20-21 / 178
20
21
However, his expulsion would not deter Newton from his artistic endeavours.
Indeed, he set about painting immediately:
“
On the day I was expelled from the JJ school of Art in
1945
, I marched home
indignantly, told my astonished mother what had happened- I was
21
years
old then, had grown an Errol Flynn moustache and I smoked cigarettes from a
holder like Robert Donat- and started furiously painting in oils with a palette
knife on a large piece of plywood my mother had bought to use as a cutting table
top for dressmaking. I painted an azure nude with a still-life and landscape
in the background. I finished the painting in an hour of white heat. I titled it
‘The Blue Lady’ and exhibited it in my first one man show December
1945
.
Fifty selected paintings and drawings from a total of a couple of hundred
works, all done within six months from the date of my expulsion
”
11
He returned to his native Goa to paint renewed intensity. He recalled the
experience in ‘Nirvana of a Maggot’, an auto biographical essay published in
Words and Lines
.
“
Some years ago, I spent a few months in an almost deserted village in Goa,
which is my native country. I was living in an old half dilapidated house.
The village, quite a primitive one, was scantily populated. The tentacles of
the monstrous civilisation spreading on the outskirts beyond were gradually
strangling it….In those days I was painting peasants and rural landscapes.
I painted the earth and its tillers with broad strokes, heavily outlining masses
of brilliant colours. Peasants in different moods, eating and drinking and
toiling in the fields, bathing in a river or a lagoon climbing palm trees,
distilling liquor, assembling in a church, praying or in procession with priests
and acolytes carrying the monstrance, relics and images; ailing and dying,
mourning or merrymaking in market places and feasting at weddings.
”
12
He returned to Bombay with a folio full of work. With the help of an old
student friend of his, E. Mogul, Newton presented a selection of his works
at his first solo exhibition on the
1
st December
1945
. His show, opened by
Rudolf von Leyden, was held at The Bombay Art Society, then situated
at Rampart Row behind Prince of Wales Museum. The Mayor of Bombay,
also a native of Goa, attended the exhibition. Newton sold almost all of
the pictures and one in particular, ‘
Blue Lady
’ was bought for the Baroda
Museum by the director of the time Dr. Herman Goetz
13
. Another work,
‘Ave Maria’ was bought by a girl working for his mother called Maria
Figueiredo, for half her weeks wage at the time, some forty-eight rupees.
It was to be a defining purchase for her, as two years she and Newton
married. The exhibition also received favourable reviews in the newspapers,
notably in The Times of India, Rudolf von Leyden’s said in his review
that “
the exhibits showed imagination, effort and enthusiasm which were
commendable in a young artist
”. The exhibition had been a huge success
and was the first stepping stone for Newton on his artistic path.
ARTISTIC BEGINNINGS
1945—1946
Newton, aged
21
,
1945
© The Estate of Francis Newton Souza
The Times of India
featuring the Art Society of
India’s Annual Exhibition, December
10
,
1945
© The Times of India