A dark elephant and calf feed beneath a red tree

Under a coral-red tree whose branches fork across a green forest wall, a great dark elephant stands over her calf as it feeds, the small trunk curled around leaves and twigs on the golden ground; scarlet flame-flowers lie fallen at their feet, one tucked behind the mother's ear, and crows perch in the dark trees to the right. Signed and dated March 1940 at Saraya, it belongs to the late animal pictures in which Sher-Gil gave the village elephants the same still monumentality as her human subjects.

Amrita Sher-Gil (1913–1941) was born in Budapest to a Sikh aristocrat and a Hungarian opera singer, trained at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, and returned to India in 1934 determined to paint the country's people rather than its picturesque surface. In the seven years left to her she fused the flat colour and frontal stillness of Ajanta murals and Pahari miniatures with the Post-Impressionist lessons of Gauguin and Cézanne, producing the foundation of modern Indian painting. She died in Lahore at twenty-eight; her work is declared a National Art Treasure by the Government of India and is held chiefly by the National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi.

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