“One of the most revealing aspects of an artist’s work is his sense of the past: his capacity to assimilate in his mind and being the consciousness of his race, and his ability to direct the totality of that awareness through the filter of his creative imagination into an engagement with the contemporary situation […] Behind every stroke of the artist’s brush is a vast hinterland of traditional concepts, forms, meanings. His vision is never uniquely his own; it is a new perspective given to the collective experience of his race. It is in this fundamental sense that we speak of Husain being in the authentic tradition of Indian art. He has been unique in his ability to forge a pictorial language which is indisputably of the contemporary Indian situation but surcharged with all the energies, the rhythms of his art heritage.” (E. Alkazi, M.F. Husain, New Delhi, 1978, p. 3)

The unique ‘pictorial language’ of Maqbool Fida Husain described by his friend, admirer and collector Ebrahim Alkazi in 1978 is masterfully represented in Eternal Lovers. By the time he painted this double-portrait, Husain had travelled extensively across India and had seen and closely studied various forms of folk and classical Indian art. Here, he borrows the theme of the timeless couple from traditional representations of Shiva and his wife, the goddess Parvati, represented as Uma-Maheshvara. Seated on a tiger skin, the usual attribute of Shiva, the couple is represented closely entwined in an intimate embrace. In this image taken from the canon of South Asian art iconography, Shiva is referred to as Maheshvara, while Parvati is called Uma, and they are represented seated on Mount Kailash overlooking the valley. Borrowing the main features of the myth, Husain uses Shiva and Parvati to represent his own interpretation of the ideal union between man and woman as Eternal Lovers.

Complementing his use of ancient Indian iconography, the treatment of the figures here also draws from the temple sculptures of Mathura and Khajuraho that Husain discovered as early as 1948 when he travelled to Delhi with Francis Newton Souza. Husain recalls, "We went to Delhi together to see that big exhibition of Indian sculptures and miniatures which was shown in 1948 [...] It was humbling. I came back to Bombay in 1948 with five paintings, which was the turning point in my life. I deliberately picked up two or three periods of Indian history. One was the classical period of the Guptas. The very sensuous form of the female body. Next, was the Basholi period. The strong colours of the Basholi miniatures. The last was the folk element. With these three combined, and using colours – very boldly as I did with cinema hoardings [...] I went to town [...] That was the breaking point [...] To come out of the influence of British Academic painting and the Bengal revivalist school.” (Artist statement, P. Nandy, The Illustrated Weekly of India, 4-10 December 1983)

In Eternal Lovers, which displays all of the above influences, Husain uses both earthy and vibrant tones, reminiscent of miniature paintings, to almost sculpt his two figures from the dark background. The lovers’ bodies are delineated with sharp, strong lines and the sensuous body of the female figure radiates subtle rays of pine green and yellow. By the late 1960s, when this work was painted, Husain had defined his unique style with confident brushstrokes and a thick application of paint. In its theme and aesthetics, Eternal Lovers represents the complete spectrum of Husain’s ingenuity, particularly the artist’s unique way of channeling various traditions to create an original, modern artistic language.