The secret hoard of private collectors

While few of them go public with their collections, people like Malvinder Singh and Kiran Mazumdar Shaw are owners of enviable art pieces

The maharajas were eclectic collectors. Having ateliers with several artists at their command who fulfilled commissions for folios and miniature paintings in the tradition of the grand Mughals, they turned to foreign artists to furnish their palaces under the British Raj. Their travels to Europe gained them an interest in Western art which they sometimes bought recklessly, often more kitsch than class. Back home too, their attempt to grapple with a rising modernism wasn't always well articulated. The Nizam of Hyderabad didn't buy any work from Amrita Sher-Gil even though she held a viewing especially for him in his capital. But then, he'd refused to meet Raja Ravi Varma a couple of decades earlier, and it was the enlightened maharaja of Baroda who commissioned the artist a large number of portraits (including one of Princess Tarabai posing with a pet pomeranian, surely a first in Indian art).

If the royals were collecting Western art or their acolytes like S. G Thakar Singh or Herman Muller in India, it was Western collectors who first started showing an appreciation for Indian modernism. These included the early promoters of the Progressive Artists' Group, Emmanuel Schlesinger, Walter Langhammer and Rudy von Leyden. In recent times, parts of those collections have come up for auction and offer a glimpse of the chrysalis of modernism as it segued between the Bengal School revivalists and the Bombay modernists. In America, Chester Herwitz's collection was highly valued, and in Mumbai, Jehangir Nicholson was recognised among the more eminent collectors - parts of whose collection has been recently auctioned by Pundole's to fund the renovation of the National Centre for Performing Arts. McKinsey's regional director in Dubai, Kito de Boer, and Japan's Masanori Fukuoka hold extensive collections of Indian art. In London, advertising guru Charles Saatchi can take the credit for the boom in the new generation artists who powered the rise of contemporary art in India.

A recent trend in the country, of collectors sharing their works with the public, is in its nascent stage. Only Kiran Nadar with the eponymous museums in New Delhi and Noida that bear her name, and Anupam and Lekha Poddar's Devi Art Foundation, have aired their private collections in institutions created for the public. Ebrahim Alkazi has shared his vast archive of historic photographs through a number of brilliantly curated exhibitions and documented books. A few others have expressed an interest in creating museums too, but with little to show for it yet. These include Harsh Goenka, who has an enviable collection and is partial to artists' self-portraits, and Sangita Jindal who runs an art magazine and could herald a private museum in Mumbai some time soon. Rajshree Pathy too had talked of a museum for Coimbatore but seems somewhat distracted in recent times by her annual design conclave that has grown steadily over the last three years.

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All galleries (and some artists) have their dedicated buyers, and it is true that a number of them have sizeable collections so that a large extent of it remains in storage, but these are people who eschew the limelight. While at least some of their collection is meant to satisfy their aesthetic coding, for many it is an alternate and future-forward form of investment. Inevitably, art prices do rise (leave aside recessionary hiccups and a poor choice of artworks). But there are several others who might well be secret collectors given the budgets they bring to the market (using these difficult times to bully huge discounts). At some stage they might out their collections, but for now one must let them collect in private.

Which leaves us with the usual suspects. Malvinder Singh's family collected masters such as M F Husain, but he has himself been drawn by the artists of the Baroda school, and of the current contemporaries whose works can be seen at his farmhouse in Delhi, the city office where he holds meetings, and at the flagship Fortis Hospital in Gurgaon where his interests have driven the installations and sculptures that hold patients and visitors in thrall - the art of positive healing, perhaps. Kiran Mazumdar Shaw has been a strong buyer of Bikash Bhattacharjee, Husain, Anjolie Ela Menon and Arpana Caur, while her husband collects works by the Scot artist Archie Forrest. Prized buys for most have been Husain, or Krishen Khanna - as true for Parmeshwar Godrej as for Jindal - while the latter is also partial to Atul Dodiya and Suhasini Kejriwal. The Shroffs and the Adanis too are believed to be putting together the building blocks of large collections. Builder Nitin Bhayana has been able to pair masters such as F N Souza with contemporaries like Atul Dodiya and Ravinder Reddy in his beautifully appointed art boutique home in the capital. The Park heiresses Priya and Priti Paul have proved to be eclectic collectors, the former preferring printed works and photographs, the latter dazzled by contemporary and installation art. In Mumbai and London, Amrita Jhaveri has been a potent collecting force with an 'eye' that is so well admired that when she chose to put a fraction of that collection on auction at Sotheby's, it was a sellout. The forthcoming Christie's debut auction in Mumbai in December is built around the valuable art property that Kekoo and Khorshed Gandhy of Chemould had collected in their lifetime as 'insiders'. In America, parts of Rajiv Chaudhri's collection of Indian modern art are on occasional loan to museums that put together important exhibitions.

Who is India's most serious collector? That might well be Rajeev Savara. Friends to his house talk of his attention to detail and the care with which he has ensured iconic or emblematic works with a historical connect. He is also, understandably, extremely knowledgeable about Indian art. At public fora, he has spoken about the need for a trust or foundation to which he can consign the collection. When this will happen - and where - might still be a matter of some speculation.