Painter, muralist, dramatist and poet Samuel Fyzee-Rahamin was born Samuel Rahamin Samuel to a Jewish family belonging to India’s Bene Israel community in Poona (now Pune), India in 1880. He studied at the School of Art in Bombay, and then, on a scholarship in London at the Slade School of Fine Art (1903), and the Royal Academy school (1904-09) under John S. Sargent and Solomon J. Solomon. His tutors’ influence can be seen in his Portrait of Rosalind Adler (1906, Ben Uri Collection), a typical Edwardian portrait of a young girl and almost certainly a commission.
In 1908 Samuel returned to India, becoming art advisor to the Maharaja of Baroda and abandoned naturalism in favour of the two-dimensional figuration traditionally associated with Rajput painting, a strand of the Bengal school. He maintained his connections with Britain, exhibiting critically acclaimed paintings in the latter style at galleries in the UK and internationally. In 1924 his work was included in the British Empire Exhibition in Wembley and in 1925, he became the first Muslim artist to enter the Tate when two of his Ragmala paintings were acquired for its collection (one gifted by the Jewish businessman Victor Sassoon, the other presented by the State of Bhavnagar). In the 1930s, he helped the Victoria & Albert Museum reorganise its collection of Indian art and submitted a shortlisted proposal for a mural for India House in Aldwych. In 1926 as Samuel Fyzee-Rahamin he published an article ‘On Indian Art and Burne-Jones’, inspired by his commission as a muralist for the Delhi Imperial Secretariat and highlighting the difficulties of cultural exchanges under the auspices of the British Empire.
In the 1930s two of his plays were staged in London, choreographed by his wife, Atiya Fyzee-Rahamin, an important author, performer and patron of the arts, who belonged to a prominent Muslim family in Mumbai. Prior to their marriage in 1912, Samuel converted to Islam and both he and Atiya unusually took each other’s family names.
In 1948, the Fyzee-Rahamins moved to Karachi, Pakistan following the partition of the Indian subcontinent in 1947. Samuel Fyzee-Rahamin died there in 1964.
