 glass plate negatives, including some early colour images. He also used an early movie camera to capture sequences of life in the Antarctic camps. After the expedition’s disastrous end, Ponting’s photographs became a kind of memorial to Scott and his team, and were widely published. On his return to England, there was an exhibition of the photographs, and portfolios of some of the best images were published.
