The act of collecting objects is often likened to eating peanuts, for you just can’t stop. Chemould Prescott Road’s Instagram (IG) series, The Collectors, not only celebrates its collectors, but as one of the city’s oldest galleries, showing how the practice isn’t restricted to the act of buying itself: it’s a pot-pourri of determination, entrepreneurship and of course, friendship.
Shireen Gandhy
The people included in the series so far are Dr Homi Bhabha, Jehangir Nicholson, Kavita Singh, Harsh Goenka and Gurcharan Das, among others. The idea germinated from gallerist Shireen Gandhy’s piece on her collector friends for a magazine. She decided to revisit it and have open-ended conversations with them, which then became the source of the IG posts. Stating the medium’s 300-word character limit as the only hurdle, Gandhy says, “Sometimes, you may write or do something and there won’t be an audience. I am amused at how much discussion this has generated. Collecting has changed now primarily because of technology — you don’t always have to see the collector. Earlier, the connection was different. So, what people are enjoying about this series are the little anecdotes.”
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The series begins with a post on Dr Homi J Bhabha, who donned many hats, including that of a patron of the arts; he had said that the arts is what made his life worth living. The nuclear physicist was a discerning collector and also a painter, who left behind a substantial body of work following his death in an air crash in 1966.
Kanwaldeep Sahney, Sunita and Laxman Shrestha, and Devinder Sahney in the 1970s. In the early ’60s, Kanwaldeep became a regular visitor at Gallery Chemould and Pundole, and her collecting journey took shape since the dealers provided instalment plans to buy paintings. In the ’80s, her husband Devinder became one of the most “compelling” collectors, visiting artist studios before the start of any exhibition to lay hands on the first pick.
Jehangir Nicholson at the opening of SH Raza’s solo exhibition at Gallery Chemould on February 20, 1984. A trained chartered accountant and cotton merchant with a passion for photography and car racing, Nicholson forayed into the art world and made quite the splash. Gandhy recalls how he would examine his chosen piece of art by joining his index finger and thumb and looking through the space to inspect it. He started a museum comprising works from his own collection at the NCPA before it was moved to CSMVS after his death.
In 1977, former Miss India and interior designer Kavita Singh used the money given to her to buy jewellery by her businessman husband Jasjit Singh to buy artworks by Anjolie Menon and Krishen Khanna from Gallery Chemould instead. Later, she was gifted the painting of her dreams, one by Amrita Sher Gill.
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