Volumes have been written about the "pioneer" of modern Indian art, Amrita Sher-Gil. Her melancholic portraits of women—'Three Girls', 'Women on the charpai', 'Hill Women', 'Young Girls'—often got the Hungarian-Indian painter dubbed as the "Indian Frida Kahlo". But not much is known about her doctor husband Victor Egan whom she married in 1938. Now a rare 'Portrait of Victor Egan', painted by Sher-Gil around 1939, will make its first ever market appearance in AstaGuru's forthcoming online action on December 19.
Estimated somewhere between Rs 10 to 15 crore, the painting has Egan, a Hungarian army doctor, clad in his uniform and coolly holding a cigarette between his fingers. It showcases Sher-Gil's great proficiency as a portraiture artist, and elucidates Sher-Gil's academic training. The press note says Sher-Gil created the work as a parting gift to Egan's family. After they got married, Egan and Sher-Gil lived in Hungary, however due to the looming war situation they decided to shift to India in the year 1939 to Sher Gil's paternal home in Uttar Pradesh, thereafter moving to Lahore in 1941. Three months after she moved to Lahore with Egan, Sher-Gil died on December 6, 1941 after a brief illness, just when she was about to showcase her latest paintings in an exhibition on December 14 , causing the art circles there to speculate the real reason of her death.
But to get a deeper sense of Egan's personality and his relationship with Sher-Gil, there are some blogs from Pakistan which shine a light on their journey together. One blog by Tariq Luqman has what appears to be an excerpt from Egan's daughter Eva Sood's writings which describes how her father and Sher-Gil grew up together in Hungary and were the best of friends. "He was studying medicine and she, the ever eccentric artist claimed he was the only one who kept her grounded and understood her. She was the one who proposed they get married much against the wishes of her parents...Her mother Marie Antoinette thought she could have done better than marry her first cousin who was a young inexperienced doctor with no money," the entry notes.
Her mother, the blog further elaborates, also held Egan responsible for her daughter's death, accusing him of murder. Another blog by the name of Chugtai Museum observes in a essay, "But people knew the personality of Amrita. She had excessive sexual appetite and she quenched it with affairs with many people. Her Hungarian husband Dr Victor Egan did not like that, although he loved her very much. A jealous husband with access to sophisticated poisons, poisoned her to death. That was the story everybody knew in Lahore and is known in art circles."
After Sher-Gil's death, Egan found himself to be an enemy subject in the British Raj in the middle of the Second World War, states Luqman's blog. But he eventually managed to go back to Saraya in Uttar Pradesh and restarted his medical practice there. He gave up on his native country Hungary which had turned communist.
