[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/saffron.png?w=1024″]<\/p>\n
\n\tA painting by Raja Ravi Varma has set a new auction record for the work of an Indian artist, signaling continued strength at the top end of the market.<\/em><\/p>\n Yashoda and Krishna<\/em>\u00a0(ca. 1890s) sold for $17.9 million at Saffronart in Delhi on April 1, surpassing the previous benchmark for Indian painting at auction, held by M.F. Husain\u2019s\u00a0Untitled (Gram Yatra)<\/em>, which sold for $13.8 million at Christie\u2019s\u00a0New York last year and was purchased by ARTnews<\/em> Top 200 Collector Kiran Nadar.\u00a0The result also comfortably eclipses Varma\u2019s prior record of $4.5 million, set in 2023<\/p>\n \n\tThe buyer was pharmaceutical billionaire Cyrus Poonawalla, founder of the Serum Institute of India, according to\u00a0Artsy.<\/em>\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tCharacterizing Varma as \u201cindisputably remains the most influential pioneer of early modern Indian art,\u201d Saffronart called Yashoda and Krishna<\/em> \u201cone of the artist\u2019s most accomplished works,\u201d in its lot description. \u201cIn this painting,\u201d the essay continues, \u201che interprets the universally resonant theme of maternal love through the mythological figures of the infant Lord Krishna and his foster mother Yashoda, a subject strongly embedded in Indian culture and devotional sentiment.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tThe sale also underscores how concentrated this market has become at the very top. Works by Varma and a handful of other artists are\u00a0effectively barred\u00a0from leaving India under national heritage laws, meaning the best material likely circulates within a\u00a0relatively closed ecosystem. That restriction has done little to dampen demand and may, according to the numbers, be intensifying it.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n [analyse_source url=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/art-news\/news\/raja-ravi-varma-17-9-million-auction-record-indian-art-1234779868\/”]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/saffron.png?w=1024″] A painting by Raja Ravi Varma has set a new auction record for the work of an Indian artist, signaling continued strength at the top end of the market. Yashoda and Krishna\u00a0(ca. 1890s) sold for $17.9 million at Saffronart in Delhi on April 1, surpassing the previous benchmark for Indian painting at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,226],"class_list":["post-1865042","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-artnews-com","tag-crawlmanager"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1865042","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1865042"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1865042\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1865042"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1865042"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1865042"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}