Rare art collection by Indian masters worth millions to go under the hammer

The Hansen collection, being auctioned by Sotheby's, includes Gaitonde, Ram Kumar and Krishen Khanna

By the end of this month, 16 never-before-seen works by Indian masters will go under the hammer at Sotheby’s Modern and Contemporary South Asian Art auction.

While the sale will feature rare works by V S Gaitonde, Ram Kumar, Krishen Khanna, Mohan Samant and Piraji Sagara, what also makes it special is that the collection being auctioned belongs to Gunnar Hansen, who was general manager-Manufacturing and later board member at engineering conglomerate Larsen & Toubro. He was also the senior executive who interviewed a young A M Naik who later went on to become L&T’s longest-serving boss. Called the Gunnar and Inger Hansen Collection, it is named after the L&T veteran and his wife, Inger.

Hansen moved to India in 1953 and stayed here for almost three decades, living in Bandra in Mumbai. “The collection is a testament to their legacy and to that of L&T, which brought our family to India in the first place,” says the couple’s son, Peter Hansen. He adds that his parents would be delighted that some of these artworks may be returning to India with this sale, half a century on from when they began collecting them. “Indeed my parents would even ‘borrow’ art from the artists before they bought it, just to check if it fitted in with the family home, as was the case with the Gaitonde, a true masterpiece,” he says. 

The collection will be auctioned on September 29.

Sotheby’s has had a strong run in the last six months, with online sales of almost $300 million — more than four times that of the year before, says Edward Gibbs, chairman and head of department, Middle East and India, Sotheby’s. Other highlights of the sale outside of the Hansen collection include a portrait by Bhupen Khakhar of his friend, Shankerbhai V Patel, and works that are part of the Patwant Collection. The overall auction (101 lots) is estimated at $ 4.8-$6.8 million.

Bhupen Khakhar’s portrait of his friend, Shankerbhai V Patel

Sotheby’s has conducted 196 online auctions so far (versus 73 in 2019), and the number of lots sold is more than three times of what was sold in the same period last year. In all, 540 online auctions are planned for 2020 as against 129 conducted last year. So far, the auction house has sold 12,000 lots since the lockdown. “We regularly see a flight of capital into alternative assets such as art when the financial markets are volatile and uncertain, as they are now,” Gibbs says.

While Hansen’s is a private collection, Dinesh Vazirani, co-founder and CEO of Saffronart auction house, says among India’s big corporate art collections are those by the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), IHCL and Air India. “When the CEO of the company was passionate about art, it led to such collections” he says. ITC, too, he adds, commissioned largescale works by Tyeb Mehta, M F Husain and Krishen Khanna, which are now housed in the ITC Maurya hotel in New Delhi. FMCG company Procter & Gamble, too, had an impressive collection, but consequently sold it, Vazirani says.

What does a corporate collection mean for provenance? For one, it means the collection was built at a time when the masters were still up and coming and, therefore, there’s a stronger chance of good early works being part of it, Vazirani explains.

Ishrat Kanga, deputy director at Sotheby’s, seconds that. With the Hansen collection, the auction house even got original receipts for works bought at Chemould and other galleries in India at the time.

The Sotheby’s auction isn’t the only one where Gaitonde will likely be the star of the sale. Saffronart has its 20th anniversary coming up on September 17, which will feature its 300th auction. On sale will be a Gaitonde (starting at Rs 25 crore) owned by actor and etiquette trainer Sabira Merchant. The entire collection, says Vazirani, is valued at around Rs 55 crore.