01 Painting, PORTRAIT OF A LADY, with Footnotes. #59

Walter Langhammer, 1905 – 1977

Untitled (Indian Woman with Amphora)

Oil on canvas

23.5 x 31.5 in (60 x 80 cm

Private collection

An amphora is a type of container of a characteristic shape and size, descending from at least as early as the Neolithic Period. Amphorae were used in vast numbers for the transport and storage of various products, both liquid and dry, but mostly for wine. More on amphora

Walter Langhammer, 1905 – 1977, went to India before World War 2, fleeing the Nazis in Austria. An art student at the time, Langhammer had made friends with an Indian student, Shirin Vimadalal, who subsequently returned to India. After he wrote to her, she managed to persuade Sir Francis Low, editor of the Times of India, to appoint Langhammer first art director of the paper in about 1936. Adapting enthusiastically to his new home, Langhammer set up open house at his studio on Nepean Sea Road, and the young Indian artists who were to develop into the great names of the Indian Progressive Art movement would meet there on Sundays to hear his tales of the European art scene. Exhibiting regularly himself at the Bombay Art Society, Langhammer was soon surrounded by an 'in crowd' of fellow European Jewish refugees - professionals, artists, doctors and industrialists - who became important art patrons and accelerated the Progressive movement. 

Kekoo Gandhy, who was to found the long-running Chemould gallery of modern art in Bombay, recalls Langhammer's confidence that contemporary Indian art would make a mark and have an impact on the art scene. India had a great store of inspiration to draw from and the colours and light of India would make the difference.' 

Langhammer is considered one of the founding fathers of the most famous of India’s schools of modern oil painting, the “Bombay Progressives.” Founded after the partition of India in 1947, this group of young Indian artists had sought out Langhammer’s tutelage and drawn inspiration from the traditions of European oil painting to establish an independent artistic identity

Langhammer returned 'heartbroken' to Europe in the early 1960s, when his health deteriorated. More on Walter Langhammer

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