Indian Life - Goa, Red Room with a View - Michel Testard
🔹 Technique: Oil on canvas
🔹 Dimensions: 80 x 60 cm
🔹 Price: €1,800
I have been to Goa several times, the last time in March 2020, just before the first Covid lockdown.
I visited old Goan houses there, particularly in the town of Chandor, not far from Panjim. These large, dilapidated mansions resemble ancient Portuguese palaces frozen in time since the 17th century.
We pass through ballrooms, salons, master bedrooms with four-poster beds, palanquins, confidant sofas, gilded mirrors... Everything—furniture, objects, paintings, tableware—seems frozen for nearly three centuries. Many windows open onto a tropical garden or the Indian Ocean.
Back in France, I painted several scenes of “rooms with a view”, as a metaphor for confinement , and the dream of a magnificent outside world: the sea, the tropical jungle, a step back in time.
This theme of the "room with a view" was often used by Matisse on the Côte d'Azur.
For me, this is a dream of the Indian Riviera.
