Categories
What we deal in,
and what each thing is
A working reference to the media and traditions that pass through an Indian art house. Written plainly, because most disputes begin with a buyer who was never told what they were looking at.
Painting
AB / MEDIA
Oil on canvas
Pigment bound in drying oil, worked on stretched canvas or board. It holds impasto, allows glazing, and yellows very slowly with age. The dominant medium of the Progressive generation, and the one that carries the highest prices at auction.
Acrylic
Pigment in an acrylic polymer emulsion. It dries in minutes rather than months, stays flexible, and does not yellow. Widely adopted in India from the 1960s onward. Its rapid drying is why acrylic surfaces often read flatter and more graphic than oil.
Watercolour and gouache
Pigment in a water soluble gum binder on paper. Watercolour is transparent and unforgiving; gouache is the same medium made opaque with added white or chalk. Both are highly sensitive to light and humidity, which is why condition matters more here than in any other medium.
Tempera
Pigment bound in egg or another emulsion, laid in thin translucent layers. The medium of the Bengal School wash technique and of much early Indian modernism. It produces a matte, luminous surface that cannot be reproduced in oil.
Drawing and works on paper
Pencil, charcoal, conte, ink and pastel. Often the most revealing works an artist makes and consistently the most accessible in price. A strong drawing by a major hand frequently costs a fraction of a weak canvas by the same hand.
Printmaking
AB / EDITIONS
An original print is made by the artist in a printmaking medium and issued in a stated edition, normally signed and numbered. A reproduction is a photograph of an existing painting. The two look similar in a listing and are not remotely the same asset. Establishing which one you are being offered is the first question, always.
Serigraph (silkscreen)
Ink forced through a stencilled mesh, one screen for each colour, producing flat dense colour with crisp edges. Widely used in India for editions after major modern painters, issued under the artist's or the estate's authority.
Lithograph
Printed from stone or plate on the principle that grease repels water. It reproduces the artist's drawn mark closely and gives soft tonal gradation, so a lithograph often reads as a drawing rather than a print.
Etching and intaglio
The image is bitten into a metal plate with acid, inked, and printed under pressure, leaving a plate mark impressed into the paper. That plate mark is one of the easiest authenticity checks a buyer can make unaided.
Woodcut and linocut
Cut in relief, so what remains standing prints. Bold, high contrast, and closely associated with the graphic tradition taught at Santiniketan and Baroda.
Sculpture, photography and new media
AB / THREE DIMENSIONS
Bronze
Cast, usually by the lost wax method, and issued in an edition with a stated foundry. Casts made after an artist's death are a separate category from lifetime casts and are valued differently. The foundry mark and the edition number both matter.
Stone and wood
Carved and therefore unique, with no edition. Condition questions concern structural stability, old repairs, and whether any surface has been recut or repolished, which alters value materially.
Photography
Valued on process, print date and edition. A print made by the photographer at the time carries a very different value from a later print made from the same negative, even where the image is identical.
Installation and new media
Works that exist as instructions, components and display conditions as much as objects. What is bought is defined by a certificate specifying how the work may be installed, and what may be replaced when a component fails.
The classical and folk traditions
AB / TRADITIONS
Miniature painting
The court traditions: Mughal, Rajput, Pahari and Deccani. Painted in fine natural pigment with burnished detail, often with gold. Age frequently brings these works under the Antiquities and Art Treasures Act 1972, which changes what may lawfully be done with them.
Pichwai
Large devotional cloth paintings from the Nathdwara tradition of Rajasthan, made to hang behind the image of Shrinathji, depicting Krishna and the festivals of the year in natural pigment on cotton.
Tanjore
South Indian devotional panels on wood, built up with gesso relief and surfaced in gold leaf, frequently set with stones. The gold is structural to the object, so condition and gilding losses drive value directly.
Madhubani (Mithila)
From the Mithila region of Bihar. Densely patterned work built from fine line fill, traditionally by women, depicting deities, wedding subjects and the natural world.
Warli
From the Warli community of Maharashtra. A spare geometric vocabulary of circles, triangles and lines in white on an earth ground, depicting harvest, marriage and daily life.
Gond
From the Gond community of Madhya Pradesh. Figures and animals built from dense patterns of dots and fine strokes, a tradition that moved onto paper and canvas within living memory.
Patachitra
Scroll painting from Odisha and West Bengal on prepared cloth, with narrative registers and strong contour drawing, historically carried and recited by the painter.
Kalighat
Nineteenth century Calcutta paintings sold to pilgrims near the Kalighat temple. Swift brushwork, bold contour and social satire. Widely regarded as a bridge between folk painting and Indian modernism.
Kalamkari
Hand drawn or block printed cotton from Andhra Pradesh, worked with a pen of bamboo and natural dyes, traditionally narrative and temple related.
Where a traditional work is old enough to fall under the Antiquities and Art Treasures Act 1972, registration and export restrictions apply and we will say so before anything else is discussed. We do not deal in antiquities.
Enquiries
Not sure what you are looking at?
Send photographs of the front, the back and any signature or label. We will tell you what the medium is, what it appears to be, and what cannot be established from an image.
Write to Client Advisory Call +91 75062 45557