Born into the volatile socio-political atmosphere of pre-independent India, Pyne grew up in his ancestral house, an old dilapidated building in Calcutta. As a child with shy and reticent demeanour, his close companion was an ageing grandmother, who wound a fantastical world around her young progeny, inhabited by mythological characters. These memories formed the base for his pictorial explorations in the later years. An alumnus of the Government College of Arts and Crafts, Kolkata, Pyne primarily worked with pencil, pen and ink, drawing being his creative forte. His forms are very structured and often give the impression of skeletal scaffolding.

The present lot is a charcoal drawing in the definitive style of the artist. The mood invokes the queer imagination of a child; having a sense of adventurous gaiety along with a foreboding mystery.