Mridang/Drummer (Toy Series)

This gouache work is evocative of the wooden toys and their designs that M. F. Husain made early on in his career. With just a slight bend of the bodies of the drummers, especially of the one in red, Husain lends a sense of movement to the work. It appears to be a scene from an event of great energy—a marriage or a religious ceremony—where the two are playing the mridang, a percussion instrument largely used in Carnatic music. Husain had created this work (along with another titled Kumhar from the series), for an exhibition at a Delhi gallery to mark his sixtieth birthday, when his year of birth had not been corrected to 1913.