Why Sher-Gil is a special case: a tiny oeuvre, a national-treasure status that restricts export, and a market that is largely domestic.
ArtValue compares your work with public auction results and market data. Its coverage of the Indian auction houses (Saffronart, AstaGuru, Pundole's) is limited, so for this market treat the estimate as a first orientation, not as a price or an authentication.
A short career. Born in Budapest in 1913, trained in Paris and working in India from 1934, Sher-Gil died in Lahore in 1941 aged 28. The oeuvre is small, and the National Gallery of Modern Art in New Delhi holds a major group of her works, so few paintings are ever for sale.
National art treasure. Her works are among those reported as declared "art treasures" under the 1972 Act (details below). The market is therefore essentially domestic, and buyers and sellers must take the legal status into account.
Quality, period and documentation. Mature works of the second half of the 1930s, with documented exhibition and publication history, are the reference. For a work attributed to her, scholarship and provenance matter more than anything else.
A single exceptional work from 1937; it is not a guide to anything else attributed to her. Prices are as reported, usually including the buyer's premium. 1 crore = 10 million rupees. Isolated results are not a valuation of your work: price depends on period, medium, size, quality and provenance, and sale records move over time.
Forgeries of leading Indian modernists are a documented problem. Examples: in January 2009 S. H. Raza opened an exhibition of his work in Delhi and publicly said that most of the roughly 30 paintings on show were not by him; the show was cancelled the same day (ArtDaily/Artron, 20 January 2009). In September 2025 India's Enforcement Directorate filed a charge sheet before a special court in Mumbai alleging that 11 fake paintings had been sold as works by Husain, Raza, Manjit Bawa and Souza for about Rs 17.9 crore (The Week (PTI), 24 September 2025). These are allegations and cases, not a statement about any particular work.
India's Antiquities and Art Treasures Act, 1972 makes it unlawful for anyone other than the Central Government, or an authority or agency it has authorised, to export an "antiquity" or an "art treasure" (section 3). Exporting or attempting to export one is punishable by imprisonment of six months to three years and a fine (section 25). An "art treasure" is a work of art that the Central Government has declared as such by notification, and no such declaration can be made while the artist is alive. Source: Antiquities and Art Treasures Act, 1972 (text).
Works by nine deceased artists were declared national art treasures by Central Government notifications of 1976 and 1979, the so-called "Navaratna": Abanindranath Tagore, Gaganendranath Tagore, Rabindranath Tagore, Amrita Sher-Gil, Nandalal Bose, Jamini Roy, Raja Ravi Varma, Nicholas Roerich and Sailoz Mookherjea (Khaitan & Co, Chambers Art & Cultural Property Law 2025, India). Amrita Sher-Gil is on that list. In practice this means her works cannot lawfully leave India without a specific permit from the Archaeological Survey of India, which is exceptional, so the market for them is essentially domestic, and a work that is outside India today needs specialist legal advice about its status before any sale or move.
Other rules can apply as well (customs and import duties in the destination country, cultural property rules, taxes). This is general information, not legal advice.
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