Indian photography sets new mark at Bonhams sale
Famed auctioneer Bonhams’ sale of Indian photography in UK has set a new price benchmark. The collection of Hamburg-based Indian businessman, the late Kanwardip Gujral, has raked in revenues of £512,000
By Ashoke Nag, TNN |
KOLKATA: Famed auctioneer Bonhams��� sale of Indian photography in UK has set a new price benchmark. The collection of Hamburg-based Indian businessman, the late Kanwardip Gujral, has raked in revenues of ��512,000. A lot revolving around an album on Kashmir and northern India shot by Burke, Baker and Craddock sold for ��72,000.
The lot sported a pre-sale estimate of ��10,000-20,000. This major collection of photographic images spanned the period between the 1850s and 1940s. The sale generated tremendous interest and took prices to new levels in the photographic images category.
David Park, Bonhams��� head of Books, Maps and Manuscripts, told ET in an email from London: ���This sale of a single owner���s collection received a huge amount of interest. As a result, the sale made ��512,000 with many items going at three or four times their estimate. This sale has rewritten the prices for all the major photographers whose works were featured in the sale. The value of their work has been seriously raised.���
Incidentally, Kanwardip Gujral was born in Lahore and brought up in Agra after 1947. In fact, Kanwardip was holidaying in Simla with his parents when the partition of India was announced. They could not return to Lahore and migrated to Agra. Later, Kanwardip travelled to England for higher studies.
The lot sported a pre-sale estimate of ��10,000-20,000. This major collection of photographic images spanned the period between the 1850s and 1940s. The sale generated tremendous interest and took prices to new levels in the photographic images category.
David Park, Bonhams��� head of Books, Maps and Manuscripts, told ET in an email from London: ���This sale of a single owner���s collection received a huge amount of interest. As a result, the sale made ��512,000 with many items going at three or four times their estimate. This sale has rewritten the prices for all the major photographers whose works were featured in the sale. The value of their work has been seriously raised.���
Incidentally, Kanwardip Gujral was born in Lahore and brought up in Agra after 1947. In fact, Kanwardip was holidaying in Simla with his parents when the partition of India was announced. They could not return to Lahore and migrated to Agra. Later, Kanwardip travelled to England for higher studies.
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Later, he went to Germany and settled down in Hamburg. His first purchase of Indian photographs was in 1976, but he began collecting with fervour in 1990, when he bought a group of nineteenth century albums on a holiday in Italy. The albums included a number of photographs of India and formed the basis of his collection.
The collection in effect records the lives of Indians and Europeans in India: their lives and homes, dresses, trades and achievements. These accounts hovered around albums compiled by viceroys to those by railway engineers.
The top item in the sale, which went for 72,000, was a series of 102 prints of Kashmir in the 1860s and 1870s owned by Lord Lansdowne, India���s viceroy from 1888 to 1894. In step, a two-part panorama of the courtyard of the Pearl Mosque was picked up for ��20,400 and Lala Deen Dayal���s Views of Central India for ��15,600.
In the same breath, The Taj Mahal from the East with Ruins in the Foreground has also gone at ��15,600, while The Great Panorama of the Taj Mahal, shot by John Murray in January-March 1864 was sold for ��14,400. In tandem, Frederick Fiebig���s A Rotunda in a Garden, taken in Calcutta in 1850, was acquired for ��14,400.
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