A scenic view, once seen, amalgamates into you. And so does a beautiful painting. Khalid Iqbal’s landscape paintings have been a part of me for a very long time.
Khalid Iqbal was Pakistan’s master landscape painter (1929-2014). He taught and inspired many of country’s landscape painters. He studied at the renowned Slade School of Fine Arts, London, returning in mid-1950 to teach and paint in Lahore. He taught at the Punjab University and later at the National College of Arts (NCA), Lahore, where he became the Principal and which he left in 1981 to spend more time painting. Afterwards he was nominated a Professor Emeritus at the NCA.
Pakistan’s rich landscape has inspired its own generation of painters. You see Ghulam Rasul exploring contours around Islamabad; and you have Zulqarnain Haider, Nazir Ahmad, Ijaz-ul-Hassan and Iqbal Hussain painting Lahore, its surrounding areas and historical sites. Kaleem Khan focused on the landscape around Quetta. Before them, Anna Molka Ahmad and Ustad Allah Bux viewed scenery from their own particular lens.
Khalid Iqbal's colour scheme is generally muted and mostly hazy. But his yellow summer Amaltas or Flame of the Forest set the viewer's soul on fire
Pakistan’s landscape painters have aspired to reach Khalid Iqbal’s level of detail, observation and command on scenery and palette. His ability to capture the breath of a moment in landscape remains unmatched. He masterfully captured the light and sentiment of a very particular moment - for example the subtle tint of red light in his sunsets or the filtered atmosphere after a rain, both are clearly communicated to the viewer. He was equally adept at portraits and still-life painting, but focused more on landscapes. In all three, his subjects are ordinary views: objects and people from routine life and nothing glamorous, yet it is difficult to move your eye away from the spectacle of a Khalid Iqbal.
Khalid Iqbal’s colour scheme is generally muted and mostly hazy. But his yellow amaltas in the summers or his Flame of the Forest set the viewer’s soul on fire and one is totally enchanted. A closer look at his paintings reveals the use of a wide range of hues, including other brighter strokes. One of his students - and a leading landscape painter in his own right - Nazir Ahmed is mesmerised even when talking about Khalid Iqbal and describes the latter’s command over the colours in the following words:
“When Khalid Iqbal wants a blue or purple stroke to be a grey pond or a beige mud wall, that blue or purple duly turns into one in his paintings!”
Photo Courtesy - Umar Saeed, Saeed Akhtar Studios
I grew up looking at Khalid Iqbal’s paintings displayed in our home. My father, Mustansar Hussain Tarar - himself a man of the outdoors and an ardent narrator of different landscapes in his books - regularly shuffles his five precious Khalid Iqbals to different corners of the house so that they remain in his sight and he can derive the maximum joy from looking at them - despite having possessed these workers for decades!
Landscape painting was considered to be a genre on the lower rungs of art by some in the seventeenth-century French academy. In due course, it became popular and as a result of several developments - including as a conscious effort to move away from religious and historical symbolism in paintings, and as a response to industrialisation and the resultant urbanisation - artists began to be newly inspired by land- and cityscapes. The availability of transportation also allowed painters to go out of cities over weekends and paint. There were particularly those who painted for the glory of the US through landscape, which as a new country lacked a ‘momentous’ history (from a European perspective) to be painted. New inventions like portable paint tubes and field easels also allowed this process of development of landscape painting to develop faster.
Khalid Iqbal teaching at the Punjab University Fine Arts Department in the early 1960s
It is difficult to paint a landscape because of the constant changes in light, season, expanse and even the varying presence of flora and fauna. Painting all this requires one to be out and about - not sitting in the closed-door comfort of a studio. It requires a different level of rigour and discipline than other subjects of painting. Landscape painters have tried to make their way around it by taking photos, making notes, or looking for convenient spots. Khalid Iqbal, nevertheless belonged to the tradition in which there was no other way but to paint on the spot. Athar Tahir, a poet and a painter himself, who was a close friend of Khalid Iqbal and is these days working to compile the Oxford Companion to Pakistani Art, says:
“Khalid Iqbal’s compositions focus on light and its many moods. He uses subtle tints to depict the details of the landscape and capture the fleeting moments of the time of the day.”
Khalid Iqbal’s strokes are Impressionist but the product is real-life landscape. In most of the work of his latter life that I was exposed to, he consciously leaves incomplete parts in a painting, allowing our own subconscious observations to successfully complete the blanks - another sign of his mastery over landscape painting.
Old Haveli, most likely demolished now, close to the Punjab University New Campus area - Photo Courtesy - MHT Collection
"When Khalid Iqbal wants a blue or purple stroke to be a grey pond or a beige mud wall, that blue or purple duly turns into one!"
Khalid Iqbal’s paintings have layers of paint that give shape and form to his objects. The oft slanted strokes transform into freshly cut foreground grass, crops or a morning sky. When judging his award-winning painting called ‘Hampstead’ one of his Slade School teachers marveled at how a young Khalid could paint grass that had just been trodden over. The wild oil strokes are indeed the hard work and calculated handiwork of the master because Khalid Iqbal would take months to work on a painting. He preferred to paint on the spot and at the exact time - often braving harsh weather and the inclement outdoors.
A surprise visit to his residence and studio in Model Town would cause him to hide his in-progress works because he only showed works that he considered up to his own standards. Such a visit, therefore, resulted in one seeing a few of his finished works or some that he chose not to sell. These included a few of his still-life works - a broken plant pot, a composition of onions and a self-portrait among others.
Poplar Tree composition - Photo Courtesy - MHT Collection
There were, of course, times when the work did not match the creator’s high standards and Khalid Iqbal would whitewash that board to paint another one on top. As a result he painted works that were quite limited in number and kept posterity in mind. He only painted on a hard board surface. I am sure that in the future, if art experts were to closely examine his works they would find paintings underneath some of his fine works.
In the early hours of morning, Khalid Iqbal would fasten his easel on to his motorcycle, riding to the outskirts of Lahore - at that time mostly the area outside of the Punjab University campus around the Lahore Canal. His paintings are indeed a chronicle of Lahore’s peripheral areas before urbanisation swept in and ate them up. His winter morning paintings have the thin layer of Lahore’s signature winter fog painted at that hour in cold weather. This was his routine for a long time and remained so for as long as his health permitted it. I remember Saeed Akhtar, another legendary painter and student of Khalid Iqbal, helped design an iron stand on his motorcycle for him to conveniently carry his easel and art supplies.
Two Acacia trees, presently Jauhar Town just off the canal - Photo Courtesy - MHT Collection
Khalid Iqbal would almost select the buyers for his paintings. He sometimes had a particular collector in mind to give a work away. We were introduced to him by Nazir Ahmad, who as a landscape painter of stature himself, was convinced that, there is no better landscape painting to be bought than a Khalid Iqbal. Khalid Iqbal was a simple gentleman hiding a babyish smile under his drooping moustache. He was single, lived with his immediate family and was taken care of by a maid servant who would bring milk tea and biscuits for the guests.
There are no particular or majestic titles of Khalid Iqbal’s paintings and he ordinarily did not sign them - but the work itself speaks out aloud that it is the creation of the great Khalid Iqbal. It was an uphill task for him to sign his paintings. He would avoid it but when cornered, he obliged with the initials “KI” in a corner - appearing like a blot on white paper.
A corner of Khalid Iqbal's beloved garden
As for the five Khalid Iqbals that we own - each took quite an effort to acquire. Our lucky break was one of the paintings that he himself continued to consider amongst his best. One is a composition of two Acacia trees on each side of a water channel outside Lahore - the area close to the Canal and now part of Jauhar Town. He was fascinated by and loved to paint Acacia trees because of their diverse and endless formations and scale as compared to other trees. The painting has a katcha (dirt) path going along the water channel and a debris mixture of dried and wet mud recently pulled from the water course. You can feel the brittle soil and the softer mud with its dark and softer shades. The dominant grey conveys the winter morning moment/haze: not an early morning but when the day is just emerging. It is as refreshing to see it today as it was when we had set our eyes on it for the first time, a quarter of a century ago. It is a family treat for us to all sit in front of, enjoying and observing various facets of the work.
The angles of Khalid Iqbal’s composition are unique, like taking a close photograph or like a scene captured from a moving vehicle. He mostly did not delve into larger panoramic landscapes, showing his love for details. The flow of his composition makes you almost walk into the painting. His painting can be appreciated and explored by observing different parts and each has its own unique composition and beauty.
Canal Bushes, 1995
Salima Hashmi, one of the country’s most influential painters, teachers and art critics, vividly narrates the change brought by Khalid Iqbal to landscape painting - his attention to light, delicate nuances and eye for detail. She says that while passing through Lahore’s Davis Road, the Flame of the Forest tree caught Khalid Iqbal’s attention, resulting in a series of paintings. Khalid Iqbal’s teacher Sir William Coldstream was an exponent of a particular way of drawing, which - because of the location of the Slade School of Art near Euston Road - became known as the ‘Euston Road style’, and Hashmi herself was taught by Adrian Heath, who was also influenced by this way of drawing. Khalid sahib spotted it at once when he saw her work upon her return to Pakistan.
Buying Khalid Iqbal’s paintings was a big project. They were comparatively expensive but never over-priced and most importantly, required Khalid Iqbal’s consent. He would gently tell the client that since one recently bought a painting, one should now wait. After our fifth, he told my father that he had “collector’s mania” and as a freelancer like himself, he ought not to be spending too much money on paintings.
Khalid Iqbal had his own ways of generosity. He painted on hard board and his paintings were randomly displayed his studio and drawing room. A painting of poplar trees was in his drawing room. My father always looked at it, mesmerised. Once Khalid Iqbal asked him the reason for such attention and my father told him of the amazingly painted wedge contour on the right-hand corner, hidden in trees and grass. Khalid Iqbal said no one had observed it and gave it away to him as a gift. Khalid Iqbal drew satisfaction and pleasure out of painting. The poplar tree composition was our fifth and last Khalid Iqbal.
One of his Slade School teachers marveled at how a young Khalid could paint grass that had just been trodden over
Though Khalid Iqbal’s followers are painting in his tradition and there has been significant advancement in the various contemporary subjects of paintings, landscape painting has to undergo a much-needed revival to produce a new generation of painters to document Pakistan’s beautiful landscape. For this Salima Hashmi calls for the “need to have a fresh eye to re-think landscape by giving it a different direction, or to express it in mediums other than oil or water colour.”
Driving through plains, with a lonesome tree or two dropping on a water course or in the middle of crops, I am reminded of Khalid Iqbal. For me, his name is synonymous with such landscapes. A visit to museums abroad exposes you to the beauty and achievements of Cezanne, Constable, Monet, Turner and other greats. And while it is heartening to know that a new generation of Pakistani painters is becoming part of the international artistic conversation, one feels it is a tragedy that legends like Khalid Iqbal never received the global attention that they truly merited.
The writer can be reached at smt2104@caa.columbia.edu
