Rise of the babu

Lala Prasad Shaw's "simple" portraits now fetch a king's ransom.

The babu is having his day in the sun "" finally! Till some years back it would have been easy to dismiss Lalu Prasad Shaw's work as merely an affectation of the best (or worst, depending on your point of view) of the Company School's influence. It was only too easy to criticise him for his "caricatures".

But there was more to Shaw than easily met the eye. Such as his classic "portraits" of the quintessential Bengali about town; not the Raj today that the Company School so often ridiculed, but the middle class neighbour you were most likely to chance upon as you crossed the road, or peeped into the apartment next to yours.

For many years, it was the "simplicity" of his work that reined in Shaw's work for investors. They were, well, too simple. It was only the better informed among the collectors who saw the details with which he delineated his portraits and his still lifes.

Each fold of fabric, each wrinkle on the face, each strand of hair, it appeared, was individually drawn and painted. And his quiet little works, like the artist himself, told reams about the character.

In a glance, you'd know more about the yawning woman, or the man holding a flower, than you might know about your best friend.

A student of Kala Bhavan in Santiniketan, Shaw has lived and worked in both Kolkata (where he is based) and

Birbhum (where he was born), has studied printmaking, worked with gouache, and does his best works using tempera on paper. Though he experimented with abstracts in his early years as an artist, and drew streetscapes, in later years he was drawn to still life (the ubiquitous vase of flowers) but, chiefly, it is his classic portraits that have thrust him into, now, the limelight as collectors have begun to scramble for his works.

In the next few years, this might well engage collectors in a frenzy, with the Saffronart auction that closed on Thursday night fetching him not only his highest prices, but also well above the estimates set by the auction house.

Of the three works at the auction, two were estimated close to Rs 1 lakh but sold for Rs 8.9 lakh each instead; a third work more conservatively estimated between Rs 77,000-86,000 fetched Rs 3.6 lakh at the auction.

Not bad for an artist whose previous auction best at Christies was Rs 1.8 lakh, and whose works on average sell for well under Rs 1 lakh.

Or at least they did. Now watch the escalation begin.