The painting was created in 1957 and was later held by Vadehra Art Gallery in New Delhi before being offered at Saffron Art's April 2022 auction; its present location is not publicly recorded.
Patna Three Figures is a painting by Binode Behari Mukherjee, created in 1957. The artwork is made using watercolour on paper. Measures 31 × 41 cm. It is signed indistinctly in Bengali near the centre. The work was listed as Lot 71 in Saffron Art’s Spring Online Auction of Modern and Contemporary South Asian Art and Antiquities held on 6–7 April 2022. Saffron Art records the work as a painting and identifies its provenance as Vadehra Art Gallery, New Delhi from where it was acquired by the consignor.
The title suggests that the composition focuses on three figures and is connected with Patna. The work reflects Mukherjee’s interest in observing people and everyday surroundings. According to Saffron Art he initially drew people he saw and met around him and his artistic development gradually moved towards more elemental forms. His work gave importance to elements such as colour, line and texture rather than depending mainly on literary or mythological subjects.
Mukherjee was trained at Kala Bhavana, Santiniketan under Nandalal Bose. Was deeply influenced by the artistic environment created there. He later developed a modern vocabulary that combined his understanding of Indian artistic traditions with a more individual approach to form and composition. His practice included mediums, including murals, watercolours, oil paintings, ink, crayons and graphic works.
Patna Three Figures is particularly significant because it was created in 1957 the year in which Mukherjee became completely blind. Despite his deteriorating eyesight he continued to develop a language based on simplified forms and visual experience. The painting therefore belongs to a period in his artistic career and demonstrates his continued engagement with figurative subjects and watercolour, as a medium.
This one was made in 1957, just when Binode Behari Mukherjee’s sight was basically going, and honestly that fact kind of colours the whole way I read it. Three figures, watercolour, no sharp or fussy about them. He's not going for exact likeness here, he's working off feel rather than sight at this point, and you can feel that in how loose and simplified the bodies are. Nothing fine details of faces or clothes, only the basic shapes of people near each other. The painting is tiny, not even a foot wide, but the figures seem large, almost as if they’ve been taken from a mural wall. That makes sense, given he spent most of his life painting walls at Santiniketan. There is a stillness to it that doesn't feel forced, more like he was trying to grab hold of something before it got away from him completely. He'd been to Patna to teach, so perhaps there's some of that travelling, observational life tucked in as well. “It’s not a show pony. It’s quiet, a little rough, unfinished in spirit even if technically finished, and that roughness is sort of the point. It sounded like an artist with no more interest in polish than to get at something true underneath.
