Rare Raja Ravi Verma works may fetch $400,000-$600,000 at Sotheby's auction

Raja Ravi Varma's celestial nymph 'Tillottama', M F Hussain's 'Nayika' and S H Raza's rarely seen 'Ville Provenale' will be some of the Indian art masterpieces to go under the hammer at the Sotheby's upcoming 'Modern and Contemporary South Asian Art' sale on March 19 in New York.

The sale will also feature modern masterworks by leading artists including Bikash Bhattacharjee, Ganesh Pyne among over 70 lots that are expected to fetch an estimated total of $4.7-6.6 million.
Following in the footsteps of Untitled (Damayanti), sold last season for a remarkable price of $1.7 million, Ravi Varma's Tillottama carries a pre-sale estimate of $400-600,000, the organisers said.

Painted circa 1896, the luminescent portrait of Tillottama, a celestial nymph from Hindu mythology, is characteristic of the artist's oeuvre; by combining western Academic Realism with markedly Indian subjects, and unexpected combinations of colours, Ravi Varma's works of art remain timeless and uniquely his.