An important aspect of the research into the illicit antiquities market is tracking art dealers and their sales. The vital role of these intermediaries is the least studied. They supplied idols to rich and famous patrons and also museums. Towards the end of their lifetimes, we often see their business not being carried on and the vast majority of their treasured collections end up as celebrated donations and gifts. We have written in our previous columns about how such gifts help circumvent the already slack collection guidelines.
The best-kept secret is that hardly a few of them are genuine gifts. There is always a quid pro quo — a compensating tax break dressed up by a friendly valuer overvaluing the ‘gift’ and as is the norm, we see patrons and museums showering rich praise on the scholarly pursuit of such dealers. But the same write-ups do offer us many vital clues and today we see one such article about art dealer Jaipaul and his collection in the Allentown Museum and other institutions in the US.
The headline of the report in The Morning Call, an American newspaper, calls him “a special collector” and the write-up says: “Born in 1927 in Quetta, Jaipaul gave up his last name as a boy, protesting the country's strict caste system. After India became independent from Britain in 1947, he served as PRO for the Congress Party and as a campaign aide to Jawaharlal Nehru … After he earned a doctorate in political science from the University of Minnesota, the couple (Jaipaul and his wife) moved to Philadelphia, where he worked for universities and human-rights organisations. In 1979 Jaipaul turned a three-decade passion for collecting Indian art into a business. In his Philadelphia gallery, he sold furniture, brasses and other items made from the second to the 19th centuries, judging 20th-century Indian art as too Western, too commercial.”
What a wonderful man. The next sentence, however, is a red flag: “He (Jaipaul) dodged India's export restrictions by acquiring works from Europe and Asia.” The article goes on to add that Jaipaul approached the Philadelphia Museum of Art, which chose 11 objects from him, and says that museum officials also “recommended two smaller institutions looking to jump-start small Indian collections."
Let us first look at a sculpture from the Philadelphia Museum’s acquisitions, a 12th century CE Jaina Rishabanatha from western India. The lack of provenance information—except it being a gift of Jaipaul to the museum in 2000—is disturbing. Neither the Allentown Museum nor any of the other institutions that have bought or sold artefacts routed via Jaipaul’s gallery have ever revealed even a single evidence in their provenance that shows legitimate removal from India. Take for example the Walter’s Art Museum’s Vamana (10th century CE). The museum’s online portal lists the following provenance information: “Jaipaul Gallery, Philadelphia; purchased by John and Berthe Ford, Baltimore, June 13, 1976; given to Walters Art Museum, 2008.”
The provenance in the Association of Art Museum Directors (AAMD) site for the same sculpture adds: “Jaipaul Gallery, Philadelphia [date and mode of acquisition unknown]...” Why would Walter’s Museum edit out the crucial “date and mode of acquisition unknown”?
In another article in The Morning Call that again praises Jaipaul, there is the following: “Not surprisingly, the Jaipauls' home in Melrose Park, Montgomery County, became a museum. The living room contained a circa 900 A.D. granite sculpture of a sexy Parvati, the Hindu goddess of power who lived on a mountain with Shiva, the happy-looking lord of positive destruction. The garden featured a 14th-century white-marble sculpture of Adinath Rishabhanath. ‘There was a piece,’ says the couple's youngest daughter, Liza Jaipaul Gonzalez, ‘literally everywhere you turned’."
Sadly, we see many Hindu murthis from “Jaipaul galleries” still coming up in auctions, though all of them have dubious provenances.
For instance, a Vijayanagar-era Parvati was sold in 2020 by auction house Bonhams with no-pre 1970 provenance (Jaipaul Galleries, Philadelphia, the 1970s …Sotheby's, New York, 19 March 2014, lot 45). The year 1970 is important because nations then signed the UNESCO Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property. Even America’s AAMD acquisition guideline says: “Members normally should not acquire a work unless research substantiates that the work was outside the country of probable modern discovery before 1970.” This of course does not give a free pass to idols stolen earlier as India has had an antiquities law since 1878; it’s just that the sculpture sold by Jaipaul galleries does not even pass the 1970 test.
If indeed Jaipaul sourced his collection outside of India, there should be provenance records showing acquired in art markets outside of our country. However, in every example that we have researched, there is not a single record showing provenance prior to the artefact arriving in his collection. As the provenance information has too many gaps, museums, collectors and auction houses would be advised to do proper due diligence for their existing and future collections to make sure there is paperwork showing legitimate export out of India.
S Vijay Kumar
Co-Founder, India Pride Project, and author of The Idol Thief
(vj.episteme@gmail.com)