A global family art house, home in Mumbai. Works are acquired and placed privately, held under one register, valued in writing, and answered for across generations rather than across a transaction.
Private sales · Valuations · Advisory · Consignment
Now showing · Virtual Exhibition
59 works in five rooms, the Ravi Varma Press stones, a tool that hangs any work on a photograph of your own wall, a spoken audio guide, and a Hindi edition. Open at any hour, on any phone.
Walk the hall in 3DEnter the exhibitionRaja Ravi Varma & the stonesहिन्दी में
AB / SERVICES
Private Sales
A negotiated sale between two named parties. No public catalogue, no reserve announced to a room, and no permanent record of a lot that failed to sell. Discretion is the instrument, not the marketing.
How it worksValuations & Estates
Written valuations for insurance, succession, and division between heirs. The comparable results the figure rests on are issued alongside it, so the basis can be examined rather than trusted.
How it worksCollection Advisory
Which period of an artist carries the weight, what condition a work is really in under raking light, and when the right answer is to wait. The advice includes the works we tell you not to buy.
How it worksConsignment
A written estimate before any commitment, the reasoning behind it, and a straight recommendation between private sale and public auction — including when the auction room is the better answer.
20% commission on sale. Placed at the Art House for 30 days.
BeginAB / MARKET
Highest price, Indian art
$17.9 M
Raja Ravi Varma, Yashoda and Krishna — the highest auction price recorded for any Indian painting.
Saffronart · 1 Apr 2026One month's turnover
₹866 cr
Indian art auction turnover in September 2025 alone — a figure that exceeded some earlier full years.
Reported market total · Sep 2025Founded
1947
The Progressive Artists' Group forms in Bombay — Souza, Raza, Husain, Ara, Gade and Bakre. Still the centre of the market.
Bombay · first exhibited 1948Antiquity threshold
100 yrs
Above this age an object is an antiquity under the 1972 Act: registrable, and not exportable without a permit.
Antiquities & Art Treasures Act, 1972These are public auction results and published market figures, not sales by this house. We show them because a collector deserves the evidence the market is actually priced against.
AB / METHOD
Most disputes in the art trade are not disputes about taste. They are disputes about paper: who owned the work before, what was repaired and when, and whether the figure someone was quoted had anything behind it.
So the house works the other way round. A work is catalogued the day it arrives and given an inventory number that stays with it for life — on the condition report, on the valuation, on the invoice, and on every notice sent while it is in transit. Ownership history is written down and shown to the buyer before money is discussed, not after.
Where evidence is thin, it is described as thin. A gap in a provenance chain is stated plainly rather than smoothed over, because a buyer who discovers the gap later has been sold something other than the work.
AB / EXPERTISE
1947 onward
Founded in Bombay in 1947 by F. N. Souza, S. H. Raza, M. F. Husain, K. H. Ara, H. A. Gade and the sculptor S. K. Bakre; first exhibited 1948. The centre of gravity of the modern Indian market.
Post-war abstraction
The abstract line running from V. S. Gaitonde's meditative fields to Raza's geometry, and the Neo-Tantra painters who drew on sacred diagram and cosmology as an abstract language.
The schools
The Bengal School under Abanindranath Tagore, Kala Bhavana from 1919, the Madras Movement and Cholamandal from 1966, and the narrative figuration of Baroda.
We deal in what we can document. Where a work sits outside these areas, we say so and, where we can, name the specialist who should see it instead.
AB / ROOM
Scale is the thing photographs never tell you. Set the dimensions of a work below and it is hung on a wall of known width, lit as it would be lit here. Move your pointer to look around the room.
Move to look around
The panel on the wall is the house's own ground, drawn in your browser. It is our identity, not a work for sale, and it is there so the room can be shown honestly without borrowing someone else's painting. To see a work on your own wall, use On Your Wall.
Enquiries
Every enquiry is read by the Client Advisory desk and answered the same day. A photograph and whatever history you hold is enough to begin.
Write to Client Advisory Get in touchOr read how a consignment works before you write.
AB / ROOMS
The house is arranged in rooms. Walk into the one that stops you: abstraction, the human figure, the devotional tradition, the natural world, and the lithographic stones of the Ravi Varma Press.
10 works
Abstract painting sets aside a recognisable subject and works through colour, surface and gesture.
10 works
Figures, faces and groups: a girl in profile, a family, dancers, a seated Buddha, friends standing in a line.
13 works
Paintings that tell a story or carry a devotional image, from the pichwai tradition of Nathdwara to contemporary narrative work drawing on miniature painting.
5 works
Trees, animals, water, houses and the sea.
20 stones
Lithographic printing stones in the tradition of the Ravi Varma Press, the Bombay press founded by the painter Raja Ravi Varma in 1894.
AB / FILMS
Each painting, set in slow motion. Open any one for its artist, its tradition and its story, or walk the whole house full screen.
Figures & portraits
After Henri Matisse
Figures & portraits
Thota Vaikuntam
Figures & portraits
M. F. Husain
Landscape, nature & trees
Chandra Morkonda
Abstract
Prakash Bal Joshi
Devotional & narrative
Prasad KVS
Devotional & narrative
Ramesh Gorjala
AB / FIGURES
Indian masters
23
Each with its published auction record and how the house values against it.
Selling a masterAB / GUIDE
Buying
What is available today, what it costs in full, and how buying works.
Works available How to buySelling
The published record for each master, and how the house values and sells privately.
Selling a master Sell a workLearning
Plain guides on value, authenticity, homes, gifts, offices and taking art abroad.
Read the guidesPeople
The Founder, the Chairman and the heads of the house, each with a direct line.
The heads of the housePlaces
How a Mumbai house serves collectors in twelve cities in India and abroad.
Collectors by cityArtists
What to send, how work is assessed, and what to ask any gallery.
For artists The artists of the houseInstitutions
A catalogue and register of what is held, written valuations, and works for a space.
Send the briefStandards
A named person, one reference for life, and evidence stated only as far as it goes.
Our standardsGlossary
Thirty six terms a collector meets when buying, selling or valuing art.
Read the glossary
