Scholar's private treasures enrich city museum

MUMBAI: Karl Khandalavala’s artcollection is now a national asset— just as the great lawyer and arthistorian had wished.After over a decade in the making, the Meherbaiand Karl Khandalavala gallery opened at the Maharaj Chhatrapati Shivaji VastuSangralaya (Prince of Wales Museum) on Khandalavala’s birth centenary onMarch 16. The gallery displays the most celebrated pieces fromKhandalavala’s private collection of 700 Indian miniature paintings,manuscripts, drawings and sculptures. The scholar gave his entirecollection on permanent loan to the museum, of which he was trustee for 50years, shortly before his death in 1995. That makes Khandalavala the biggestdonor, after Sir Dorab Tata, to the city’s premiermuseum.“The gallery includes art objects that allow you aglimpse into the psyche of the collector. We hope, as indeed Karl Khandalavaladid, that the nation enjoys these things of beauty as much as hedid,’’ observes museum director Kalpana Desai.A few ofKhandalavala’s favourite art objects leap out at you here. Among theminiatures, on which he penned books, is the collector’s most belovedBasohli, ‘Radha and Krishna in a Bower’, a vivid hued 1680s’picture depicting Radha gazing coyly through her gauzy duppatta at an ardentKrishna. The ornaments of the lovers are studded with tiny flakes of emeraldhued ‘beetle-wings’—�a characteristic of the BasohliSchool’’, the crusty collector had once explained to this reporter.There’s also ‘The Death of Vali’, a stark Paharipainting of the monkey-king lying dying with Ram’s arrow through hisheart, with his anguished slayer standing by. It’s a picture that neverceased to move the animal-loving collector. “Much as I revere Ram, I willnever forgive him for slaying Vali,’’ he hadremarked.Among the sculptures that Khandalavala scoured the countryfor, are a 16th century bronze Hanuman, a Tara, and a brass Krishna that thecollector believed looked like “grace petrified’’. “Thisgallery brings my guru alive for me,’’ muses art historian ShridharAndhare, who delivered the Karl Khandalavala memorial lecture earlier this week.“Karl was a fine scholar and a fine human being. When helearned something from us, his adoring pupils, he always let us know. Hebelonged to a generation that included mighties such as C Sivaramamurti, StellaKramrisch, Niharranjan Ray, besides Ananda Coomaraswamy and Foucher before them.Theirs was a tradition of liberal humanism, one that is now virtually extinct,in which the process of study and understanding served as much to hone andrefine human sensibilities as to add toknowledge.’’Karl’s erudition was laced withreverence for the subject, adds Desai. “Whenever he entered the NationalMuseum he would pause before the large Pallava image of Vishnu,’’she recalls.“It was a gesture not necessarily that of abeliever, nor of his civilised Parsi cosmopolitanism, but of one paying homageto the wonder of artistic creation.’’