With regard to themes, he mostly painted rural India, which was unlike his other comrades from the Progressive Artists’ Group who chose to paint city life. Renowned critic Geeta Kapur elaborates ‘There is undoubtedly a strong element of romanticism at work in Husain’s impulse to portray rural India… In his tendency to romanticise, he is in line with Amrita Sher-Gil, Jamini Roy and George Keyt… it is Amrita Sher-Gil who shaped the most haunting image of the Indian villager…She made her Indians beautifully dark and emaciated; she showed them immobile, brooding over an everlasting dream. Husain took Amrita’s legacy further towards a more authentic stage. His villagers are not particularly beautiful; but surrounded by their tools, their animals, their magic signs and symbols, they appear more truly alive, secure and rooted in their environment.’