Samuel Fyzee Rahamin

Fyzee Fyzee-Rahamin

Karachi, Pakistan

Samuel Fyzee Rahamin was born in Poona, now Pune, India. After training at the School of Art in India, he moved to London to enrol at the Royal Academy Schools, where he was taught by John Singer Sargent and Solomon J. Solomon. He returned to India in 1908, abandoning the loose brushwork technique inherited from Sargent and becoming increasingly committed to reviving the traditional style of Mughal painting. On his marriage to Atiya Begum (of the Fyzee family) in 1912, Samuel Rahamin, a Jew by faith, converted to Islam and took the name Fyzee Rahamin. His wife was a respected authority on Indian music and her book The Music of India (1925) was widely appreciated. Atiya Fyzee wrote travel accounts of her time in Europe and had a friendship with Mohammad Iqbal; her brother was a successful tennis player who appeared at Wimbledon. Music seems to have had an important influence on the work of Samuel Fyzee Rahamin, who illustrated his wife’s book.

His career is further evidence of the global networks of art and culture at the beginning of the twentieth century. He lived in Bombay (now Mumbai) but held his first exhibition at the Galerie Georges Petit in Paris in 1914. He also exhibited in the UK and America, including at the 1924 British Empire Exhibition at Wembley. A 1926 issue of Burlington Magazine carried a notice of his exhibition of watercolours at Arthur Tooth & Sons Gallery, entitled ‘Water-Colours, India, Vedic, Mythological and Contemporary’. In May 1939 he held a ‘Special Exhibition’ displaying ‘Modern Indian Art, on traditional lines’ at the American Association, New York. He was recruited to become an art advisor to the state of Baroda and also painted frescoes for the Imperial Secretariat, New Delhi, in 1926–7 and 1928–9.

In 1928 Samuel Fyzee Rahamin approached William Rothenstein to recommend him to paint the proposed murals in India House in Aldwych. Fyzee Rahamin was not appointed because of his seniority. Fyzee Rahamin assisted the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Metropolitan Museum, New York in the reorganization of their collections of Asian art. He was also a writer and published plays and poetry. He lived in Karachi from 1947 and his art collection, which he presented to the Aiwan-e-Riffat Museum in Karachi, is now housed in the Fyzee Rahamin Art Gallery. There are also examples of his work in Tate Britain and Manchester City Art Gallery.