| I have been honored by your invitation to say a few words at this book launching of Dr Musarrat Hasan’s book on Khalid Iqbal. |
| It is difficult for me to be detached about either, for they are both dear friends. I have known both of them for the best part of my life, and when I say ‘the best part’, I do not mean the longest part of my life, but quite literally its ‘best part’, qualitatively the finest part of my life. |
| I have known Khalid sahib since the early 1950s, when he was the art teacher at Aitchison College and I one of his numerous, untalented students. From Musarrat’s biography, it seems that this was during the period just before Khalid sahib left for London to join the Slade School of Art. I myself left for the U.K. a year later. |
| We did not meet again until I returned to Pakistan in 1966 and met Khalid sahib, this time in his room at the National College of Arts. I had begun cataloguing the LM collection of miniatures, and often walked across from the museum to the NCA. There was no wall separating the two in those days. Khalid-sahib and I would have tea together and talk about everything that interested us – traditional art, modern art, Punjabi history, even politics. |
| He even persuaded me to model for two of his final year students – Asif and Amjad. As Khalid sahib explained to me, the models hired by the college tended to be old and senile, and he wanted them to try their hand on a younger face. I am not sure whether Asif and Amjad learned anything from me; I certainly did, and that was how to stay motionless and to keep quiet. |
| This afternoon, I cannot stay quiet for I will be talking about everyone’s favourite person, favorite teacher and favourite painter. |
| If I was to encapsulate Khalid Iqbal’s career in one word, it would be with the word ‘Economical.’ He has been economical with his talent. He paints when he wants to, not because he needs to. |
| He has been economical with his time. He does not squander it as most of us do. He shares it only with people that he wants to meet. He has been economical with his writings. No Pakistani painter has been as self-effacing or as reticent about himself or his works. |
| He has been economical with his paintings. No artist of his stature has rationed his output so stringently. He has been economical with his exhibitions. The retrospective we see today of his works is a rare and therefore valuable exception. And he has been economical with his palette and his paints. No painter of his stature has spread paints so thinly over so many yards of canvas. |
| Where Khalid sahib has not been economical is with himself. He has given of himself freely, without restraint, without return and without recompense. |
| In all the time I have known him, whether as a pupil at Aitchison or at the Old Alhamra building where I took evening classes from him, or as a mentor as he guided me through the period of Sikh painting, he has given me more than I expected, and more than I deserved. All of you, I am sure, feel the same way about him. His influence has illuminated our lives, enriching them with values that cannot be measured in monetary terms. |
| If there has been any deficiency in his life, it has not been on his part but by the government in according him the recognition he so richly deserves. He received the President’s Pride of Performance medal in 1980, the year before his retirement from the NCA. It was not an honour that the President finally gave it; it was an honour that Khalid sahib accepted it, for he was the teacher of many such medal holders. Khalid Iqbal is more pre-eminent in his field. He is the standard by which others are measured. |
| Dr Musarrat’s book, therefore, has a timely relevance because although private collectors and public institutions may own his works, through this beautiful publication, his works will have a permanent gallery of their own for the public to enjoy. Zaheer Salam-sahib at Ferozsons and the NCA have done a wonderful job in arranging this publication. It is an overdue tribute to a man and painter who will live as long as painting itself lives in Pakistan. |
