Samuel Fyzee-Rahamin

Samuel Fyzee-Rahamin (19 December 1880 – 1 January 1964) was an Indian, later Pakistani, painter and writer, one of the founders of modern Indian painting. Born in Poona as S. Rahamin Samuel Talkar into a Bene Israel Jewish family, he converted to Islam in 1912 on his marriage to the writer and intellectual Atiya Fyzee and took the name Fyzee-Rahamin; he was court painter of Baroda, painted the frescoes of the Imperial Secretariat in New Delhi, emigrated to Karachi in 1948 and died there in poverty. No Arabic Wikipedia article exists for him, so the Arabic page is written from the English and Urdu sources and says so. ^{1 2}

Rahamin was born in Poona in the Bombay Presidency into a Jewish family of the Bene Israel community, and studied art at the Sir J. J. School of Art in Bombay and then at the Royal Academy in London. ^{1 3}

In 1912 he converted to Islam to marry Atiya Begum, known as Atiya Fyzee, an Indian Muslim writer and intellectual, and took the name Fyzee-Rahamin. The English article's account of the conversion cites a 2014 Business Standard book review and a 2014 Frontline article, and quotes an Art UK account calling him "the first Muslim artist in the Tate collection". No source names a school within Islam for him, so his affiliation is recorded as unclassified with the conversion itself documented here; the Urdu stub's text says only that he was Atiya Fyzee's husband, and its filing of him among converts to Islam from Judaism is a category, not a text attestation. ^{1 2}

He was the court painter of the princely state of Baroda from 1908 to 1918, and in 1918 visited London to represent India at an exhibition of the Imperial Forces. After his return he ran an antique store in Bombay, and was then commissioned to paint the frescoes of the Imperial Secretariat in New Delhi, which he executed between 1926 and 1929 and which are considered a landmark in Indian art history; his paintings are exhibited at the Tate Museum and Art Gallery. He supported the modernists of Europe and was critical of revivalists who replicated the styles of the old masters, and his paintings are described as combining European, Persian, Chinese, Japanese and Indian styles. ¹

With his wife Atiya Fyzee he co-authored a 1940 book on Indian art, Indian Art. ¹

After Pakistan's independence in 1947, Fyzee-Rahamin and his wife emigrated to Karachi in 1948, where they lived in abject poverty. He died in Karachi on 1 January 1964, as the English article gives it; Wikidata gives 22 October 1964 and the unreferenced Urdu stub gives 22 October 1967, so the English article's date is followed and the death recorded as debated, with the other readings preserved. His painting Itinerant Musicians was entered for the Sarpendra Prize and won first prize, and scholars have recently acknowledged his position among the modern artists of South Asia. ^{1 2 3}

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