The Three Graces

The war years saw a number of emigres from Europe seeking exile in India. But the case of the Hungarian artists Elizabeth Brunner and her mother, Elizabeth Sass-Brunner, is curious beyond belief. Brunner’s parents were artists in Hungary, and she was preparing to follow in their footsteps, when, barely nineteen, she told them of a dream in which a silver haired man with a beard handed her an oil lamp and asked her to carry it around the world. Her mother was convinced that this was a message from Rabindranath Tagore, who had visited Budapest a few years earlier and impressed Hungarians with his views, and so the two set off for India on a whim in 1930. Though they would travel to Japan and through Europe later, India was to remain their home.

Having sought sanctuary in Santiniketan, which they now regarded as a spiritual home, the Brunners travelled through India and painted important personalities as well as people, the countryside and landscapes. ‘Their works,’ P. N. Mago would later write, ‘are tinged with a sense of humanism and spirituality.’