All artists painting in the 1950s and 60s had to define themselves in relation to the great modernist movements of the earlier half of the 20th Century and it’s most famous exponent, Pablo Picasso. As it was for Souza, or Newton as he was then called; “The tour de force came in the 40s when I saw works by Van Gogh, Gauguin, Cezanne, Matisse, and Picasso reproduced in art books over which I poured in the N. Petit Library, of which you had to be a member which cost money…. I was a member…. Completing my extracurricular education……I had to find my own way through this (Western Art), because the Indian Tradition was not up to date having been disrupted by alien conquests; and the Western Tradition was alien to me. I had to express my own individuality, so I had to make a spectacular entrance.”
FN Souza, Writings and Statements by Souza, in correspondence with Dr A. S. Rahman, August 1986

By the time he reached London in 1949 and finally saw Western Art in the flesh, he excitedly wrote to his fellow progressives:
“The one man who has upset my ambition of being famous is Picasso! We had seen nothing of Picasso in Bombay. The quantity of work he has done he has done is in capitals AMAZING! The quality is ASTONISHING! There is no style he has not done, he has imitated you, me, Husain, Ara, Gade and in his sculpture Bakre without we knowing it, or he knowing us!... I envy him. I love him. I admire him. I am jealous of him, which sincere painter wouldn’t be… be proud as well as envious of him?”
Ed. A. Vaypeyi, Geysers, Letters Between Sayed Haider Raza & his artist friends, Raza Foundation, p 21

After finding his feet Souza did indeed make a spectacular entrance after his first solo in 1955 and became one of the key artists of Post War Britain. Souza took inspiration from the same Old Masters that Picasso did, but once those motifs were mixed with Souza’s own particula knowledge of Classicism what emerged was a very individual language. Indeed, Souza clearly believed he had more to say than Picasso, as he pointed out “John Craxton committed suicide because Picasso and Matisse had done everything there is to be done in Art, that is before he had heard of me...”
F. N Souza, 1960, quoted in E. Mullins, Souza, Anthony Blond Publishing, London, 1963