London, June 1: Indiansare now rich enough to buy back some of their artistic treasures, according toan expert at Christie’s, the London auction house which has placed a pricebetween £1.3 million and £1.8 million on a painting by Syed Hyder Raza.

If Saurashtra, the 200cmx200cm acrylic on canvas, achieves itstarget, it will exceed the previous record of £1,273,250 for La Terre, 1973,another of Raza’s works, set at a Christie’s auction in June 2008.

Well-heeled Indians are flooding London for two auctions onconsecutive days — the estate of Francis Newton Souza on June 9, followed by asale of works by, among others, Raza, M.F. Husain, Tyeb Mehta, Bhupen Khakhar,Subodh Gupta, Ganesh Pyne, and Jamini Roy on June 10.

The latter auction has three other works by Raza, valued at£5,000, £8,000 and £150,000 but is led by Saurashtra whose £1 million plusestimate has not been plucked out of the air.

This reassurance was given by Yamini Mehta, a Mumbai girl whogrew up in America but moved over after seven years with Christie’s New York toChristie’s London to be its senior specialist and director of the contemporaryIndian art department.

“Raza himself considers Saurashtra to be one of the 10 mostimportant works he has done in his life,” she told The Telegraph.

Raza, who is 88, has been invited to attend the auction.

“The artist, though living in France for more thanhalf-a-century, is a revered master in India and the painting is one of hismost ambitious works he has ever created as homage to his homeland,” Mehtasaid.

“Its size, scale, and expressive brushstrokes radiate thebrilliant colours of India and has a deeply spiritual subtext. In this onework, the artist has worked through all of the themes of his long and variedcareer and serves as the shining example of one of the best works in this fieldto come to auction.”

The value depended on “the size of the painting, the palate,where it fits into the artist’s oeuvre”, Mehta explained.

She also described Jamini Roy’s depiction of sunset over theHooghly, valued at £5,000 to £7,000, as “a very nice work, very charming. Itwas bought by an Italian diplomat who met (Roberto) Rosselini, when he wasfilming in India (and did a bunk with a Bengali housewife, Sonali Das Gupta).So there are stories attached to these paintings”.

Raza’s Saurashtra, painted in 1983, comes from a Frenchcollector who acquired it directly from the artist.

Whenever Raza is asked about what inspires him, he comes outwith the same answer: “I have never left India. I love my country and I amproud of it.”

On who is likely to spend over a million pounds on acquiring theRaza masterpiece or indeed any of the other works in the auctions, Mehtaspeculated: “It’s so iconic it could go just about anywhere. We have sent 3,500catalogues all over the world. It could go to an NRI or someone in India. Thepurchasing power of Indians has gone up a lot, we have noticed.”

In London, revealed Mehta, “we have Lakshmi Mittal’s wife (Usha)who is on the board of Christie’s holding private events.”