SUNDAY CHRONICLE
MEET ONE OF THE MOST CELEBRATED ART CONNOISSEURS
Avenerated authority among India’s art cognoscenti, Jagdish Mittal at 93 is still as sharp and focussed as he’s ever been. Old age has left a mark on the man, but his eyes reflect tales of a seven-decade long career span, where he has gone from being an artist and collector to a published scholar who has been celebrated by such institutions as the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
The Padma Shri awardee, who originally hailed from Uttar Pradesh, chose a different path from his engineer father, when he decided to pursue a degree in Fine Arts from Kala Bhavan, Vishwa Bharti, Santiniketan. “It was when our teacher took us to Benares on a trip that I first encountered the spark in the eyes of the scholar Rai Krishnadas. His vigour and zeal inspired us,” says Mittal of his initial foray into the arts. Further research and study unearthed an inherent ability to recognise good art, which eventually kindled a passion for collecting pieces.
“I once saw a black and white photograph of a painting in a text book and became obsessed by it. I didn’t know what it was, but fussed over it for months. It turned out to be a painting that was part of an album given by Dara Shikoh to his wife. Today the same painting is displayed in London as a work of historical value.”
Many other such random finds resulted in Mittal recognising his innate capacity to identify great works of art without any prior knowledge about them, “I once liked a series of six Pahadi miniature paintings that I bought without knowing who they were by,” he shares, “After a little research, they turned out to be works by Nainsukh.”