Upload
others
View
19
Download
0
Embed Size (px)
Citation preview
CERTIFICATE
This is to certify that the present research work titled RENAISSANCE IN
INDIAN ART (1900-1947) has been conducted by Ms Monika Srivastava and is
the original work of the researcher. I wish her success in all her present and
future endeavours.
Prof. P.K. Srivastava
Supervisor & Head,
Department of Western History,
University of Lucknow,
Lucknow
DECLARATION
I Monika Srivastava, hereby declare that the work contained in this thesis
RENAISSANCE IN INDIAN ART (1900-1947) has been solely carried out by
me and is not submitted at any other University or to any examining body in
India or abroad. I am solely responsible for the content of the present thesis.
Date:
Place: Monika Srivastava
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
I would like to begin by expressing my deepest gratitude to my
Supervisor, Professor Pramod Kumar Srivastava, Head, Department of
Western History, University of Lucknow, for his invaluable guidance and
constant support. I have been extremely fortunate to have an advisor who
helped me to explore the topic of my research in depth. His patience and
support enabled me to overcome many critical situations and finish this
thesis. I would like to thank him for encouraging me to research this topic
and for facilitating my growth as a researcher. I am deeply indebted to him
for the lengthy discussions that helped me sort out the details of my work.
Professor Srivastava’s insightful comments and constructive criticism at
different stages of my research were thought-provoking and helped me focus
my ideas.
I am extremely grateful to Professor P. Rajiv Nayan, Dean, Faculty of
Fine Arts, University of Lucknow, for having allowed me to have
unrestricted access to literature at the Library of the College of Arts.
I am equally thankful to the staff of various library like- Lalit Kala
Academy, Kaiserbagh and the Lalit Kala Publication Division, Aliganj, Arts
College, Tagore Library, University of Lucknow, State Museum, Lucknow,
Jahangir Art Gallery, Mumbai, Indian Museum, Kolkatta and Prince of
Wales Museum (Chatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya) Mumbai.
My sincere thanks to Mr. Manav Prakash of Universal Bookseller,
Hazratganj, Lucknow for helping me in arranging the books in due course of
time and in collecting my research material.
I would like to express my gratitude towards my colleagues at A.P.Sen
Memorial Girls College, Lucknow, especially Principal, Dr. Vinita Singh, for
their kind co-operation and encouragement which helped me complete this
project.
A special thanks to my family. My family has been a constant source
of love, concern, support and strength all these years. I would like to express
my heart-felt gratitude to my family. Words cannot express how grateful I am
to my mother Mrs Vinodini Srivastava, and my father, Mr R. B. Srivastava,
for their blessings and support. My brother Mukul Srivastava (Chief Manager
Economist, Union Bank of India) provided me emotional support throughout
my journey and always guided me to stay focused on my study. It would not
have been possible for me to complete this thesis without the help, at every
stage, given by my sister, Vartika. In spite of her preoccupation with her
work, she helped in the typing, editing and finalising of several drafts.
Lastly, I would also like to thank all of my friends who supported me,
exhorted me to complete the thesis which had been delayed considerably due
to certain unavoidable circumstances.
Date:
Place: Monika Srivastava
CHAPTER CONTENT PAGE NO
I
Art : Origin and Meaning 1-58
1:1
What is Art? 3-14
1:2
What is Painting 14-20
1:2:1
Western Paintings 20-29
1:2:1:1 Pre-historic 20
1:2:1:2 Egypt 20
1:2:1:3 Aegean 21-22
1:2:1:4 Greece 22
1:2:1:5 Roman 22-23
1:2:1:6 Medieval Ages 23-26
1:2:1:7 15th Century 26-29
1:3
Origins of Renaissance Art
29-32
1:3:1 16th Century 32-34
1:3:2 Michael Angelo 34-35
1:3:3 Raphael 35-37
1:3:4 Mannerism, Baroque and Rococo 37-38
1:3:5 Baroque 38
1:3:6 Rococo 38-39
1:3:7 Neo-classical 39-40
1:3:8 Romanticism 40-41
1:3:9 Realism 41-42
1:3:10 Impressionism 42-43
1:3:11 Post-Impressionism 43-44
1:3:12 Modernism 44-45
1:3:13 Post Modernism 45-46
1:3:14 Indian Paintings 46-51
1:3:15 Mughal School 51-58
II Colonial Painting-I 59-124
2:1
Company School of Painting 70-78
2:1:1 Madras 78-79
2:1:2 Tanjore 79-80
2:1:3 Murshidabad 80-83
2:1:4 Calcutta 83-86
2:1:5 Lucknow 86-90
2:1:6 Patna 90-96
2:1:7 Benaras 96-98
2:1:8 Delhi and Agra 98-101
2:2 Fine Art Education in India and Raja
Ravi Varma 102-124
2:2:1 Fine Art Education in India 102-106
2:2:2 Raja Ravi Varma 106-124
III Colonial Painting-II 125-242
3:1 E.B. Havel and Changing Art
Traditional in India 125-131
3:2 Abanindra Nath Tagore, Nationalism
and painting in colonial Bengal 132-153
3:2:1 Personal life and background of
Abanindra Nath Tagore 132-138
3:2:2 The paintings of Abanindranth Tagore 138-147
3:2:3 Abanidranath Tagore and "the Bengal
School" 147-153
3:3 Nandlal Bose 154-173
3:3:1 Nandalal Bose’s association with
Mahatma Gandhi 173-185
3:3:2
Search for Individual Identity Avant
Garde 185-189
3:4 Individual Styles 189-242
3:4:1 Gaganendranath Tagore 189-199
3:4:2 Rabindranath Tagore 199-214
3:4:3 Jamani Roy 214-226
3:4:4 Amrita Sher Gil 226-242
IV Post Colonial Painting 243-310
4:1 Pre Independence Art Trends 243
4:2 Gladstone Solomon and the
developments in Bombay 243-250
4:3 Developments in Calcutta 250-251
4:4 Developments In Madras 251-252
4:5 Developments in Lahore 252-253
4:6 Developments in Lucknow 253-254
4:7 Art in Bengal During 1940 and
Formation of Calcutta Group 254-265
4:8 Calcutta Group 265-282
4:9 Progressive Art Group Bombay 283-296
4:10 Bombay Group 296-298
4:11 Delhi Silpi Chakra 298-310
V Conclusion 311-335
Bibliography 336-351
Annexure
Plates I-XXVI
PREFACE
The world is full of all the colours of life, all the colours that are
present in the rainbow. The different colours in the rainbow depict
different moods. Everywhere there is a movement and change is
manifested in the form of different seasons. Works of art were created
many thousand years before the invention of writing. Thus these works of
art are our chief source of information about pre-historic and ancient
people. Art is the best mode of expression of one’s mental and emotional
state. The present work is divided into five chapters.
The first chapter describes in detail what is art, paintings during the
pre colonial, the western period, origin of renaissance art and the works
undertaken by Michael Angelo, Raphel, Mannersism, Baroque, Rococo
and the changes witnessed in Indian paintings.
The second chapter is about the Company School of paintings
developed in Madras, Tanjore, Murshidabad, Calcutta, Lucknow etc., fine
art education in India and efforts undertaken by Raja Ravi Verma.
The third chapter contains a description of colonial painting and the
role of E. B. Havel, Abanindranath Tagore, Rabindranath Tagore, Nandlal
Bose, Jamini Roy, Gagendranath Tagore and Amrita Sher-Gil.
The fourth chapter contains the details of the post colonial paintings
and pre-independence art trends.
The fifth chapter is a conclusion and a summary of the previous
chapters. The plates in the annexure depict the paintings of various
periods.
The realization of problems of immense magnitude that came with
the themes for serious paintings, the introduction of new and meaningful
content into the creative expression of the artists of the time, the role of
artists and renewal of forms are sought to be examined in this thesis.
1
Art: Origin and Meaning
The earth is a beautiful place for man to live. We can find all
beauties of life under an ever-changing sky. The world is full of all the
colours of life, all the colours that are present in the sun. There are
different colours in the sun which depict different moods. Everywhere
there is a movement and changes in the form of different seasons. These
movements and changes helped man to become civilized.
There is a close relation between man and nature. During pre-
historic times, man was fully dependent on nature for his basic needs, for
nature provides food when man is hungry; it provided shelter when needed
(in the form of caves or rock-shelters). It gives warmth and light in the
form of the sun, water in the form of rain. Science and technology were
not known during the pre-historic period. Science was the latest
development in human history, so it had little meaning to mankind. Man
has been in love with nature for a long time and he has found nature to
have a special kind of human relationship. Because of this attitude art
derives itself from being a part of nature.
One of the most primitive impulses in man is the urge to make
patterns; in other words, to create something which appeals to the eyes and
through which he can express himself, his feelings, his thought his
2
customs etc. As soon as the basic requirements of food and shelter have
been satisfied, we find that a human being starts adoring his surroundings.
Moved by the charm of nature man tries to express his appreciation for it
in the form of art.
Even during the pre-historic period, art had its influence on man.
We can find evidence of art in the pre-historic age in the caves all over the
world, for example, Altamira in North Spain,1 Niaux near Tarascon-en-
Ariege2. These caves give us some of the finest examples of the art of that
period. Though, man, still in a savage state, was able to express himself in
the medium of painting or engraving.
Works of art were created many thousand years before the invention
of writing. Thus these works of art were our chief source of information
concerning pre-historic and ancient people. The most primitive decoration
is usually produced by simple and appropriate technique. ―The oldest
human art probably consisted of floral gathering, found objects and skin
marking.‖3
According to an ancient legend, ―the first drawing was done by
tracing the shadows cast by a figure. Another possible origin is that some
natural stain was found to have a vague resemblance to a figure, and was
1 Burkitt, M. C.,The Old Stone Age, Rupa and Co. India, 1962, p. 158.
2 Ibid. 154
3 Wilson, Frank Avray, Art and Understanding, London, 1963, p.7.
3
touched up to enhance the likeness. Similarly, a stone or a piece of wood
may have been found to suggest a human or an animal form and later
other stones or pieces of wood were deliberately carved into similar
forms.‖4
But as civilization advanced, man tried to imitate more complex
techniques which resulted in, or we can say were responsible for, the birth
of painting, sculpture and architecture.
1:1 What is Art?
What is art: The question, though in appearance simple, is quite
formidable. When we ask an ordinary person this question he generally
replies that art is architecture, sculpture, painting, music and poetry in all
its forms, or, all those things that produce beauty is ‗art‘.
With the advancement of civilization, the meaning of the word ‗art‘
has become more complex. Today art has so many aspects, serves so
many purposes such as decorative, creative, religious, spiritual,
philosophical, etc., that it is very difficult to describe it in one sense.
There are different opinions regarding the definition of art. Some
philosophers say that art is something spiritual. They relate art with God.
A philosopher like Plato says that ‗art is imitation‘. According to him,
4 Chamat Mary, Osborne Malcolm and others, The Arts,paintings,the graphic arts, sculpture and
architecture, London, undated, p. 23
4
God alone is a creator because he creates the form, the ideal bed,
craftsmen and artists are not strictly speaking creators but imitators.‖ 5
Plato regards art ―as the copy of a copy, the appearance of an appearance
and the language he generally uses for his theory of art is imitation or
mimesis.‖6
Aristotle says that ―art imitates nature.‖ For nature, to Aristotle is
not the outward world of created things; it is the creative force, the
productive principle of the universe.‖7
Philosophers like Plato and Aristotle say that art is imitation,
imitation of nature. Plato says that God created everything, all the beauty
of the world is created by God; men only copy those things. So he
considers art merely to be a copy. Aristotle says that art is imitation of
nature. In other words, man is copying nature. But it is not true because art
is something creative. It involves the artist imagining his view regarding
the object. If art was only imitation, then photography would have been
the most efficient medium for imitation. Therefore, there would have
been no need of any other form of art. No other form of art can reproduce
nature as accurately as the camera does. Two people painting a scene from
5 .Lodge, R. C. ,Plato’s Theory of Art, Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd., London, 1953, p.167.
6 Read Herbert, Art and Society, Faber and Faber, London, 1956, p. 101.
7 . Butcher, Aristotle’s Theory of Poetry & Fine Art, Ludhiana, 1972, p.116.
5
the same spot would produce different paintings because it would depend
on the mood of the artist how he visualizes the scene. Although it is true
that the artist draws his primary inspiration from nature, he does not
merely reproduce nature. He gives a restatement to Nature by his creative
imagination. Therefore, art is not merely imitation of nature but it reflects
the mind of the artist, how his eyes have seen or how his heart has felt. Art
is a combination of both—Nature and the soul of the artist.
Some philosopher said that art is spiritual in essence and can be
understood only by spiritual people.
Jacob Boehme (1575-1624) said:
―Art…. belongs to the outward man…. That he should behold
God‘s wonder and great hidden wisdom and praise God in all
his works. If the outward man learneth no art then he is most
near to a beast which knoweth not what the substance of all
substance is…. Indeed the divine wisdom standeth not in art….
But it showeth art the way, what it should do and how it should
seek. Art is really the tool or instrument of God where with the
divine wisdom worketh or laboureth; why should I despise it?
The deeper a man is taught of God concerning God the deeper
he seeketh into God‘s deeds of wonder in art; for all profitable
arts are revealed or manifested out of God‘s wisdom for the
government of the outward life and for the glorious
manifestation of the divine wisdom and omnipotence.‖8
According to Hegel (1770-1831) God manifests himself in nature
and in art in the form of beauty. God expresses himself in two ways; in the
object and in the subject—in nature and in spirit. Beauty is the shining of
8 Bulley, Margaret H. ,Art and Understanding, London, 1937, p. 149.
6
the Idea through matter. Only the soul and what pertains to it is truly
beautiful and, therefore, the beauty of nature is only the reflection of the
natural beauty of the spirit—the beautiful has only a spiritual content. But
the spiritual must appear in sensuous form. The sensuous manifestation of
the spirit is only appearance (schein), and this appearance is the only
reality of the beautiful. Art is thus the production of this appearance of the
idea, and is a means, together with religion and philosophy, of bringing to
consciousness, and expressing the deepest problems of humanity and the
highest truths of the spirit.‖9
Margaret H. Bulley said, ―Art is spiritual in essence and can only be
received and understood by spiritual man. Works of art alone explain art.
They are symbols or parables through which mortals catch sight of
spiritual truth or reality. The truth is not in the symbol, but the symbol can
reflect the truth. It serves as a clue or pointer to the nature of what is
true.‖10
Michaelangelo says,
―Art, I believe, puts us in a state of grace when universal emotion reveals
itself to us religiously, yet very naturally, everywhere…. We should find
the universal harmony everywhere, like colour. What is important is the
general idea. It cannot be explained but must be felt.‖11
9 Tolstoy, C.F., What is Art? An Essay on Art, Translated by Aylmer Maude, Oxford London, 1938, p.100.
10 Bulley, Margaret H., op.cit. p. 1.
11 Ibid. p. 69.
7
For Kant art was always ―a sensible and imaged covering for an
intellectual concept.‖12
Many philosophers and even artists like Leonardo held the view that
art is nothing but the ―imitation of nature.‖13
According to Herbert Spencer,
―The origin of art is play. In the lower animals all the energy of
life is expended in life—maintenance and race—maintenance,
in man however there remains after these needs are satisfied,
some superfluous strength. This excess is used in play which
passes over into art. Play is an imitation of real activity. So is
art.‖14
Benedetto Croce says that ―Art is intuition and expression.‖
According to him,
―There are two kinds of knowledge—intuitive or imaginative, and
intellectual or conceptual. Works of art are primarily examples of
intuitive knowledge. Intuitive knowledge is direct knowledge of
individuals, including images. It is also active (not passive reception of
sensations); the knower somehow creates what he knows. Intuitions
(occasions of intuitive knowledge) are further more identified with
expression.‖15
Croce said:
―Art is governed entirely by imagination; its only riches are
images. Art does not classify objects, nor pronounces them real
12
Croce, Benedetto, Aesthetic, Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic. Translated by D. Ainslie, Macmillan,London, 1909, p. 293.
13 Chamot Mary and others, op. cit. P. 371.
14 Tolstoy, C.F., op. cit. P. 108.
15 Croce, Benedetto, op. cit. p.
8
or imaginary, nor qualifies them, nor defines them. Nothing
more, Art therefore is intuition.‖16
He further says that every true intuition or representation is also
expression. That which does not objectify itself in expression is not
intuition or representation but sensation and naturality. The spirit does not
obtain intuitions, otherwise than by making, forming, expressing. He who
separates intuition from expression never succeeds in reuniting them.‖17
Thus art is the expression of impressions, not the expression of
expressions.‖18
Collingwood holds the view that art is imagination. According to
him, ‗the work of art exists in imagination. It is an imaginary object.‘ For
Collingwood, the work of art is essentially an experience, something
which exists in the mind of the artist. From the words of the poem or the
paint on the canvas, the appreciator must recreate the experience of the
artist. An only in so far as he is able to do this can he be said to know the
work of art.‖19
Collingwood tells us that ―before an artist creates or a poet writes,
he has a feeling of intense uneasiness. If you say he is subject to emotion
or feeling that would not be quite accurate, because the poet cannot tell 16
Croce, Benedetto, op. cit. P.385.
17 Ibid. p. 13
18 Ibid. p. 21
19 Collingwood R.G.,The Principles of Art, Oxford, 1938, p.194.
9
you what he is feeling; he is in a state of emotional confusion. In this
situation the artist picks up his brush or his instrument or gets hold of pen
and ink. In trying to give expression to his vague and undefined emotion,
he discovers it. And in discovering himself or in realizing this experience
he creates a language.‖20
Both Croce and Collingwood regard art as imagination, but Croce
says that this imagination is also expression.
According to Veron, ―Art is the external manifestation, by means of
lines, colours, movements, sounds, or words of emotion felt by man.‖21
Susan Langer says that what art expresses is not actual feeling, but
ideas of feeling; as language does not express actual things and events but
ideas of them. Art is expressive through and through, every line, every
sound, every gesture, and, therefore, is hundred percent symbolic; the
sensuously pleasing and also symbolic; the sensuous quality is in the
service of its vital import. A work of art is far more symbolic than a word;
which can be learned or even employed without any knowledge of its
meaning; for a purely and wholly articulated symbol presents its import
directly to any beholder who is sensitive at all to articulated forms in given
medium.‖22
20
Chatterji, P. C., Fundamental Question in Aesthetics, Simla, 1968, p.39.
21 Tolstoy, C. F. Op. cit. P. 119.
22 Langer, Susan, Philosophy in a New Key, Mentor Books, New York, p. 59.
10
According to Veron, man expresses his emotions in the form of Art,
while Susan Langer says that art is the idea of feeling.
According to Picasso, ―Art is a lie that makes us realize the truth, at
least the truth that is given us to understand. The artist must know the
manner whereby to convince others of the truthfulness of his lies.‖23
A philosopher like Tolstoy regards art as a mode of
communication. He says that ―To evoke in oneself a feeling, one has once
experienced and having evoked in oneself then by means of movements,
lines, colours, sounds or forms expressed in words, so to transmit that
feeling so that others experience the same feelings—this is the activity of
art.
Art is a human activity consisting in this that one man consciously,
by means of certain external signs, hands on to others feelings he has lived
through and that others are infected by these feelings and also experience
them.‖24
Sully says that art not only gives enjoyment to the person who
creates art, but also provides pleasure to the one who sees it. It is a mode
to convey. According to him, ―Art is the production of some permanent
object or passing action which is fitted not only to supply an active
23
Bulley Margaret H., Op. cit. P. 47.
24 Tolstoy, C.F., Op. cit. P.123.
11
enjoyment to the producer, but to convey a pleasurable impression to a
number of spectators or listeners, quite apart from any personal advantage
to be derived from it.‖25
Thus we see that different philosophers hold different views
regarding art. Some regard art as something spiritual. They believe that
art belongs to God. All beauty is created by God. Others say that art is
imitation, imitation of nature. Collingwood regards it as an imaginary
object. It is an emotion of the artist which he expresses in the form of art.
While Croce regards art both as an intuition as well as an expression.
Tolstoy regards art as a means of communicating ones ideas and feelings.
Art stands for perception, imagination, expression and
communication of, feelings and thoughts.
There are certain things or objects around us, when we see them
they remain in our subconscious mind for a long time. This is known as
perception. Perception gives birth to imagination because the artist does
not depict precisely what he sees. He looks at the object and stores the
impression in his memory. He paints the picture, according to what he has
been seeing and feeling. Artists perceive the object and what he creates or
paints is his subject, which is the result of his imagination. The
imagination is subjective while perception is objective. Imagination in
25
Tolstoy, C. F., Op. cit. P. 119.
12
turn gives birth to expression because if the artist is immersed in his
sensory experience and in his imagination he cannot create art. Therefore,
he must emerge from his imagination and express his feelings, thoughts
and ideas. Finally, the expressions of the artist are communicated to others
by means of colour, sound, words, etc. We can explain it with the help of
the diagram:
Perception
--
--
-
Imagination
--
--
-
Expression
--
--
-
Communication
Art is perception and imagination in the sense that one cannot
imagine without perception. Perception and imagination are inter-
dependent. The artist is able to create art because he had perceived the
object earlier. It is due to perception that an artist is able to imagine. An
artist cannot imagine in a vacuum. So art is first perception, then
imagination. Our eyes perceive and our minds imagine.
For example, there are two persons. One of them has been brought
up around nature, has seen the world, its beauty, and the people around
him. The other has been brought up in isolation in a dark room, has never
seen nature or the world. The two are asked to paint nature, or write a
poem about nature. The first person will be able to draw or write because
he has perceived nature and with his own imagination he is able to express
13
his feelings, thoughts or ideas about nature. On the other hand, the other
person will not be able to draw or write because he has never seen nature
so he cannot imagine it also.
Whatever the artist creates, his perception and imagination is
involved. The perception gives the artist an inspiration to create things. In
every work of art, the artist‘s imagination is involved. The human activity
which produces art is imagination. It is through imagination that the artist
reacts to the external world by expressing his own feelings. Words, forms,
colours and sounds are created by imagination. It is because of
imagination that form is produced. It is through form that one recognizes
the activity of the mind. Art is a creative activity. If it is copied, it is not
art. So art always involves the artist‘s imagination. For example—the
flowers look very beautiful while they are blossomed on the tree.
Although flowers appear beautiful but it is not art. When one arranges
those flowers in a vase then it is art, because here the imagination of the
artist is involved. Thus we see that art is both perception and imagination.
Art is expression and communication in the sense that when we
imagine something it is necessary for us to express it. If we confine our
imagination to ourselves it will be merely ‗fancy‘, not art. So art is the
expression of our imagination. It is through art that man expresses his
feelings, thoughts and ideas, either on canvas or marble or by writing it. In
14
olden days, when the art of writing was not known, or language was not
known, people used to express their feelings, thoughts and ideas through
painting or engraving. Art is the best mode of expression of one‘s mental
and emotional state. When we express our feelings, thought or idea, we
want that it should be communicated also, and art serves this purpose. It is
a mode of communication. Mere expression is not art. To be called art,
one‘s expression must be communicated also. Here communication means
to publicise one‘s ideas, thought and feeling. If we express our thought,
feelings, ideas on canvas or in any other form but do not make it public, it
won‘t be art. If a person writes a poem (in this way he is expressing
himself) but does not make it public, how can others know his feelings.
Though he is expressing his ideas but not communicating them, it will not
be art. Art is both expression and communication. As a human being we
always want to share our personal experience with others and we are also
interested in the personal experiences of others. Art serves the same
purpose.
Thus art is perception, imagination, expression and communication.
1:2 What is Painting?
Architecture, sculpture and paintings are the three great forms of art
which appeal to the spirit through the eyes, painting being the oldest. The
art of painting is as old as human beings are. It is one of the oldest art
15
forms which even the primitive man knew. ―How did the caveman learn to
make such skillful pictures? We do not really know for sure. But since the
pictures are done on the sides of caves, which were rough and bumpy, it is
possible that the idea of making pictures came from these bumps. Just as
the ink blot suggests ideas to us, some hungry cave man, staring at the
wall of his cave, might have imagined that that particular bump looked
like an animal and perhaps he drew an outline around it with a burned
stick from the fire. He would then complete the picture by filling in the
parts that were not there. Finally, he learned how to make such a drawing
all by himself without the help of a bump on the wall of the cave.26
Man,
still in his savage stage, was charmed by nature, the playful blending of
light and shade. He had appreciated nature in the form of paintings which
adorn their cave walls. He founded painting as one of the most appropriate
mode of expression of his feelings, thoughts and ideas, because the art of
writing was not known to him. Long before man learnt the art of writing
he knew the art of painting. The paintings which adorn the cave walls of
the pre-historic man are our chief source of information of that period.
Although very few paintings of that period have survived to this day,
because the material used in painting was, unfortunately, more perishable
26
. Harry N Abrams, The Picture History of Painting: From Cave Painting to Modern Times. Inc. New York, 1957, p. 8.
16
than material used in any other form of art. But whatever little has
survived is our chief source of information of the pre-historic people as
there no written records of that period.
Among the earliest records of human creative activity are the
paintings executed in the Paleolithic period on the walls of caves, as at
Altamira in Northern Spain and Font-de-Gaume in South-western
France.27
The materials used in making them were simple mineral colours
ranging in hue through a gamut of browns and reds, supplemented by
blacks and grays, which are applied within incised contours to smoothed
surfaces of the walls in a process not unlike that of fresco painting.28
In India, the earliest known paintings have been found on the walls
of caves in northern India. Painted in red ochre, they represent animal
hunts and so resemble similar scenes found in the Paleolithic caves of
Spain that archaeologists believe the two contemporary.29
Even after the advancement of civilization the art of painting
flourished because of its less complex nature and its universal acceptance.
In olden days when life was simple, people knew nothing about the
materialistic world but had love and appreciation for nature and wanted to
make their place of living beautiful, they adopted the art of painting
27
See Plate No 1.
28 The Encyclopedia , Americana. U.S.A., 1955, Vol. XXI, p.111.
29 See Plate No. 2.
17
because the material used for painting was very simple and was easily
available in the vicinity. He obtained various colours from flowers and
other natural vegetation. The brush was also very simple—it was either a
wooden stick or some type of grass. The subject he chose for painting was
what he saw around him. The motive behind these paintings is still not
known. It was either to decorate his living place or it had some religious
or magical purpose.
Even today, the art of painting is a part of our life. Paintings adorn
the walls of our homes, or are made for rituals, or is a mode of publicity,
etc. ―Paintings are used to enrich the walls of our living quarters and also
to preserve the likeness of members of our families. Similarly, paintings
are used to commemorate events of social importance and to embellish
public buildings.‖30
It is because of the very simplicity of elements involved that the
practice of painting is so popular and universal, and it is for the same
reason that it can be used equally for the epic interpretation of the
‗Creation of the Universe, of man, and his fall‘, which is Michaelangelo‘s
Sistine Chapel Ceiling as for the nucleus of a page of advertising. The
quality of the result, as a work of art, is the extent to which the artist
30
. Ray Faulkner, E. Ziegfeld & G. Hill Art Today, New York, 1941, p.114.
18
desired to give form is embodied in and made clear by the pattern of line
and colour that constitutes the physical substance of the painting.31
Now the question arises, what is painting? There are different views
regarding the definition of painting.
―A painting is a layer of pigments applied to a surface. It is an
arrangement of shapes and colours. It is a projection of the
personality of the artist who painted it, a statement, or at least a
partial statement—of the philosophy of the age that produced it,
and it can have meanings beyond anything concerned with the
one person who painted it or the one period in which it was
created.‖32
―Painting in the fine art, is the application of colour to a surface for
the purpose of creating images.‖33
―As an expressive art painting consists in the organizaing of ideas in
terms of line and colour upon a two-dimensional plane.‖34
―According to Michaelangelo, painting is a music and melody
which intellect only can appreciate and with great difficulty.‖35
―Painting, like literature, is an art of complex appeal; nevertheless,
the vital task for the artist remains to express him in that special form, that
31
The Encyclopedia Americana. U.S.A., 1955, Vol. XXI, p.111.
32 Canaday John Edwin, What is Art? An Introduction to Painting, Sculpture and Architecture. Published
by McGraw-Hill Companies, 1980. P. 11.
33 Encyclopedia of World Art, Vol. X, McGraw-Hill, London, 1965, p.899.
34 Maurice Denis, Encyclopedia Americana, Vol. XXI, U. S. A., 1955, p.111
35 Mary Chamot & Others,The Arts, Paintings, the Graphic Arts, Sculpture and Architecture, London,
Undated, p.145
19
―music and melody‖, without which the art of painting remains
incomplete.‖36
―A painting is an object composed of various elements, its function
is to present images for perception which are endowed with quality and
meaning.‖37
―Painting, of all the arts, is perhaps the one in which the creative
artist is most involved in all the operations and stages of the technical
process; even in painting however there are inherited technical traditions
and practical usages.‖38
―The art of painting is the expression of ideas and emotions, with
the creation of certain aesthetic qualities, in a two dimensional visual
language. The elements of this language—its shapes, lines, colours, tones
and textures—are used in various ways to produce sensations of volume,
space, movement, and light on a flat surface. These elements are
combined into expressive patterns in order to represent real or
supernatural phenomena, to interpret a narrative theme, or to create wholly
abstract visual relationship. The artist communicates his visual message in
36
Mary Chamot & Others, The Arts, Paintings, the Graphic Arts, Sculpture and Architecture, London, Undated, p.160.
37 Encyclopedia of World Art, op.cit. P. 914, vol. x.
38 Ibid. p. 918.
20
terms of the sensuous qualities and expressive possibilities and limitations
of a particular medium, technique and form.‖39
1:2:1 Western Paintings
1:2:1:1 Pre-historic: The earliest records of human creative activity are
the paintings founded during the prehistoric period on the walls of caves at
Altamira in northern Spain and Font-de-Gaume in South-western France.40
The materials used in making them were very simple. They used mineral
colours. The colours used were browns and red which were supplelmented
by blacks and grays. The cavemen generally painted the animals which
surrounded them. ―The bison and deer in the Altamira Caves are shown
almost without exception in profile views—whether charging, standing or
reclining.‖41
1:2:1:2 Egypt: In Egypt, painting was the mode of expression, in the way
it was during pre-historic times. ―As early as the old kingdom period
which began about 3400 B. C., it was called upon to aid in creating the
symbols of achievement and distinction that covered the walls of tombs
with records of the ways in which their inhabitants lived in mortal life. For
the Egyptian, as for the pre-historic man, therefore, painting was a
39
The New Encyclopedia Britannica, Vol. XIII, 1977, p.869.
40 The Encyclopedia Americana, Vol. XXI, U. S. A., 1955, p.111.
41 Ibid. p. 111.
21
functional art, defining concepts of accepted social values, rather than
simply a form of decorations.‖42
The oldest Egyptian painting was made on the wall of a temple or
tomb in a place called Hieraconpolis on the bank of the Nile, almost 6000
years ago.43
In Egypt, painting was the part of sculpture. Colours were applied
on the sculpture. ―It was usually employed as a supplement to sculptured
relief, the carved stone often being covered by a thin layer of smoothed
plaster or stucco to which the colour was applied. They used dark
reddish-brown colour for the flesh of male figures while feminine ones are
of lighter cream colour.‖44
1:2:1:3 Aegean: Painting was a significant art in the Aegean world, where
in the islands off the mainland of Greece, in Crete, and in the mainland
itself, a brilliant culture was maintained from the fourth through the
second millennia B.C.45
For the Cretans, painting was for decorations and
pleasure. Painting was done on the palace walls to make a splendid
decoration. ―Painting in this region appears in the form of decoration for
42
Ibid. p. 111.
43 Abrams Harry N, 0p. Cit. P.14. & See Plate No. 3.
44 .The Encyclopedia Americana, Vol. XXI, U. S. A., 1955, p.112.
45 Ibid. p. 112.
22
countless vases and jars46
and mural decorations on the walls of the great
palaces such as those at Knossos and Phaistos in Crete and at Tiryns on
the mainland.‖47
1:2:1:4 Greece: Greece learned a great deal from the Cretans and this
helped them to build up a great civilization of their own. Between the
eighth and third centuries B. C. the Greeks produced their keenest thinkers
and their finest artists. As in Crete, in Greece too paintings were done on
the walls of the temples and houses. Greek painters generally painted
Human forms.48
―Greek painting can be described as entirely devoted to
the representation of human beings, neither animals nor nature having any
place in it except as aids to the understanding of the event depicted.‖49
1:2:1:5 Roman: The Romans were great patrons of art. They were good
at making fresco paintings. This was proved from the many murals that
have been dug up among the ruins of their towns.50
Roman painters often
combined the real and the ideal.51
They were influenced by the Greeks.
46
See Plate No. 4
47 The Encyclopedia Americana, vol. XXI, op. cit. P. 112.
48 See Plate No.5.
49 Luc Benoist, Jean Cassou and others, Handbook of Western Painting—From Cave Painting to
Abstract Art, London, 1961, p.9.
50 Abrams, Harry N. ,op cit. P. 34.
51 Ibid. p. 35
23
The Romans extensively employed the mosaic technique, in which
a pattern is worked out in countless small cubes of marble or glass held in
place in a bed of plaster on a wall or the floor.52
1:2:1:6 Medieval Ages: During 5th century B. C., Rome was a small state
like Athens, but soon she became a vast empire with its own civilization
due to her military strength and talent for government and politics. The
Roman Empire was divided into two halves—Eastern and Western. The
latter soon broke into many pieces and was destroyed as the result of
invasions by Barbarians. The Eastern Roman Empire, which was founded
before 500 A. D., continued for a thousand years more, with its capital at
Byzantine. The Church was established and Christianity became the
official religion.
The Byzantines built beautiful Churches with lavish decorations.
The official Christian style of painting was called Byzantine after that city
whose modern name is Istanbul.53
―Byzantine gave painting a purely
didactic task54
, that of offering a programmatic exposition of religious
facts, understandable to all, in order to assist the memory and excite the
imagination in a predetermined direction. The painting assumed a highly
important position in the religious cult, becoming an organic component
52
The Encyclopedia Americana Vol. XXI, op. cit. P. 113.& See Plate No.6.
53 Abrams, Harry N.,op.cit. p.40.
54 See Plate No.7.
24
of the sacred ritual. It played an important role in the court ceremonial as
well, for it served to surround the cult of the emperor with an aura of
Roman splendor and magnificence.‖55
The downfall of the Roman Empire resulted in great confusion in
Western Europe, giving rise to a large number of small states. The nations
of Western Europe, The English, the French, and the rest—all got their
start from here.
After the fall of the Roman Empire, the Roman Catholic Church
became its natural successor. During the troubled time, the Church was the
only stable institution left in Western Europe. The Church was the only
center of education and learning. Monks and priests imparted education
and were the only literate men in Europe. ―The monks, however, were not
only priests and teachers. From the fifth to the twelfth centuries, they were
also the leading artists and craftsmen. In those days almost every
monastery had a workshop for making copies of the Bible and other
books. This was done by hand, since printing had not yet been invented.
The monks did not know about paper, they wrote on ‗vellum‘, a material
made from the skin of calves. The writing shops also included painters
whose job was to decorate the manuscripts with pictures and ornaments.
55
. Encyclopedia of World Art. Op. Cit. Vol. II., p.796.
25
For many centuries, these miniatures were the most important kind of
medieval painting and most precious legacies of the middle ages.‖56
From the twelfth century, there came a change in medieval society.
People started leaving the countryside and started living in towns. City
life made people more independent and they started taking a greater
interest in the world around them. The towns soon became the centers of
wealth, and of art and learning as well. Out of this new spirit came a new
style in art called Gothic Art. It started in France and spread in all other
countries of the Western world. The great cycles of painting, which were
used to cover the huge bare walls of Romanesque churches, gradually
went out of favor almost everywhere during the Gothic period, as a result
of the introduction of wide openings in church walls. These openings
broke up the architectural masses and reduced the amount of smooth
surface. Fresco painting became chiefly ornamental; it was used on
ceilings, archivolts, and ribs. During this period a new style of painting
flourished which was done on small pieces of coloured glass which were
cut to shape and then fitted together with lead frames into large stained
glass windows. These windows were essential part of Gothic architecture.
56
Encyclopedia of World Art, op. cit. Vol VI, p 575
26
―The stained-glass window came into its own, creating a warm, rich
atmosphere in the building interior.‖57
1:2:1:7 15th
Century: The fifteenth century was the era of exploration
and discoveries. During this period people became more aware about their
surroundings. They became keen to explore the whole world and
everything in it. During this period, many new geographical discoveries
took place. In 1492, Columbus discovered America. Vasco Da Gama had
discovered the sea route to India. The technique of printing was invented
thus making the book cheap. The artists of this period too turned to
explorers. ―Just as the 14th century was the age of mysticism, had revealed
the depths of the soul-life, so the 15th century takes possession of the
external world; as trade and navigation had discovered new worlds, so
painting discovered life. She no longer seeks to arouse contemplative and
pious sentiments, but rather to mirror the external world in all of its
beauty.‖58
The artist now realized that the world around them was full of
beauties and wonders. They began to see the things through their own eyes
instead of relying on books.
It was from the manuscript tradition of the middle Ages that one of
the great pictorial styles of the 15th century developed that of Flanders.
57
Encyclopedia of World Art, op. cit. Vol VI, p 575& See Plate No. 8.
58 Muther Richard, The History of Paintings from the Fourth to the Early Nineteenth Century, London,
1907, VOL.I, p. 41
27
The Van Eyck brothers Hubert, Rogier Van der Weyden were famous
painters of this period. The 15th Century was regarded as a renaissance in
Europe. Thus, came renaissance in the field of painting too. The
theological abstraction of the medieval age was replaced by a new feeling
for the significance of individual experience and it was regarded as a
humanization of medieval beliefs.
The word "renaissance" means "rebirth" or "revival." In the 14th
century many Italian scholars believed that the arts had been declining in
quality for 1,000 years. They admired the art and writing of the Classical
Age (400 B.C.-A.D. 400), the time of the Greek and Roman empires. To
revive the glory and grandeur of the ancient past, these scholars eagerly
studied classical literature, architecture, and sculpture.
But the Renaissance was much more than a rebirth of classical art.
It was a rejection of the middle Ages, which were just ending. During
medieval times, the arts were concerned mainly with religion, with the life
of the spirit, with the hereafter. Little importance was given to life on earth
except as a preparation for the next world. But as the 15th century began,
Italians were turning their attention to the world around them. People now
were more concerned about secular, or nonreligious, matters. They began
placing faith in their own qualities and their own importance. This new
spirit was called humanism. Artists were among the first affected by the
28
new spirit of humanism. In their work they began to focus on human life
on earth.
During the middle Ages, the Catholic Church thought European art
should only be about religion. Painters and sculptors only worked with
themes from the Bible. The church, which supported the artists, wanted
viewers to concentrate on Biblical stories, religious teachings, lives of
saints and matters pertaining to spiritual world.For medieval church men
and women both were sinners because of original sin and were not liable
to be depicted as subjects of the painters and artists. The people looked
flat and two-dimensional. The figures and objects in the picture were all
the same size and stacked up on each other and there was no depth.
Renaissance art broke free from the church and turned to the classic ideals
of Greece and Rome for inspiration. It celebrated people and human ideas
and ability. Renaissance artists stressed the beauty of the human body.
They tried to capture the dignity of human beings in life like paintings and
sculptures. They believed if art looked more realistic, people would be
able to connect with it. Medieval spiritualism had begun fading in order to
welcome modern materialism.
In order to create more realistic art, Renaissance artists developed
new painting techniques, including linear perspective and chiaroscuro.
Instead of stacking figures and objects together on a canvas, figures that
29
were far away were painted smaller. Those closer up were painted bigger.
Paintings of three dimensions were now possible. Chiaroscuro is all about
shadows. Painters would layer light and dark paint to show the way light
shines on a surface and the shadows it creates. Chiaroscuro and the use of
shadowing made figures look more realistic and expressive. With
shadows, painters could create a sense of depth. Figures looked less flat or
stiff. Leonardo da Vinci used chiaroscuro in his brilliant work ―Mona
Lisa‖59
, is one of the most famous on earth. Compare it with the religious
painting from the Middle Ages to see how Renaissance techniques made
the Mona Lisa look more lifelike. The David60
is another masterpiece of
Renaissance art. Michelangelo carved the statue out of marble. David is a
character from the Bible. In the Bible story Michelangelo used to create
the statue, young David defeats the giant Goliath with a slingshot. Even
though he is a biblical character, Michelangelo‘s David celebrates
humanity and the power of man.
1:3 Origins of Renaissance Art
The origins of Renaissance art can be traced to Italy in the late 13th
and early 14th centuries. During this so-called ―proto-Renaissance‖ period
(1280-1400), Italian scholars and artists saw themselves as reawakening to 59
See Plate No. 9
60 See Plate No. 10.
30
the ideals and achievements of classical Roman culture. Writers such as
Petrarch (1304-1374) and Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-1375) looked back
to ancient Greece and Rome and sought to revive the languages, values
and intellectual traditions of those cultures after the long period of
stagnation that had followed the fall of the Roman Empire in the sixth
century.
The Florentine, painter, Giotto (1267?-1337) was the most famous
artist of the proto-Renaissance, made enormous advances in the technique
of representing the human body realistically. His frescoes were said to
have decorated cathedrals at Assisi, Rome, Padua, Florence and Naples,
though there has been difficulty attributing such works with certainty.
Giotto, the famous painter of the 15th
century broke the old rules
and made his paintings look real and lively. ―Giotto, for whom, expressive
style was not a matter of graceful line decorative colour, or even the
austere formalism of his master. In truly classic fashion, Giotto realized
the necessity of making his forms visually convincing if the emotions by
which they were impelled or the ideas which they embodied were to carry
conviction.‖61
He established himself as one of the great humanistic
61
The Encyclopedia Americana, USA, 1955, Vol. 21, p. 115.
31
painters. Giotto produced a marvelous fresco in the ―Arena Chapel at
Padua known as Allegory of Envy.‖62
In the later 14th century, the proto-Renaissance was stifled by
plague and war, and its influences did not emerge again until the first
years of the next century. In 1401, the sculptor Lorenzo Ghiberti (c. 1378-
1455) won a major competition to design a new set of bronze doors for the
Baptistery of the cathedral of Florence, beating out contemporaries such as
the architect Filippo Brunelleschi (1377-1446) and the young Donatello
(c. 1386- 1466), who would later emerge as the master of early
Renaissance sculpture.
The other major artist working during this period was the painter
Masaccio (1401-1428), known for his frescoes of the Trinity in the Church
of Santa Maria Novella (c. 1426) and in the Brancacci Chapel of the
Church of Santa Maria del Carmine (c. 1427), both in Florence and
―Expulsion of Adam & Eave from Paradise‖.63
Masaccio painted for less
than six years but was highly influential in the early Renaissance for the
intellectual nature of his work, as well as its degree of naturalism. Fra
Angelico and Massacio were the painters who added much to finding and
perfection of new techniques.
62
See Plate No.11.
63 See Plate No. 12.
32
Botticelli, another painter of that period was influenced by the spirit
of classicism and thus gave new life to the tradition of Christian art. The
subjects of his paintings were like ‗Birth of Venus,64
Spring, Mars and
Venus,‘ which he selected from Greek Mythology.
The chief characteristic of the Renaissance was humanism.
Therefore, the painters of that period also adopted the humanistic spirit.
Although the subjects of the paintings were from the Bible, they were
portrayed with all the worldly beauty.
The aim of medieval paintings was to impart religious teachings. The
Renaissance artists looked upon art as an invitation of life. They acquired
information of the world by close observation of nature and of man. The
artists studied optics and geometry and used their knowledge to develop a
perspective in their paintings. They studied human anatomy to find the
mechanism underlying gestures and expressions.
The 15th
Century was the period in which the eyes of man were
opened to the beauties of the world.
1:3:1 16th
Century: By the end of the 15th century, Rome had displaced
Florence as the principal center of Renaissance art, reaching a high point
under the powerful and ambitious Pope Leo X (a son of Lorenzo de‘
64
See Plate No.13
33
Medici). Three great masters–Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo and
Raphael–dominated the period known as the High Renaissance, which
lasted roughly from the early 1490s until the sack of Rome by the troops
of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V of Spain in 1527. The 16th
Century
was regarded as the Age of Genius or the High Renaissance. During this
century there were so many great men that they seemed like ―a new race
of giants, gifted with creative powers such as the human mind had never
known before.‖65
Leonardo da Vinci, Michaelangelo and Raphael were
three great painters of that period.
Leonardo da Vinci was the all-round genius than any other man in
history. He was an artist with a scientific temper. His great paintings
reflect not only his own hold over light, shade and colour, but a careful
study of human anatomy and problems of perspective. Artists, he said are
the best scientists; not only do they observe things better than other
people—they think about what they see, and then tell the rest of us about it
in pictures.‖66
Now a days, scientists prefer to put their knowledge into
words (they have to invent great many new ones for this purpose), but in
the Renaissance, a good picture was still ―worth a thousand words.‖67
65
The Picture History of Painting, op. cit. p.109.
66 The Picture History of Painting, op. cit. p. 111.
67 The Picture History of Painting, op. cit. p. 111.
34
Leonardo was the first man to design flying machines and made
exact pictures of the inside of the human body. His paintings, the ―Last
Supper‖68
, a fresco, and ‗Mona Lisa‘69
, painted about 1505, now in the
collection of the Louvre in Paris are his everlasting masterpieces. The
―Last Supper‖ is at ‗Santa Maria delle Grazie, Milan‘. The portrait of
Mona Lisa has kept all the art lovers wondering for centuries for its
enigmatic smile. Leonardo‘s other two paintings which evoke great
admiration is the ‗Virgin of the Rocks‘70
and ‗The Virgin and the Child.‘71
1:3:2 Michael Angelo: Michael Angelo was a contemporary of Leonardo
and Raphael. Like Leonardo, he was also from Florence and a versatile
genius. He was a great sculptor but rose to prominence in other fields such
as painting, architecture, poetry and engineering. ―Michael Angelo‘s
masterpiece is the huge fresco covering the entire ceiling of ―the Sistine
Chapel in the Vatican‖.72
He did it between 1508 and 1512 for Julius II,
during whose reign Rome became the center of Italian art. Another
famous masterpiece of Michael Angelo was the fresco which he painted
68
See Plate No.14.
69 See Plate No.9
70 See Plate No.15
71 See Plate No.16
72 See Plate No.17
35
on the altar wall of the Sistine Chapel ‗The Last Judgment,‘73
which during
counter reformation faced the wrath of the fundamentalists.
1:3:3 Raphael: Raphael also came to Rome at the request of Julius II.
He learned a great deal from Leonardo‘s work. The theme of his paintings
was mainly Madonna and Child of which the Sistine Madonna is the best
known. ―Disputa‖74
and ―School of Athens‖75
is also remarkable piece of
work. Numerous mythological paintings and portraits are uniformly
consistent and decorative in their simple but logical composition schemes,
the unfailing tact of the characterizations.
Thus the Renaissance, a cultural movement roughly spanning from
the 14th to the mid 17 century, heralded the study of classical sources, as
well as advances in science which profoundly influenced European
intellectual and artistic life. In Italy, artists like Paolo Uccello, Fra
Angelico, Masaccio, Andrea Mantegna, Filippo Lippi, Giorgione,
Leoenardo da Vince, Michaelangelo, Raphael, and Titian took painting to
a higher level through the use of perspective, the study of human anatomy
and proportion, and through their development of an unprecedented
refinement in drawing and painting techniques
73
See Plate No.18
74See Plate No. 19
75 See Plate No.20
36
Flemish, Dutch and German painters of the Renaissance such as
Hans Holbein the younger, Albrecht Durer, Lucas Cranach Bosch and
Pieter Bruegel represent a different approach from their Italian colleagues,
one that is more realistic and less idealized. Genre painting became a
popular idiom amongst the Northern painters like Pieter Bruegel. The
adoption of oil painting whose invention was traditionally, but
erroneously, credited to Jan Van Eyck, made possible a new verisimilitude
in depicting reality. Unlike the Italians, whose work drew heavily from the
art of Ancient Greece and Rome, the Northerners retained a stylistic
residue of the sculpture and illuminated manuscripts of the Middle Ages.
Renaissance painting reflects the revolution of ideas and science
that occurred in this period, the Reformation, and the invention of the
printing press. Durer considered one of the greatest printmakers, states
that painters are not mere artisans but thinkers as well. With the
development of easel painting in the Renaissance, painting gained
independence from architecture. Following centuries dominated by
religious imagery, secular subject matter slowly returned to western
painting. Artists included vision of the world around them in their
paintings. Those who could afford the expense could become patrons and
commission portraits of themselves and their families.
37
In the 16th century, movable pictures which could be hung easily on walls,
rather than paintings affixed to permanent structures came into popular
demand.76
1:3:4 Mannerism, Baroque and Rococo: In European art, Renaissance
classicism spawned two different movements—Mannerism and the
Baroque. Mannerism was a reaction against the idealist perfection of
classicism. It employed distortion of light and spatial frameworks in order
to emphasize the emotional content of a painting and the emotions of the
painter. The work of El Greco is an example of Mannerism in painting
during the late 16th
and 17th centuries.
Mannerism encompasses a variety of approaches influenced by, and
reacting to the harmonious ideals associated with artists such as Leonardo
da Vinci, Raphael and early Michaelangelo. While High Renaissance
explored harmonious ideals, Mannerism wanted to go a step further.77
Mannerism is notable for its intellectual sophistication as well as its
artificial qualities.78
Mannerism favours compositional tension and
instability rather than the balance and clarity of earlier Renaissance
painting.
76
v en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_painting
77 Gombrich, E H. The Story of Art London:Phaidon Press Ltd, ISBN 0-7148-3247-2
78 Finocchio, Ross. "Mannerism: Bronzino (1503–1572) and his Contemporaries". In Heilbrunn Timeline
of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/zino/hd_zino.htm (October 2003)
38
The word ‗mannerism‘ deives from the Italian word maniera,
meaning ―style‖ or ―manner‖. Like the English word ―style‖, manieracan
either indicate a specific type of style (a beautiful style, an abrasive
style),or indicate an absolute that needs no qualification (Someone ―has
style‖).79
1:3:5 Baroque: Baroque art is often seen as part of the counter
Reformation—the artistic element of the revival of spiritual life in the
Roman Catholic Church. Religious and political themes were widely
explored within the Baroque artist and there is a strong element of drama
and emotion. Famous Baroque artist are Caravaggio or Rubens.80
Baroque
art was particularly ornate and elaborate in nature, often using rich, warm
colours with dark undertones. Pomp and grandeur were important
elements of the Baroque artistic movement in general. Baroque art in
many ways was similar to Renaissance art. The term was initially used in
a derogatory manner to describe post-Renaissance art and architecture
which was gaudy, over-sentimental and of poor taste.
1:3:6 Rococo: Rococo or ‗Late Baroque‘ is an 18th century artistic
movement and style, which affected several aspects of the arts including
painting, sculpture, architecture, etc., The Rococo style developed in the
79
Shearman John, “Maniera as an Aesthetic Ideal” In Cheney, 2004, p. 37
80 “Baroque Art” Art History – Famous Artists, paintings. Com.
39
early part of the 18th century in Paris, France, as a reaction against the
grandeur, symmetry and strict regulations of the Baroque, especially that
of the Palace of Versailles. In such a way, Rococo artists opted for a more
florid and graceful approach to Baroque art and architecture. Rococo art
was more elaborate than the Baroque, but it was less serious and more
playful.81
Whilst the Baroque used rich, strong colours, Rococo used pale,
creamier shades. The artistic movement no longer placed an emphasis on
politics and religion, focusing instead on lighter themes such as romance,
celebration and appreciation of nature.
1:3:7 Neo-classical: Throughout the 18th century, a counter movement
opposing the Rococo sprang up in different parts of Europe, commonly
known as Neoclassicism. It despised the perceived superficiality and
frivolity of Rococo art, and desired for a return to simplicity, ‗order‘ and
‗purism‘ of classical antiquity, especially ancient Greece and Rome. The
movement was also influenced by the Renaissance, which itself was
strongly influenced by classical art. Neoclassicism was the artistic
component of the intellectual movement known as the Enlightenment. The
Enlightenment was idealistic and put its emphasis on objectivity, reason
and empirical truth. A defining moment for Neoclassicism came during
81
"Ancien Regime Rococo". Bc.edu. Retrieved 2013-08-25.
40
the French Revolution in the late 18th century. In France, Rococo art was
replaced with the preferred Neo classical art. In fact, Neoclassicism can be
seen as a political movement as well as an artistic and cultural one.82
Neoclassical art places an emphasis on order, symmetry and classical
simplicity. Common themes were courage and war. Ingres, Canova and
Jacques-Louis David are among the best known artists.
1:3:8 Romanticism: Just as Mannerism rejected Classicism, so did
Romanticism reject the ideas of the Enlightenment and the aesthetics of
the Neoclassicists.83
Romanticism rejected the highly objective and
ordered nature of Neoclassicism and opted for a more individual and
emotional approach of the arts. Romanticism placed an emphasis on
nature, especially when aiming to portray the power and beauty of the
natural world and emotions, and sought a highly personal approach to art.
Romantic art was about individual feelings, not common themes, such as
in Neoclassicism, in such a way, Romantic art often used colours in order
to express feelings and emotions.84
Similarly, to Neoclassicism, Romantic
art took much of its inspiration from ancient Greek and Roman art and
82
"Art in Neoclassicism". Artsz.org. 2008-02-26. Retrieved 2013-08-25.
83 "General Introduction to Postmodernism". Cla.purdue.edu. Retrieved 2013-08-25.
84 Ibid.
41
mythology.85
Among the greatest Romantic artists were Eugene Delacroix,
Franciso Goya, Turner, John Constable, Caspar David Friedric, Thomas
Cole and William Blake.
1:3:9 Realism: In the 19th century, due to industrialization, there came a
huge change in European society. Poverty, squalor and desperation were
to be the fate of the new working class created by the ―revolution‖. In
response to these ongoing changes in society, the movement or Realism
emerged.86
Realism sought to accurately portray the conditions and
hardships of the poor in the hope of changing society. In contrast with
Romanticism, which was essentially optimistic about mankind, Realism
offered a stark vision of poverty and despair. Similarly, while
Romanticism glorified nature, Realism portrayed life in the depths of an
urban wasteland.87
Like Romanticism, Realism was literary as well as an
artistic movement. The great Realist painters were Jean Baptiste, Gustav
Courbet, Jean Francois Millet, Camille Corot, and Thomas Eakins.
By the mid-19th century, painters became liberated from the
demands of their patronage to only depict scenes from religious
mythology, portraiture or history. The idea of ―art for art‘s sake‖ began to
85
James J. Sheehan, "Art and Its Publics, c. 1800," United and Diversity in European Culture c. 1800, ed. Tim Blanning and Hagen Schulze (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 5-18.
86 "General Introduction to Postmodernism". Cla.purdue.edu. Retrieved 2013-08-25.
87 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Realism_(arts)
42
find expression in the works of painters like Francoise de Goya, John
Constable, Turner, etc.
1:3:10 Impressionism: The term impressionism applies to a particular,
late 19th century style centering in Paris. It is a 19
th century movement that
originated with a group of Paris-based artists. Their independent
exhibitions brought them to prominence during the 1870s and 1880s, in
spite of harsh opposition from the conventional art community in France.
The name of the style derives from the title of a Claude Monet work,
Impression, Soleil Levant (Impression of the Rising Sun) which provoked
the critic Louis Leroy to coin the term in a satirical review published in
the newspaper Le Charivari.88
Impressionist painting characteristics include relatively small, thin,
yet visible brush strokes, emphasis on accurate depiction of light in its
changing qualities, ordinary subject matter, inclusion of movement as a
crucial element of human perception and experience.89
The development of Impressionism can be considered partly as a
reaction by artists to the challenge presented by photography, which
seemed to devalue the artist‘s skill in reproducing reality. Both portrait
and landscape paintings were deemed somewhat deficient and lacking in
88
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impressionism
89 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impressionism
43
truth as photography ―produced life-like images much more efficiently
and reliably.90
Frederic Bazille, Gustave Caillebotte, Paul
Cezanne, Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro are some of the main
Impressionists.
1:3:11 Post-Impressionism: Post-Impressionism is the term coined by
the British artist and art critic Roger Fry in 1910 to describe the
development of French art since Manet.91
Fry used the term when he
organized the 1910 exhibition Manet and the Post-Impressionists.92
Post-
Impressionists extended Impressionism while rejecting its limitations: they
continued using vivid colours, often thick application of paint, and real-
life subject matter, but they were more inclined to emphasize geometric
forms, to distort form for expressive effect, and to use unnatural or
arbitrary colour.93
Breaking free of the naturalism of Impressionism in the late 1880‘s,
a group of young painters sought independent artistic styles for expressing
emotions rather than simply optical impressions, concentrating on themes
90
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impressionism
91 http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/postimpressionism.
92 Voorhies, James. "Post-Impressionism". In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The
Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/poim/hd_poim.htm
(October 2004)
93 http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/postimpressionism.
44
of deeper symbolism.94
Through the use of simplified colors and definitive
forms, their art was characterized by a renewed aesthetic sense as well as
abstract tendencies. Among the nascent generation of artists responding to
Impressionism, Paul Gauguin, (1848–1903), Georges Seurat (1859–
1891), Vincent van Gogh (1853–1890), and the eldest of the group, Paul
Cézanne, (1839–1906), followed diverse stylistic paths in search of
authentic intellectual and artistic achievements. These artists, often
working independently, are today called Post-Impressionists.95
Although
they did not view themselves as part of a collective movement at the time,
Roger Fry (1866–1934), critic and artist, broadly categorized them as
"Post-Impressionists," a term that he coined in his seminal
exhibition Manet and the Post-Impressionists installed at the Grafton
Galleries in London in 1910.96
1:3:12 Modernism: Modernism is a philosophical movement that, along
with cultural trends and changes, arose from wide-scale and far-reaching
transformations in Western society in the late 19th and early 20
th centuries.
The factors that shaped Modernism was, the development of
modern industrial societies and the rapid growth of cities, followed by
94
Voorhies, James. "Post-Impressionism". In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/poim/hd_poim.htm (October 2004)
95 Ibid.
96 Ibid.
45
World War I. Modernism rejected the certainty of Enlightenment thinking,
and many modernists rejected religious beliefs.97
A notable characteristic of Modernism is self-consciousness, which
often led to experiments with form, along with the use of techniques that
draw attention to the processes and materials used in creating a painting,
poem, etc.98
According to one critic, Modernism developed out of
Romanticism‘s revolt against the effects of the Industrial Revolution and
bourgeois values. Van Gogh, Cezanne, Ganguin and Seurat were some
prominent painters of Modernism.
1:3:13 Post Modernism: Postmodern art is a body of art movements that
sought to contradict some aspects of modernism or some aspects that
emerged or developed in its aftermath. In general, movements such
as Inter media, Installation art, Conceptual Art and Multimedia,
particularly involving video are described as postmodern.99
There are
several characteristics which lend art to being postmodern; these include
bricolage, the use of words prominently as the central artistic
element, collage, simplification, appropriation, performance art, the
97
Pericles Lewis, Modernism, Nationalism, and the Novel (Cambridge University Press, 2000). pp 38–
39.
98 Gardner, Helen, Horst De la Croix, Richard G. Tansey, and Diane Kirkpatrick. Gardner's Art Through
the Ages (San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich 1991). ISBN 0-15-503770-6. p. 953.
99 www.mediander.com/connects/192127/postmodern-art
46
recycling of past styles and themes in a modern-day context, as well as the
break-up of the barrier between fine and high arts and low art and popular
culture. 100
In painting, postmodernism reintroduced representation. Traditional
techniques and subject matter have returned in art. It has even been argued
that much of what is called postmodern today, the latest avant-gardism,
should still be classified as modern art.101
1:3:14 Indian Paintings: Indian art has a very long and an illustrious
history. Painting as an art form has flourished in India from very early
periods as is evident from various epics and other literary sources; and
also from the remnants that have somehow survived the test of time,
vagaries of nature and vandalism- wanton or otherwise caused by humans.
The main characteristic of Indian art has been its remarkable unity
and consistency.102
Though there were regional variations and individual
styles, the works produced in diverse geographical and cultural regions
shared certain common values, concepts and techniques. And, all those
varied manifestations were inspired by a common general principle. The
regional idioms, nevertheless, contributed to the richness of Indian art, and
100
Ideas About Art, Desmond, Kathleen K. John Wiley & Sons, 2011, p.148
101 liewyushin086.blogspot.com/2014/01/postmodern-art.html
102 Blog of Shreenivasarao S.
47
their mutual influences gave birth to multi-faceted development of Indian
art.103
That was true not merely of the classical paintings but also of the art
works and paintings created by the village craftsmen and artists. Since
there never was a nodal body to preserve and develop art in India, it was
the initiative, enterprise and imagination of those dedicated humble artists
that kept alive the ancient traditions. Their exquisite themes inspired by
life around them, painted in their homemade bright colors employing
indigenous styles have enriched the cultural diversity of India.104
Another significant feature of the ancient Indian art was its vision of
life and its world view. That inward vision and a sense of peace and
tranquillity are its hallmarks.105
The old paintings serve as a valuable
record of the thoughts and aspirations of our ancients. These ancient arts
present the world as a great harmony that blends seamlessly into the whole
of creation. It recognizes the oneness that exists in all of us, in the animals,
the flowers, the trees, the leaves and even in the breeze which moves the
leaves.All that is seen as a manifestation of that one.
The history of Indian painting is as old as Indian culture itself.
Evidences of prehistoric painting in India are scanty, but the few remains
103
Blog of Shreenivasarao S.
104 Blog of Shreenivasarao S.
105 Blog of Shreenivasarao S.
48
that have been discovered are the hunting scenes crudely drawn on the
walls of a group of caves in the Kaimur Range of Central India and in the
Vindhya Hills.106
Some records of prehistoric paintings are found in Raigarh State of
the Central Provinces.107
The figures drawn on the cave walls are those of
human beings and animals. On one wall there is a picture which depicts a
buffalo badly wounded with spears, surrounded by the hunters.108
As the
prehistoric men were food gatherers and depended on hunting…. It is
clearly evident that whatever they painted was closely related to their day
to day life.
Although many of these drawings are now unintelligible, enough of
them have been identified to show that this primitive artist had a natural
gift for artistic expression.
Some of the ancient paintings are also found in the Mirzapur district
of U. P. The theme is hunting scenes. All these drawings bear a
remarkable resemblance to the famous rock-shelter paintings of Cogul in
Spain.109
106
Brown Perci, Indian Painting, Oxford university, 1927, p.15
107 Ibid. p. 16
108 Ibid. p. 15
109 Ibid. p.16
49
The origin of painting in India is related in a legend. According to
it, god Brahma taught a king how to bring back to life the dead son of a
Brahman, by executing a portrait of the deceased, which he endowed with
life, and so made an efficient substitute for the dead youth whom Yama,
the god of death, refused to give up.110
Portraiture was the earliest and most popular form of painting.
There is a story related to this in the epic age of Indian history. The
Princess Usha dreamt that a beautiful youth appeared and accompanied
her in her walk abroad. She confided this to one of her maids-of-honour,
Chitralekha (literally a picture) who had a natural gift for portraiture. This
maid offered to relieve the anxiety of her mistress by painting the portraits
of all the deities and great men of the time, so that the subject of the dream
might be identified. As soon as Usha saw the likeness of Aniruddha, the
grandson of Krishna, the youth of her vision was revealed to her. This
artistic incident subsequently led to their nuptials. The useful gift of being
able to reproduce from memeorythe likeness of a person, forms the subject
of several ancient Indian legends.111
According to Laufer, ―Indian painting originated at King‘s Courts
and not as a result of priestly influence.
110
Brown Perci, opcit. P. 19
111 Ibid. p. 19
50
Indian paintings are based on six canons which are termed as ‗six
limbs‘112
of Indian painting. These six limbs were put into practice by
Indian artists, and are the basic principles on which their art was founded.
These six limbs are:
1. Rupabheda—the knowledge of appearances.
2. Pramanam—Correct perception, measure and structure.
3. Bhavya—Action of feelings on forms.
4. LavanyaYojanam—Infusion of grace, artistic representation.
5. Sadrishyam—similitude.
6. Varnikabhanga—Artistic manner of using the brush and colours.
The Buddhist frescoes at Ajanta113
are based on these six principles
of painting. The first of these Rupabheda refers to the study of nature,
knowledge of the figure, landscape and architecture. Pramanam is
proportion, anatomy. Bhava deals with the effect of the mind on the body.
Lavanya Yojanam is gracefulness and beauty. Sadrishyam is simply truth.
Varnikabhanga means correct use of colour and technique.
The Buddhist frescoes demonstrate that all these laws were
faithfully followed. ―Posed in impressive and stately attitudes, the
contours of these figures are superb, and reveal a keen perception of the
112
Coomaraswamy, Anand K. , History of Indian and Indonesian Art, New Delhi, 1971, p. 88
113 See Plate No.21
51
beauty of form. There is no undue striving after academic or anatomical
exactitude. The drawing is spontaneous and unrestrained. Each figure
naturally falls into its correct place, and unaffectedly takes its right
position in the general composition. In sentiment the art is intensely
emotional, and expressive.‖114
In later age, the Indian artists continued to apply these traditional
principles.
With the decay of Buddhism in India in the seventh century A. D.,
the art of painting began to decline and there was a gap of nearly thousand
years before this art again revived its old glory.
After the decline of Buddhist art, very few paintings were found.
During the 12th
century, several paintings were done on palm leaves. Some
Jain book illustrations of the 15th century and some remains of
Brahmanical frescoes at Ellora were found.115
The decline of Indian painting during this period was due to
unsettled political conditions. At the same time, there was foreign
invasion. In its religious aspect too India was becoming transformed, on
the one hand by the decline of Buddhism and the steady rise of Hinduism,
and, on the other, by the advent of and growth of Islam.
114
Brown Perci, opcit. P. 72
115 See Plate No.22
52
Brahmanism succeeded Buddhism, and during this period there was
no great work of painting. But in the field of sculpture and architecture,
the artist attained a high level. The greatest monuments of Elephanta and
Ellora show the grandest efforts made by the artists of that period.
1:3:15 Mughal School: At the end of the 14th
century, northern India
was invaded by hordes of the Turko-Mongolian conqueror, Timur, the
ancestor of the later Mughal Emperors.
Under the Mughal dynasty, the art of painting burst out in a new,
rich flower. There was a barren desert of nearly a thousand years
intervening between the peaks of the 7th century Ajanta art and the rise of
the Mughal miniature.
The Mughal School of painting in India coincides with the period of
the Mughal dynasty. It came into prominence during the reign of Akbar in
the latter half of the 16th century and during the reign of Jehangir it was at
its highest mark. The reign of his successor, Shah Jahan, marks the first
step in its decline, while under the unsympathetic rule of Aurangzeb its
death knell was rung.
The ancestral home of Mughal painting was originally in
Samarkand and Herat, where, under the Timurid Kings in the 15th
century,
Persian art reached its zenith. Under the protection of Sultan Husain of
53
Khurasan, Bihzad, known as the ―Raphael of the East‖116
worked. He was
the greatest artist of the time.
Fundamentally, the Mughal School of painting was exotic, just as
the Mughals themselves were aliens in India. But in the same way as that
race gradually became absorbed into the people of India, so Mughal
painting came to be regarded as an integral part of the art of India. Several
indigenous painters of the country worked for the Mughal Emperor.
Basawan, Daswanth and Kesudasa were the famous Hindu painters at the
court of Akbar. With the combined efforts of both the Mughal and Indian
painters the Mughal School of painting was developed. The paintings
that came into being under the patronage of the Mughal Emperors are
termed as Mughal Miniatures‘.117
Babar founded the Mughal dynasty in 1526. He admired the
painting of Herat masters -Bihzad and Shah Musannir. But he had no time
to learn this art or to promote it.
Humayun took an interest in painting. He employed two artists, Mir
Sayyid Ali of Tabriz and Abdus Samad of Shiraz118
at his court in Kabul.
These two painters accompanied him to India when he regained his throne
in 1555.
116
Brown Perci, op. cit. p. 48.
117Lubar Hajek, Indian Miniatures of the Moghul School, London, 1960, p. 14
118 Barret Douglas and Gray Basil, Treasures of Asia, Paintings of India, Ohio,1963, p. 78
54
Mir Sayyid Ali was commissioned to supervise the illustration of
the romance of Amir Hamzah (Dastan-i-Amir Hamzah)119
in twelve
volumes of hundred folios each. ―Sixty of these illustrations painted in
tempera colours on prepared cotton cloth are in Vienna and twenty five of
them in the Indian Museum, South Kensington‖.120
After Humayun‘s death Mir Sayyid Ali continued to work at the
court of Akbar.121
According to Perci Brown, the technique and quality of
early Mughal painting, was an offshoot of the Safavid School, in the
handiwork of artists trained in the school of Bihzad.122
Akbar‘s reign (1556-1605) brought a new era in Indian miniature
painting. He came to the throne when he was thirteen years old. After he
consolidated his position in north India, he built a new capital at Fatehpur
Sikri. After 1570, when the economy and finances of the Empire was
reorganized, the Imperial ateliers123
was constructed in which the Mughal
miniaturists worked. He collected artists from India and Persia.
119
See Plate No. 23
120 Smith Vincent A, A History of Fine Art in India and Ceylon, Oxford Press, 1930, pp. 206-207.
121 Ibid. p.207.
122 Brown Perci, op. cit. p.56.
123 Lubar Hajek, Indian Miniatures of the Moghul School, London, 1960, p. 15
55
During the reign of Akbar the Imperial Court, apart from being the
center of administrative authority to manage and rule the vast Mughal
Empire also emerged as a center of cultural excellence.
Abdus Samad, a Persian master, had instructed Akbar in drawing
and painting.124
A miniature signed by Abdus Samad, preserved in the
Gulistan Library in Tehran, depicts young Akbar presenting a painting to
his father, Humayun.125
The Imperial ateliers, established by Akbar in India, were under the
supervision of two Persian masters, Mir Sayyed Ali and Abdus Samad.
More than a hundred painters were employed, most of them being Hindus
from Gujarat, Gwalior and Kashmir, who gave birth to a new school of
painting, popularly known as the Mughal School of miniature paintings.
One of the first productions of the Mughal School was the
Hamzanama or Dastan-i-Amir Hamza series. This, according to Badayuni,
the Court historian of Akbar, was started in 1567 and completed in 1582
(almost fifteen years). The Hamzanama, stories of Amir Hamza, an uncle
of the Prophet, were illustrated by Mir Sayyid Ali. The paintings of the
Hamzanama are of large size, measuring about 20x27‖, and were painted
on cloth.126
In their illustrations, the Mughal painters equal the lively
124
Beach, Milo Cleveland, Early Mughal Painting, Harvard University Press, 1987, p. 49. See Plate No.
125 Barret and Gray, opcit. P.78 & See Plate No.24.
126 Barret and Gray, opcit. P.78
56
imagination of the story tellers by the vividness and exuberance of their
pictorial expression. The illustrations are brimming over with action,
objects, people, trees and animals.127
They are in the Persian Safavi style
with brilliant red, blue and green colours predominating.
In 1582, Akbar ordered the illustration of Razm-nama, the Persian
translation of the Indian epic, the Mahabharata. In the same year, Gulistan
(The Rose Garden) a landmark of Persian literature, written by Sadi128
was
produced at Fatehpur Sikri by Muhammad Husayr-al-Kashmiri.129
The development of Mughal painting was due to Akbar. He
possessed a library of 24,000 manuscripts, many of which were illustrated,
and his biographer, Abul Fazal records him as saying (with special
reference to the orthodox Musalman prejudice against the representation
of living things) ―There are many that hate paintings, but such men I
dislike. It appears to me as if a painter had quite peculiar means of
recognizing God, for a painter, in sketching anything that has life, and in
devising the limbs one after another, must come to feel that he cannot
bestow a soul upon his work, and is thus forced to thank God, the giver of
life, and will thus increase his wisdom.‖130
127
Lubar Hajek, Indian Miniatures, op cit. P. 16
128 Franklin Lewis, “Golestan-E-Sa’Di” Encyclopedia Iranica, 2001
129 Barret and Gray, op cit. P. 82
130 Museum of Fine Art Bulletin, vol. XVI, p. 4
57
The prominent painters of Akbar‘s Court were Farrukh, Abdul-al-
Samad, Mir Sayyid Ali, Basawan, Daswanth and Kesudasa.
Jahangir (1605-27): Jahangir had an artistic inclination and during his
reign Mughal painting developed further. Jahangir admired portraits. Two
fine examples of group portraits are the scene of an audience now in the
Boston Museum of Fine Arts, and the scenes of the weighing ceremony of
Prince Khurram (later Shahjahan), now in the British Museum. One of the
imperial artists, Mansur specialized in the painting of animals and birds.131
Many court painters captured scenes of Jahangir‘s hunting skill.
Portraiture and hunting scenes were the favorite subject of this
time132
, but the more scientific fields of botany and natural history were
object of special study. Unusual flowers or rarer animals133
were ordered
to be copied by the Emperor. Western paintings were also arriving in the
country during this period.
The reign of his successor, Shah Jahan, marks the first steps in its
decline, while under the unsympathetic rule of Aurangzeb its death- knell
was rung.
131
Brown Perci, op. cit. p. 51.
132 See Plate No. 25
133 See Plate No. 26a&26b.
58
The ancestral home of Mughal painting was originally in
Samarkand and Herat, where, under the Timurid Kings in the 15th
century,
Persian art reached its zenith.
One outstanding feature of the painting of the Mughal is its
devotion to the delineation of likenesses. Realism is its key-note, and
subjects are largely drawn from incidents connected with the magnificent
court life.134
In scale the Mughal picture is small, never attaining the
dignity and size of the Buddhist frescoes.
A large number of the miniature paintings of the Mughal Period are
portraits, but at the same time the subjects are of general order. These are
mainly scenes of actual life, hunting and fighting, battles and sieges,
historical episodes, darbar, mythological stories, zoology, botany and very
occasionally, religious incidents. Jahangir specially commissioned some
of his court artists to make copies of rare birds and animals which were
brought to the capital; probably the best illustration of the series was that
of Turkey Cock,135
which is preserved in the Indian Museum. Incidents of
the chase were favorite subjects for the Mughal artist these were executed
at the command of his royal patron, who desired to have some permanent
record of his powers in the field of sports.
134
Brown Perci, op. cit. p. 50.and See Plate No.27.
135 See Plate No.28.
59
Colonial Painting-I
Almost from the very beginning, India had to face a long succession
of foreign invasions. Wave after wave of aggressors came and swept
across her fertile land. The story of freedom struggle can be said to have
begun the day the invader set his foot on the Indian soil. Before the
coming of the Europeans, the foreigners who came to India either took its
wealth with them or they assimilated with the Indians. India became their
home and they themselves became part of Indian life.
The nature of British conquest of India varies fundamentally from
that of the Muslims also. The Muslim invaders settled within the frontiers
of India and made themselves part of India‘s life. During the British
conquest, the political and economic system of India was in the hands of
the British who were completely alien to India.
The British conquest of India was neither sudden nor accidental. It
was in the 17th
century that the Europeans for the first time began taking
interest in India on any large scale. The most important early entrants were
the Portuguese, the Dutch, the French and the British. None of them came
to India to settle here. They were all attracted by India‘s fabulous wealth.
They came as trading companies in order to increase trade with India. Till
the beginning of the 18th century, none of the European Companies tried to
60
interfere in its politics. Their foremost objective was to concentrate on
trade and gain the maximum profit. During this time the power, prosperity
and prestige of the Moghul Empire was at its height.
Like other Europeans, the British also first came to India as a
trading company. The Company, which later came to be known as the
East India Company, was incorporated in London on December 31st1600,
under a Charter of Queen Elizabeth136
. But it soon assumed political
power. After the death of Aurangzeb, the Mughal Emperor in 1707, the
situation deteriorated. The Empire began to disintegrate. Central authority
weakened. Internal fights for supremacy followed. The East India
Company took advantage of the situation. By playing one prince against
the other and lending the support of its armies sometimes to this and
sometimes to that side, the Company increased its power and influence in
the Indian sub-continent.
The victory at Plassey in 1757 was the starting point of the British
conquest in India. The Company became the de facto sovereign power in
Bengal and thus the foundation of the British Empire was laid in India.
Victory in the Battle of Buxar, 1764, made the British almost supreme in
136
The Register of Letters &c. of the Governour and Company of Merchants of London Trading Into the
East Indies, 1600-1619, Letter book, East India Company Edit. Sir George Christopher Molesworth
Birdwood, Molesworth, Sir William Foster, pub by B. Quaritch, 1893.
61
North India. The helpless and powerless Mughal Emperor gave the British
the right to collect revenues in Bengal, Bihar and Orissa. The Company
was also to control the maintenance of military forces. The Nawab was
left with responsibilities of maintenance of law and order and criminal
justice. There was a divorce between power and responsibility. The dual
government continued from 1765 to 1772. During this period India
suffered the worst kind of exploitation. According to Sir Lewis, a Member
of the British Parliament, ―No civilized government ever existed on the
face of this earth which was more corrupt, more perfidious and more
rapacious than the government of the East India Company from 1765 to
1772‖.137
According to Gordon Sanderson, ―The province of Bengal, until the
advent of the British, was undoubtedly the richest land in the world. No
famine was ever recorded by history to have entered the rich and populous
area. For millennia, Bengal had been famous for its continuous and
abundant prosperity. British Imperialism needed only thirteen years to
bring destruction, destitution, death and famine to the Province of
Bengal.‖138
137
Kashyap Subhash C, Savita D. Kashyap, Tryst with Freedom a Pictorial Saga, National Publishing House, New Delhi, 1973, p. 3.
138 Ibid. p. 3.
62
During 1769-70, the first serious famine occurred in Bengal, during
which one-third of the population died due to starvation or diseases
caused thereby. The famine had created such pitiable conditions that in
several places people tried to fight hunger and death by eating dead
bodies; while the houses and godowns of the agents of the Company were
filled with grains, the farmers were unable to procure even seed for their
next sowing. Every day, thousands of corpses could be seen floating
through the Hooghly to the sea. Streets and bazaars of Calcutta were
littered with bodies of the dead and the dying. The survivors did not have
enough energy left to be able to carry the corpses to the river or to the
cremation ground and save them from being clawed and eaten up by
vultures and jackals in broad daylight.‖139
For nearly fifteen years after the battle of Plassey, the Company
servants cared more for their private trade than of the E. I. C.
In 1773, the Regulating Act was passed by the British Parliament
which, for the first time asserted its right to regulate the Company. During
this time, Warren Hastings became the Governor-General of India. He
firmly led the foundation of British rule in India.
By 1857, almost all the Indian Territory came under the control of
the East India Company. ―East India Company was in complete control of
139
Kashyap Subhash C, Savita D. Kashyap, Tryst with Freedom a Pictorial Saga, National Publishing House, New Delhi, 1973, pp. 3-4
63
India, ruling about three-fifth of the country directly and the remaining
two-fifth indirectly through subservient Indian Princes.‖140
The annexation
policy of Lord Dalhousie resulted in the Sepoy Mutiny. Although Indians
were against foreign domination from the very beginning and they used to
fight against the foreigners, but on many occasions they could not
succeed. This was mainly due to the lack of national sentiment and unity.
Secondly, the Indians trusted the foreigners. But by 1857, the Indians
came to realize that the British were making their own future at the cost of
the Indians. They were exploiting the Indians at every step.
The Indians were subjected to humiliation in politics, social,
economic and even religious matters. In 1818, Sir Thomas Munro wrote:
―Foreign conquerors have treated the natives with violence and often with
great cruelty, but none has treated them with so much scorn as we; none
has stigmatized the whole people as unworthy of trust, as incapable of
honesty, as fit to be employed only where we cannot do without them. It
seems to be not ungenerous, but impolitic, to debase the character of an
entire people fallen under our domination.‖141
Malcolm Lewis (Indian Revolt) had expressed the same view:
―We have denied to the people of the country all that could elevate
them as men; we have insulted their caste; we have abrogated their laws of
inheritance; we have changed their marriage institutions; we have ignored
the most sacred rites of their religion; we have delivered up their pagoda
property to confiscation; we have branded them in official records as
heathens; we have seized the possessions of their native princes and
140
K. A. Nilakanta Shastri, C. Srinivasachari, Life and Culture of the Indian People, Allied publishers, 1966, revised, 1974, p. 54.
141 Kashyap Subhash C, Savita D. Kashyap, Tryst with Freedom a Pictorial Saga, National Publishing
House, New Delhi, 1973, pp. 7-8.
64
collected revenue by means of torture; we have sought to uproot the most
ancient aristocracy of the world and to degrade it to the condition of
pariahs.‖142
There was large discontent among the Indians. They were agitated
against British rule on many counts. This agitation culminated into the
Revolt of 1857. The Revolt failed and it left bitter memories and created a
social estrangement between the English and the Indians. But it remains a
glorious chapter in the struggle for freedom. It paved the way for India‘s
freedom. The mutiny had its political impact. The East India Company
was abolished and the Government of India came directly under the
Crown. The Queen of England became the Empress of India and by the
Proclamation of 1858, it was said that the British will adopt the policy of
non-interference in the internal matters of India. Lord Canning took over
as the first Viceroy of India. The fight for freedom once begun never ends.
The failure of the Revolt made the people of India realize the fact that the
archaic methods of rebellion were no longer effective under this system,
and with the emergence of Indian National Congress, a new technique of
political participation evolved.
During the last decade of the 19th century, the feeling of nationalism
dominated the mind of the Indians. The birth of the Indian National
142
Kashyap Subhash C, Savita D. Kashyap, Tryst with Freedom a Pictorial Saga, National Publishing House, New Delhi, 1973, pp. 7-8.
65
Congress in 1885 proclaimed the advent of a new era, the era of political
unity and the expression of the deliberate will of the people. The Indian
National Congress became a central organ of our society in the struggle
for freedom. Prior to 1885, some important associations such as the
Landholders Society, the British Indian Association, the Bombay
Presidency association, the Madras Mahajan Sabha, the Calcutta Indian
Association and the Poona Sarvajanik Sabha, were set up in different parts
of the country to give voice to the resentment of Indians against certain
discriminatory policies of the administration in their own ways.
Nevertheless, from the very beginning the I. N. C. was an all India
organization. It was truly national and secular organization based on the
concept of the unity of India. It brought together the elite of different
communities and provided to them a common platform to give expression
to their urges and aspirations. The Indian National Congress remained a
premier political party during the freedom struggle.
During its early years, the Congress was dominated by the
moderates, but later it was divided into two streams viz. Moderates and
Extremists. Although they were working for the same goal, that is to free
the country from the clutches of the British, the method of their working
was different.
66
In the closing years of the nineteenth and the early years of the
twentieth century, several forces and events combined to give birth to an
extremist movement in Indian politics. In 1905, the partition of Bengal
was announced and the Indian national movement entered its second
phase.
Although the Government argued that the partition was necessary
because the existing province of Bengal was too big to be efficiently
administered by a single provincial government, but the real motive was to
divide the Hindus and the Muslims thus crushing the growth of the
nationalist feeling. The partition led to widespread agitations. The anti-
partition agitation was initiated on August 7, 1905, at the Town Hall,
Calcutta, where a massive demonstration against the partition was
organized. There was a ‗hartal‘ in Calcutta. The ceremony of Raksha
Bandhan was observed with Hindus and Muslims tying Rakhi on one
another‘s wrists as a symbol of unbreakable unity.
The leaders of Bengal felt that mere demonstrations, public
meetings and resolutions were not enough and something more concrete
was needed. The answer was ‗Swadeshi‘ and ‗Boycott‘.
The objective of the Swadeshi movement was two-fold. Firstly,
they wanted to demonstrate their strong opposition to the British policy,
and secondly, they wished to bring their cherished sentiments to the notice
67
of the people in England so that the latter might, in selfinterest, force the
British Government to change the policy of partition.
According to Dr. R. C. Majumdar, Swadeshi completely outgrew
the original conception of promoting Indian industry. It assumed a new
form based upon the exact meaning of the word Swadeshi, i. e. attachment
to everything that was Indian.
The Swadeshi movement activated new trends in the field of culture
also. According to Bipan Chandra, ―it was perhaps in the cultural sphere
that the impact of the Swadeshi movement was most marked. A new type
of nationalist poetry, prose and journalism surcharged with passion and as
well as filled with idealism could be seen.‖143
The Swadeshi movement marked the birth of a new era in Indian
political life. The nation learnt that the only effective guarantee against the
oppressive rule of the British is the vigorous assertion of its will.
Social conditions in India also underwent tremendous alterations
during the same period, probably the greatest changes it had ever known.
Even the conquest of India by the Muslims had not caused any basic
change in the Hindu way of life. By contrast, in the 19th
century, India
gradually moved from the medieval to the modern age. Descriptions of
Indian life, customs and beliefs in the early 19th
century show it as being
143
Chandra Bipin, Indias Freedom Struggle,
68
ridden with obsolete and inhuman practices. A gloomy picture of the blind
faith and poverty of the people is given by historians and travelers, but it
was this age that produced its greatest reformers, thinkers and writers. The
19th century was marked by important reforms, by continuous agitation for
political rights, and by a real hunger for the new education. Perhaps
Indians today are largely unaware of the great battles these courageous
pioneers undertook in order to win the freedom of thought and action we
enjoy today. Their liberal, humane and ethical thought attacked the most
conservative and cruel customs and established modern forms of religion,
scientific studies and democratic rights. They made possible the birth of
an educated and self-conscious middle class.
Thus the 19th century in India was an era of immense change. Every
phase of life was affected by the shifts in political power, economy and
social values. It had its effect on Indian art and culture also.
India has got a very rich cultural tradition. The cultural progress
continued in all ages, in the field of art and other allied branches of
aesthetic creation. In art-minded India, it is difficult to find even the
smallest utensil without some decorative element in it, or a piece of cloth
without some beautiful design at least on the border, or a wall in a house
without some patterns. Art in some form or other cannot be missed in
everyday life even in the remotest corners of a country. But during the 19th
69
century, Indian art reached a state of stagnation. The art situation in 19th
century India has not been given much attention. The educated middle
class, while fully aware of its political weakness and failures, was not so
much aware of the cultural vacuum.
With the disintegration of the Mughal Empire and the establishment
of British rule, the country entered a period of cultural blight. Owing to
lack of patronage, traditional art declined in vigor, conception and
execution. The creativity of the artist was lost in the political-economic
confusion. Less importance was given to the Indian artist.
The new powers which began to rise after the battle of Plassey were
busy in acquiring new territory. They were alien and indifferent towards
Indian culture. But after political stability was established, the traditional
cultural life began to re establish itself. This was the time when the
Western influence began to penetrate into the field of art and other spheres
of life.
With the advent of the British, new developments began in the field
of Indian painting. The paintings of Indian artists attracted the attention of
the English and at the same time, Indian artists were also interested in the
paintings brought by the British. Although there was a great demand for
Indian paintings, the Indian painters were required to depict Indian life
and scenes according to the taste of the British. Under these
70
circumstances, the Indian artists were bound to adopt the Western
methods. The combination of the Indian and the Western techniques
resulted in the synthetic or the hybrid style.
2:1 Company School of Painting:
Company style or company painting is a term for hybrid Indo-
European style of paintings made in India by Indian artists, many of whom
worked for European patrons in the British East India Company in the
18th& 19
th centuries.
By the end of the 18th century the East India Company had assumed
political and administrative power in India. As the E. I. C. expanded its
purview in South Asia during the late 17th century, a great number of its
employees moved from England to carve out new lives for themselves in
India. As they travelled through the country and encountered unusual flora
and fauna, ancient monuments and exotic new people, they wanted to
capture these images. On the one hand, with the collapse of the Mughal
Empire and gradual break up on the provincial kingdoms, Indian painters
lost their patrons and were looking for new employment. On the other
hand, Company officials were interested in paintings that could capture
the ‗picturesque‘ and ‗exotic‘ aspects of the land, besides recording the
variety in the Indian way of life which they came across. Indian artists of
that time, with declining traditional patronage fulfilled the growing
71
demand for paintings of flora and fauna, landscapes, historical
monuments, durbar scenes, images of native rulers, ceremonies, dance,
music as well as portraits.
Pictures were the best record for the British in India; they were their
most valued possessions of their experiences in India. As the British
travelled through India they came across various crafts, costumes,
festivals, etc. ―Lady Nugent noticed how copper vessels, crockery, rice,
sugar, gods and goddesses, knives, muslins, silks… were all displayed
together—all sorts of coloured turbans and dresses, and all sorts of
coloured people—the crowd immense—the sacred Brahmin bull walking
about and mixing with the multitude.‖144
Such experiences resulted in vivid impressions but as the British
penetrated more deeply into India; their sense of the exotic was further
increased.
―As they moved through the towns and villages they chanced upon
picturesque festivals—the Muharram with brightly coloured taziyas being
carried through the streets. They saw bridegrooms riding to their marriage,
and corpses carried to the cremation ghats. Each season had its festivals
with processions and with dancing crowds, and every city with its
individual character. Among these, Benares had a special fascination with
its ‗temples, idols, garlands, bells, conches, brahmins and fakeers‘. Every
sight and sound recalled ‗the strange and ancient superstition of the place
and communicated an air of awesome mystery.‖145
144
M. Nugent, A Journal from the Year 1811 till 1815 (London, 1839), i,III
145 Mildred Archer, Company Drawings in the Indian Office, Library Her Majesty’s Stationary Office,
1972, introduction
72
Even Indian landscapes and ‗native characters‘ were not merely
instances of the picturesque; they were news‘146
Captain Mundy, an ADC
to Lord Combermere, the commander-in-Chief of the Bengal army, was
continually noting this during his tours in northern and eastern India
between 1825 and 1830. On returning from his first fair he wrote:
―But in the picturesque properties of the scene, how greatly does
this Indian assemblage transcend our own. Instead of red, rectangular
buildings, square doors, dingy dress of the figures,....we have here domes ,
minarets, fanciful architecture and a costume above all flaunting in colours
set off with weapons and formed from the easy flow of its drapery to
adorn beauty and disguise deformity...every hut, equipage, utensil and
beast of India is picturesque.‖147
Similar qualities imbued festivals and ceremonies. Emily Eden the
sister of Lord Auckland the Governor General from 1836 to 1842 was
particularly fascinated. ―It was one of the prettiest, gayest feasts I have
seen she said of the diwali festival as she drove around cantonments. The
illuminations were so pretty....the sepoys had illuminated there in all
directions and even scattered lamps on the ground all over the plain; it
looked like a large Vauxhall‖148
. The Muslim festival of Muharram with
its glittering towers149
, surrounded with sparkling lanterns and attended by
warlike dancers, was equally impressive. Many a journals also contained
146
Archer and WC Archer, Indian Painting for the British 1770-1880, Oxford, 1955, p-103
147. Mildred Archer, Indian Paintings of the British Period, London, 1992, intro ,p-16
148 .E.Eden, Letters from India (London, 1872), i,255 quoted in Mildred & W.G. Archer 1955, p-5
149 See Plate No.29
73
an entry inspired by scenes such as kali puja, when the statue of the blood
thirsty goddess was worshipped beneath a canopy or carried with flags
through the streets. Even the intricate ritual of Hindu and Muhammadan
weddings with their brilliant processions of lamps and fanciful flowers
induced a mood of romantic wonder. Few of the British can have actually
attended these incidents of Indian life, but as they moved through the
countryside their eyes trained for picturesque views, they must certainly
have stumbled on scenes of ritual or caught at least a partial glimpse. The
same comment applies to two more ceremonies. The first was Hook
Swinging150
when devotees suspended from poles by hooks through their
flesh were whirled above the crowd. The second was Suttee at which the
widow immolated herself on her husband‘s funeral pyre. Between 1815
and 1828 suttees were very numerous in Bengal especially in the districts
around Calcutta. 1818 saw the greatest number with 838 of which 544
were in the Calcutta division alone. In 1828 the year before its abolition
by Bentinck, 309 incidents took place in the same area. The subject indeed
was full of fascination, for the ugly, the barbarous, and the sinister had all
in varying degrees the qualities of the picturesque.151
150
See Plate No. 30
151 Mildred & W.G.Archer , 1955, p-5
74
Yet another spectacle attracted the British–the Indian dance called
‗the nautch‘. Some found it morally repellent or tiresomely monotonous
but many were entranced. Emily Eden in particular was attracted by a
dancer she saw at Benaras in 1837.152
The ancient buildings of India also aroused enthusiasm in minds
alerted to ‗the picturesque‘. The richly carved Hindu temples of South
India impressed the British with their grandeur and complexity, but it was
Mughal architecture of Delhi and Agra which moved them most deeply
with its shining white marble, delicate pietra dura work, pierced screens
and swelling domes. The Taj Mahal, in particular, was viewed through a
romantic haze. The ruined and dilapidated state of many of these
monuments merely added to their glamour. 153
According to Mount Stuart Elphinstone:
―The mosques, the minarets, tombs and gardens of so many
Mohaminedan cities, the marble courts of the palaces of the Mughals,
peopled with the recollections of former times, and surrounded with the
remains of fallen greatness, could not but affect the imagination.‖154
Emotions of this kind made a strong impact on the British in India.
Some were able to convey their excitement through letters, others
published their memoirs. But for many, pictures were the best record and
152
Ibid. p. 6
153. Mildred Archer, 1972, introduction
154 Mildred Archer, 1972, introduction
75
became one of their most valued possessions. John Bellasis, an
enthusiastic amateur artist remarked ―my portfolio of drawings is thought
to be a great treasure here. I take great care of them.‖155
The British who were able to draw used to make drawings for
themselves, but those who could not draw hired Indian artists to paint
according to their taste. These artists provided the British with pictures of
subjects which, whether for emotional, intellectual or purely personal
reasons excited them. Lady Nugent once said ―I intend to get drawings of
everything….. I mean to begin a collection of curiosities of all sorts,
drawings, etc., for my dear children.‖ And the first time she went out in
to…. With a cavalcade of out-runners she wrote, ‗I mean to have a
drawing of this procession.‖156
This shows that the British were anxious to
acquire pictures of the new environment.
But the paintings of Indian artists did not satisfy their new patrons.
They had strong views about the nature of art. George Forster
Complained, ―The Hindoos of this day have a slender knowledge of the
rules of proportion, and none of perspective. They are just imitators and
correct workmen; but they possess merely the glimmerings of genius.‖157
155
Ibid.
156 M. Nugent, op.cit. p. 90
157 Forster, G.,A Journey from Bengal to England, London, vol. I, 1808, p. 93
76
Thomas Twining, a Bengal civilian considered that ―the merit of
their drawing is almost confined to a very accurate imitation of flowers
and birds. I never saw a tolerable landscape or portrait of their execution.
They are very unsuccessful in the art of shading, and seem to have very
little knowledge of the rules of perspective.‖158
Michael Symes was of the view that Indian artists showed no
interest in landscape painting. ―How much I regretted that my draftsman,
though skillful in copying figures and making botanical drawings was
unacquainted with landscape painting and perspective.‖159
But at the same
time he praises the Indian artist. ―Michael Symes himself was delighted
with the way his Bengali draftsman drew the costumes of the Burmese.
―The representations of the costume of the country, I am persuaded, are as
faithful as the pencil can delineate: the native painters of India do not
possess a genius for fiction, or works of fancy; they cannot invent or even
embellish, and they are utterly ignorant of perspective; but they draw
figures and trace every line of a picture with a laborious exactness peculiar
to themselves.‖160
Indian artists soon realized what their new patrons desired. The
painters of this period modified their technique to cater to the British
158
Twining T., (ed. W.H.G. Twining), Travels in India a Hundred years ago, London, 1893, p. 459
159 Quoted in Mildred Archer, 1972, introduction.
160
M .Symes, Quoted in Mildred Archer, 1972, introduction.
77
tastes for academic realism which required the incorporation of Western
academic principles of art, a close representation of visual reality and
perspective. According to Archer, ―certain Indian artists began to work for
the East India Company itself as draftsmen to engineer officers. They
were trained in map-making or in preparing architectural drawings. In this
way they learnt the use of pen and ink and wash.‖161
At the same time, few
European painters, such a J. Zaffany (1733-1810), Tilly Kettle (1735-
1837), T. Daniell (1749-1840), and W. Daniell (1769-1837) came to settle
in India. ―These were the artists who introduced a romanticized Indian
landscape through the medium of easel oil painting. With the introduction
of this academic idiom, the art of anonymous Indian Company painters
evolved, uniquely merging Eastern and Western themes and
techniques.‖162
Indian artists changed their medium and now began to paint with
water colour and also used pencil and European paper. ―They gave up
using gouche, which Europeans found hard…They modified their colour,
tempering brilliant reds, oranges and pinks with somber sepia, indigo blue
and muted greens. Flat patterns with bright patches of colour were
replaced by round forms, light and shade being indicated with soft washes
161
Mildred Archer, 1972, introduction. 162
. Mildred Archer and W.G.Archer, Indian Painting for the British, 1777-1880, Oxford, 1955,p-10
78
of colour.‖163
This type of Indian painting, known as Company, gradually
emerged at all the main centres in India.
Company paintings were first produced in Madras Presidency in
South India. This new style of painting soon disseminated to other parts of
India such as Calcutta Murshidabad Patna, Benaras, Lucknow, Agra,
Delhi, Punjab, and centers in Western India. The favourite subjects were
costumes, trades, crafts, methods of transport and festivals.
2:1:1Madras: During the first half of the 18th century Madras was the
most important British settlement. According to Archer during this time
about 78164
paintings were made by an Indian artist for Nicolas Manucci
who wrote Staria do Mogor and wanted illustrations for his book. The
illustrations include Hindu Gods and Goddess ceremonies and religious
festivals men and women of different castes.165
These paintings were of
mixed style, certain characteristics, of Golconda Paintings of the early 17th
century are found in these paintings. At the same time there was European
influence because they were painted on European papers in water colour
in shades of grey, brown dull green, red. The paintings had Indian themes
with European technique.
163
Mildred Archer, 1992, introduction, p. 6
164 Mildred Archer, Company Paintings, Indian Paintings of the British Period, Victoria and Albert
Museum, London, 1992, p-introduction-15
165 Ibid. p. 15
79
Although the artists were Indian, the themes of these paintings
appeal to a European eye. A precedent for the genre and conventions of
company painting is an album of water colours dated between 1533 and
1546 in the Biblioteca Casanatense in Rome. The 141 illustration depict
the customs and costumes of the native peoples inhabiting the lands
occupied by the vast Portuguese maritime empire. Like the later company
paintings, a large proportion of this earlier album‘s illustrations show a
standing man and women, who serve as representative examples of a
social group or occupation while other, depict deities and festivals.166
By the 17th
century Europeans in India were already collecting
paintings by Indian artists and commissioning works from them. The
paintings acquired by the Italian traveller Niccolao Manucci (1639-1717)
in Golconda and Madras between 1685 and 1705 and now at the
Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris and the Library of San Marco in Venice
similarly demonstrate the accommodation of European tastes and curiosity
in subject matter.167
2:1:2 Tanjore: In Tanjore the artists of the Moochy caste168
produced
paintings for European. Earlier the style and techniques were
166
Archer Mildred, 1992, pp 12-13
167 Archer Mildred, ‘Company Painting in South India: the Early Collections of Niccolao Manucci’, in
Apollo, 1970, pp 104-113
168 Archer Mildred, 1972, p 21
80
predominantly Indian but as British power increased, European style
began to influence painting. According to Archer the Tanjore Raja
themselves assisted in the spread of European influence. Raja Sarabhoji
had Dunish tutors from whom he learnt to draw in European manner.169
Archer further state that the Raja used to present sets of paintings made
under his supervision to his guests and to British residents. Sarabhoji‘s son
Sivaji (1832-53) continued this practice. He had interest in architecture
and in 1836; he became a founder member of the Royal Institute of British
Architects. He presented the Institute ten drawings of his palace and of
local temples, which were executed in a mixed Indian-British style.170
2:1:3 Murshidabad: In Bengal Presidency, paintings, similar in subject
matter to that of paintings in South India were developed for the British in
the first half of the 18th
century. In 1750, Murshidabad held a predominant
position in Eastern India and it was here that the paintings for the British
by Indian artists first developed. This style was originated in Murshidabad
because it was the capital of Mughal province. Before the advent of
Europeans the Nawab was the ruler of Murshidabad, who used to
commission artists for decorating the walls of their palace. Portraits and
scenes of court life were also produced for the Nawabs. After the death of
169
Archer Mildred, 1992, p. 44
170 Archer Mildred, 1972, p. 23
81
Nawab Alivardi Khan in 1756, the power of Nawabs began to decline due
to administrative weakness. By 1760, British gradually gained control on
Eastern India and Balance of Power was shifted. With the gradual increase
in power of Company more Britishers were attracted towards
Murshidabad because it was one of the largest trading centres in Bengal
Presidency. A British factory was established at Kasimbazar, barracks
were constructed at Berhampore. Many officers began to come to
Murshidabad and a British Resident was appointed to Nawab‘s Darbar.
Mursidabad had been gradually but completely transformed. And
with the decline of Mugal power the artist lost their patronage and they
started working for British in order to sustain their livelihood. The artist
had to learn a new style influenced by the English picturesque movement
for their new patrons.
The first paintings executed for the British at Mursidabad were
portrait miniatures in Mughal style. The artist made portraits of Mugal and
Murshidabd rulers for British in their taste. ―Water colour on English
paper in pale blues and green took the place of bright gouche.‖171
Some of
the portraits, probably painted about 1782, ―depict Englishmen in cocked
hats and queues, reclining on cushions with hookahs and pan- boxes to
171
Archer Mildred, 1972, p 60
82
hand. They also show English ladies with elaborately dressed hair and
voluminous skirts sitting straight-backed on their ivory chairs.‖172
According to Archer, ―in Victoria and Albert Museum, there is a
portrait of company official, William Fullerton, a Scottish surgeon, who
resided in India from 1744 to 1766. The portrait was made by the famous
artist Dip Chand. His portrait shows him reclining on a terrace, smoking
hooka. He is attended by servants and is talking to an Indian visitor.‖173
The portrait of William Fullerton shows him fully immersed in the life
style of his new homeland.
Besides, portrait artists also painted pictures depicting various
occupations and costumes of local people like the milk-women, the butter
maker, the vegetable seller, the barber.174
The earlier style of the Murshidabad artist was derived from
Mughal miniature, but by the turn of century, paintings were influenced by
western techniques therefore new style developed. Large scenes were
produced showing the Nawabs of Murshidabad or Lucknow in various
situations. A set in Victoria and Albert museum shows Nawab Mubarak-
ud-Daula of Murshidabad seated with his son and the British Resident.175
172
Ibid.
173 Archer Mildred, 1992, p 76 & Plate No. 31
174 Archer Mildred, 1992.
175 Archer Mildred, 1992, p 79
83
Another picture shows the same Nawab proceeding for prayers at the
Mani Bagum‘s Mosque on the occasion of Id.176
Other shows Nawab
Asaf-ud-Daula listening to music or celebrating Muhrram festival in the
Great Imambara Lucknow. Many other festival and ceremonies were also
depicted for example Hook-Swing, Muharram, Holi, Chait and Hindu and
Muslim marriages.177
Thus the pictures which were made at Murshidabad showed the
popular subjects of costumes, occupations, ceremonies, festivals and mode
of transport.
2:1:4 Calcutta:-Before 1773 Calcutta was a small town in Bengal. In
1759 when the Nawab of Murshidabad was defeated and East India
Company obtained its jurisdiction. In 1773 Calcutta became the capital of
British India. When this British settlement was growing in size and
importance, Indian culture in cities like Murshidabad, Dacca, and Patna
began to decline. Artist who had worked at the courts of the Mughal lost
their patronage. Some of them migrated to Calcutta in the hope of finding
work with the new rulers. Calcutta was among the early production
centres, as the site of one of the oldest British trade house.
176
Archer Mildred, 1992, p 80
177 Ibid. p.74. & See Plate No.32
84
The city‘s most enthusiastic patrons were Lord Impey, chief justice
of the high court from 1777 to 1783, his wife, and the Marquess
Wellesley,178
who served as governor general from 1798 to 1805. Both
had collected large menageries and hired artists to paint birds and animals.
Indian artists were being employed for the painting of natural history
subjects. Zain-al-Din, Ram Das and Bhawani Das, formally Patna artists,
worked for the chief justice.179
In addition to private patronage, a number
of artists also found employment with East India Company, when
company established a Botanical garden in the city. These artists were
engaged on official work of various kinds, some became specialists in
natural history drawings for Botanical Garden in Calcutta, other made
maps and drawings of antiquities for surveys.180
By the turn of the century, however, the commonest employment
for the Calcutta artist was of yet another character, the making of sets of
drawings of Indian life, scenery and monuments for sale to British visitors
and residents. At Murshidabad these sets often focussed on castes,
costumes, occupations, transport methods and festivals, but at Calcutta a
178
Archer Mildred, 1992, pp 96-99
179 Archer Mildred, 1972, p
180 Sardar, Marika. "Company Painting in Nineteenth-Century India". In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art
History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/cpin/hd_cpin.htm (October 2004)
85
new type of subject was developed the illustration of monuments,
especially Mughal, with which the British were coming into contact.
Certain Europeans conventions such as large format, the water
colour technique and use of European paper, sombre tones and elongated
figures were found in Murshidabad paintings. At Calcutta the influence of
these conventions was stronger, painters became more aware of European
taste because professional British artists who came to India spent much of
their time in Presidency capital and Indian painters saw their works and
also got acquainted with them due to availability of illustrated books. In
one of his articles Archer had mentioned that the wealthier inhabitants of
Calcutta had libraries and frequently subscribed to the lavish publications
of the late eighteenth century and early nineteenth centuries which were
illustrated with coloured engravings.181
According to Archer many
Calcutta residents possessed books such as William Hodges‘ Select Views
(1785-88) and Thomas and William Daniell‘s Oriental Scenery (1795-
1808). In 1788, Thomas Daniell wrote to Ozias Humphry saying that ‗the
commonest bazaar is full of prints – and Hodges‘ Indian Views are selling
by cart loads.‘182
Calcutta artists probably acquired examples from
Hodges‘ illustration.
181
Archer Mildred, 1972, p. 73
182 Archer Mildred, 1972, p 73
86
Shaikh Muhammad Amir was the famous Calcutta artist,183
who
produced various sets of figures notable for their dignified postures and
subtle composition. When engaged, he would paint a set of pictures for the
patron, including his house, carriage, horses and servants.184
2:1:5 Lucknow: - While the company was consolidating its rule in
Eastern India, events in Oudh were inducing the Europeans to come first
to Faizabad and then to Lucknow.
Company painting in Oudh developed on individual lines. This was
largely because the European communities in Faizabad and later in
Lucknow differed greatly from the cities which came under direct British
rule. Apart from the British Resident and the Europeans who flocked to
Oudh in late 18th
and early 19th
centuries were adventurers and tradesmen
looking for quick fortunes, they were not interested in purchasing
paintings of ‗manners and customs‘ to paste in their scrapbooks or to send
home to relatives in England. There was little demand for paintings of this
kind and only few Europeans like Col. Gentil, Claud Martin, Col Polier
and Richard Johnson were interested in paintings, but they were interested
either in European work of good quality or in oriental culture. They
183
Archer Mildred, 1992, pp. 103-105
184 Ibid. pp. 103-105. & See Plate No. 33.
87
patronised the British professional painters who visited Oudh or collected
Indian and Persian manuscripts and miniatures.
With the decline of patronage at Delhi, Mughal artists had moved to
Faizabad and later to Lucknow, and a school of painting arose which was
marked by feverish brilliance, a fitting expression of Oudh society under
Nawab Shuja-ud-Daula and Nawab Asaf-ud-Daula. Many portraits and
paintings of musical or literary themes with semi-erotic flavour were made
during this time. The artist was patronized by the Nawab. In spite of
encouragements, painters in Oudh were gradually influenced by Western
techniques.
The wealth of the Nawabs attracted a number of British artists to
their courts. As a result, Indian painters at Faizabad, and later in Lucknow,
saw examples of British work. Tilly Kettel was the first British artist to
seek his fortune in India.185
He visited Faizabad during the closing reign of
Nawab Shuja–ud-Daula‘s reign. During his stay he executed six large oil
paintings.186
―One of these, a full length study of the Nawab in a cloth of
gold dress and fur cap, his right hand on his belt, is in Governor‘s House,
Madras. A second depicted Shuja-ud–Daula and four of his sons receiving
an English general, Sir Robert Barker, with his suite of two A.D.C.s, an
185
Mildred & Archer W.G., 1955, p 54
186 Ibid. p. 54
88
officer, and a Persian interpreter187
. The remaining four pictures are
described by Gentil in his memoirs. One was a picture of Shuja receiving
an English general at Faizabad, his elephant and suite in the distance.
Another showed the Nawab in Maratha costume on horseback with a
lance in his hand.‖188
According to Mildred and W.C. Archer, nothing
more is known of these pictures and both seems to have disappeared. The
remaining pair had curious histories. Before leaving for France, Gentil
tells us, he had borrowed all four pictures from Nawab in order that Indian
artists might make miniature copies which he could take back to Europe.
When the first copy was ready- a portrait of the Nawab and his eldest son,
he showed it to Shuja, who liked it so much that he insisted on keeping it
and on the following day presented it to the Resident. When Gentil
protested, Shuja asked him why he needed the picture since his portrait
must surely be engraved upon his heart. Gentil replied that he required it
for showing to his friends, and since the Nawab had given away his copy,
he must be allowed to keep original. Shuja seems to have acquiesced, for
Kettle‘s original painting was brought by Gentil to Europe and presented
to Louis XVI in 1778.189
It is still in the Palace at Versailles. Only one
other of the remaining three pictures was copied for Gentil and this was
187
See Plate No. 34.
188 Ibid. p. 55
189 Mildred & Archer W. G.,1955, p. 55
89
also presented by him to the King of France in 1778. This picture was
made by Nevasi Lal and shows the Nawab and his ten sons standing on a
rich carpet in the Palace.190
Under Asaf-ud–Daula the blatant imitation of British culture was
accelerated. In 1784, John Zoffany came to Lucknow and stayed for five
years during which he made several paintings and drawings for the Nawab
some of which have found their way to India Office and H.M. the Queen‘s
collection.191
Tilly Kettle and Zoffany were followed by Ozias Humphry and
Charles Smith in 1786 and by Thomas and William Daniell who stayed
there from July to October 1789. There was a continuous tradition of
British artists working in Lucknow. Robert Home was the court artist to
Ghazi-ud–din Haider.192
The European artist who probably painted the
most number of Nawabs is John Beechey.193
He painted portraits of
Nawab Nasir-ud-din Haidar, Nawab Mohamad Ali Shah, Nawab Amjad
Ali Shah and Nawab Wajid Ali Shah, after he came to Lucknow in 1828.
He lived in Lucknow till his death in 1852.
190
Mildred & Archer W.C., 1955, P. 55
191 Mildred & Archer W. C. ,1955, P. 56
192 Bhatt Ravi,The Life and Times of the Nawabs of Lucknow, Rupa publication, New Delhi, 2006.
193 Bhatt Ravi, op. cit.
90
For Indian artists accustomed to miniature technique, large oil
paintings of British artists came as a revelation and a shock. Indian
portraits were highly stylised, showing the figure in profile, either
standing or sitting, but in the work of British portrait painters, they saw
figure in natural pose. The size and medium was also different. Indian
painters soon realised that the new medium could add variety to their
stock in trade. Thus Indian painters adopted the European style to suit new
fashion and market.
The work of these European painters started influencing local artists
sometimes at the insistence of the customer. As European artists and their
work was being patronised by the Nawabs, other customers began
insisting that the same kind of work and style be produced from local
artists.
Later on when the British started dominating the scene, artists
began to paint their lifestyle, customs and other events connected with
their presence in India. This style was termed as the Company style. Artist
Mummoo Jan194
is considered as one of the most important artists of this
phase.
2:1:6 Patna:-In 1704 Azim-ush-Shan, second son of the Mughal Emperor
Bahadur Shah (ruled 1707-12), became Subadar of Bengal and made
194
Bhatt Ravi, op. cit.
91
Patna his capital. Although he was killed in 1712 during the war of
succession that followed his father‘s death, Patna had already become the
flourishing capital of a Mughal province. Artists working there painted in
a provincial manner similar to that at Murshidabad.
With the political confusion of the mid-eighteenth century, the city
declined in importance, patronage was reduced and some of the painters
drifted to Calcutta in search of work.
Several painter families of the Kayastha caste appear to have moved
to Patna from Murshidabad195
in about 1760 and they were soon followed
by others. Patna was less affected by the general anarchy than lower
Bengal and, although it can hardly have held out any great prospects for
these artists, life may have seemed less precarious for them there than at
Murshidabad. The East India Company had a factory at Patna and as the
British gradually assumed control in Bengal the city grew increasingly
prosperous and regained its administrative importance. By 1800 it had
become the headquarters of one of the provincial committees into which
the Bengal Presidency had been divided. As at Murshidabad the new
arrivals soon found a new market among the British. Their work
developed on similar lines to that of their caste men in Murshidabad and
was concentrated on the same two types of subject matter festivals and
195
Archer Mildred, 1992, p. 84
92
occupations.196
―In Patna around 1800's, the European community
combined the same aloofness from Indian social life with similar interest
in the picturesque, and it was this latter trait which gradually gave the
Patna painters their expanded market. The city, which must have seemed
at one time only to some extent more established choice to Murshidabad,
was gradually seen to contain a new specialized demand.
The Patna artists began to experiment with compositions of local
Indian scenes…until about 1830 they had become perhaps the most
lucrative branch of Patna paintings. The artists painted whole sets of
'Snapshots' known as 'Firkas'197
there were the familiar figures of the
European compound: washermen, butlers returning from the market,
tailors, and maid servants. They portrayed the various bazaar tradesmen
and craftsmen, peddlers, bangle sellers, butchers, fish-sellers, blacksmiths
etc. They painted familiar town and village sights: elephants, ekkas,
bullock carts, palanquins, pilgrims etc.‖198
A similar demand was being met by the lithographs of Sir Charles
D'Oyly, which portray the same type of the subject. Archer writes‖
D'Oyly's career is of great interest, for while he was posted in Patna he set
up the Bihar Lithography, where he employed a Patna artist, Jairam Das,
196
Archer Mildred, 1972, p. 98
197 See Plate No. 35
198 Archer Mildred, 1992, pp. 85-94
93
as his assistant.199
Several of his books portraying Indian scenes and
costumes, which had a wide circulation amongst Europeans in India, were
made at the Bihar Lithographic Press, and it is interesting to speculate
how far D'Oyly may have influenced the Patna painters in their style and
subject matter, or alternatively, whether they in making competent sepia
drawings of the countryside and sketches for lithographs. Jairam Das
received direct instructions from D'Oyly and were shown a wide range of
work by Europeans. The results were electrifying. Captain Robert Smith
in ―Pictorial Journal of Travels in Hindustan from 1828 to 1833‖ writes
―for productions of the pencil, through, I was informed, the fostering care
of Sir C. D'Oyly, who has endeavoured, and with great success, to inspire
the natives with some of his own pure taste and artist like touches, instead
of the hard dry manner of the Indian painters. I was much pleased with
what I saw‖.200
Captain Smith of 44th regiment was himself a talented
painter as well. In the Patna Museum there is a large scrapbook of his
landscapes, one of which shows himself seated under a huge umbrella
sketching. While he was Collector in Dacca from 1808-1812 he took
lessons from George Chinnery201
the artist, who was also living there.
199
Archer Mildred, 1972, p. 99
200 Ganguly Nanak, Company School of Paintings of Calcutta, Murshidabad, Patna (1750-1850)
,artnewsnviews, 2012,vol. 29
201 Archer Mildred, 1992, p. 84
94
D'Oyly became an opium agent in Patna in 1818 and started living in a
large bungalow at Bankipore on the Ganges. Later it belonged to a Civil
Surgeon whose family lived in it till 1942. D'Oyly published several books
of lithographs and engravings in his lifetime ―The Costumes and Customs
of Modern India‖. ―The European in India‖ was published in London in
1813, followed by ―The Antiquities of Dacca‖ in 1816. In 1828 he
published ―Tom Raw‖, where he refers Chinnery and Griffin as 'the ablest
limner in the land'. ―Bihar Amateur Lithographic Scrapbook was
published in 1828‖.202
Mildred Archer mentioned about it ―in 1830 Views
of Calcutta, sketches of the new road in journey from Calcutta to Gaya‖
was published whereas ―Views of Calcutta and its Environs‖,
Lithographed and Published by Dickinson & Co, London was published in
1848. This was presented to the Victoria Memorial Hall by Mrs. George
Lyell in memory of her husband in 1932.203
―It is not known whether
D'Oyly had any direct contact with the better known Patna painters,
though his assistant, Jairam Das, was related to many of them nor do we
know whether D'Oyly actively influenced the Patna painters, but if a
lithograph such as ―The Nautch‖ (in the Bihar Lithographic Scrapbook) or
202
Archer Mildred, 1992, p. 84
203 Ganguly Nanak, op.cit.
95
some illustrations from ―Costumes of India‖ are compared with the Patna
paintings it is evident that one or the other has been influenced.204
It is possible that some of the stone of these lithographs were
actually drawn on stone by Jairam Das and his Patna assistants from
D'Oyly's drawings. As late as 1880 Bahadur Lal was making free copies
of birds from D'Oyly and Christopher Webb-Smith's books, and in the
Patna Museum there is a copy of the pictures ―Ord Bhawn‖ or Hindu fakir
from D'Oyly's costumes of India.205
D'Oyly may also have had a great
influence on the Patna painters in their choice of subjects. His own subject
matter birds, costumes, scenes of Indian life such as gambling, music, and
dance parties, elephants, a dancing girl holding a dove were identical to
that of Patna pictures, and it is possible that at a time when the Patna
painters were exploring the European market and trying to adapt their
style to European fashions, D'Oyly and his press may well have supplied
them with a significant model‖206
Jairam Das, Jhumak Lal, Fakir Chand Lal, Tuni Lal, Shiva Lal,
Tuni Lal‘s son, Shiva Dayal Lal, Gopal , Gur Sahay Lal, Bani Lal,
Bahadur Lal, Kanhai Lal and Jaigovind Lal were some of the renowned
204
Ibid.
205 Archer Mildred, 1992, p. 94
206 Archer Mildred, Patna Painting, The Royal India Society, 1947.
96
Patna painters.207
They produced sets of pictures illustrating the costumes,
occupations and birds.208
After about 1880, the British patronage declined.
Ishwari Prasad (1870-1950) the talented grandson of Shiva Lal was forced
to work for an Indian landlord, Raja Lachman Seth of Mathura. This
patronage did not provided adequate support and he went to Calcutta to
look for commercial work. When E. B.Havell was posted in Calcutta, he
discovered Ishwari drawing patterns for a European firm which imported
Manchester piece goods. Havell found a place for Ishwari on the staff of
the Calcutta Art School in 1904. Ishwari provided Havell and later Percy
Brown with much information on the technique of Indian miniature
painting. Besides paintings on paper, Company artists in Patna also
produced pictures on mica, adapting to Patna conditions the subjects
popularised in Murshidabad.
2:1:7 Benaras: Until 1775, when it was ceded to the East India Company,
Benaras had formed part of the Mughal province of Oudh. Although
provincial Mughal painting had flourished at Faizabad and Lucknow in
the mid eighteenth century, no well established school of Mughal painting
developed at Benaras. The painters working there appear to have been
207
Archer Mildred, 1972, pp. 99- 101
208 See Plate No. 36
97
nuqqash, bazaar painters, who made designs for textiles or decorated the
walls of houses.209
This was in the early years of the nineteenth century when a number
of British officers had been posted there, a civil station had grown up at
Secrole and cantonments had been built to the north west of the city.
British rule was being extended northwards and more and more travellers
visited Benares as they passed up and down the Ganges and these were to
prove the main patrons of Company paintings.210
In 1815, Dallu Lal (c.1790-c. 1860), whose parents had migrated
from Murshidabad to Patna at about the same time as Sewak Ram, settled
in Benares. He specialised in miniature portraits, some of which are
preserved at Bharat Kala Bhawan, Benares.211
A few of the Benares painters received patronage from some of the
local wealthy landlords, especially from Raja Ishwari Narain Singh (1835-
89). As a young man the Raja had employed Dallu lal and on assuming the
title he engaged him as court artist to train two other painters, Gopal and
Lal Chand. Another artist, Shiva Ram joined them later and was followed
209
Archer Mildred, 1972, p. 133
210 Ibid. p. 133
211 Archer Mildred, 1972, p. 133
98
by his son Suraj. They were employed in making portraits of courtiers and
in painting birds, flowers or other subjects that interested the Raja.212
In style, Benares paintings on paper are very similar to those from Patna
though the figures tend to be stiffer, the colours cruder and the whole
effect heavier and rougher.213
2:1:8 Delhi and Agra:- Delhi and Agra, throughout the Mughal period,
had been great centres of painting. Under Akbar, studios had been
established and many artists had been employed by the Emperor. This
patronage was continued by Jahangir and Shah Jahan as well as by
courtiers and nobleman of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
Numerous miniatures were produced, depicting a wide range of subjects:
portraits, genre natural history, historical and literary themes. By the time
the British occupied Delhi, however Mughal patronage had become sadly
reduced and many skilled artsists were looking for employment. It was not
difficult therefore to find painters willing to copy and record Mughul
monuments.
By about 1808, large architectural drawings were however readily
available depicting a whole range of monuments in Agra, Fatehpur Sikri,
Delhi and their neighbourhoods. The Taj Mahal was a favourite subject
212
Ibid. p. 134
213 Archer Mildred, 1992, p. 105
99
with views of the whole mausoleum complex as well as details of the
entrance gateway,214
the mosque and the central chamber with its screen
and two cenotaphs. The Pearl mosque in Agra Fort, the Private
Apartments and Halls of Audience as well, as the tomb of Itimad-ud-daula
across the river were also popular. Akbar‘s mausoleum at Sikandra and
the various buildings in the deserted city of Fatehpur Sikri provided
further subjects. At Delhi, the Fort with its massive ramparts and Halls of
Audience were constantly depicted as well as the Jami Masjid, the Qutab
Minar and the mausoleums of Humayan and Safdar Jang.215
These drawings were clearly influenced by British taste. The
traditional medium of gouache was replaced by pen and ink and water
colour. The pictures were executed on large sheets of whatman paper, in
soft washes of cream, buff grey and pink with touches of gold, green, red
or blue. The whole picture was surrounded by a black border or black
rules. The buildings were shown in perspective against a plain uncoloured
background. The style in many ways was similar to that of British
engineer draftsman of the period and it is significant that these officers
were amongst the first of the British to arrive in Delhi.
214
See Plate No. 37
215 See Plate No. 38
100
Travellers and residents in foreign countries often take home
images of the places and people they have encountered, both as personal
mementos and to inform their friends of their travels. Before the
widespread use of photography in the later 19th century, many Europeans
based in South Asia purchased sets of paintings depicting the flora, fauna,
monuments and peoples of the region. Created by local artists but targeted
specifically at a European audience, these works–often compiled into
albums – constitute a popular genre known as ‗Company‘ paintings. The
creators of Company paintings were often artists who had previously
found employment at the Mughal and other provincial courts of India.
However, by the late 1770s, the influx of Westerners either resident in or
passing through British-ruled India provided them with a new kind of
clientele. Local artists now frequently adapted both their subject matter
and their stylistic conventions to suit this new market. In producing these
works, Indian artists experimented both with new materials, such as pen-
and-ink and watercolours, and new techniques, such as a receding
foreground and shadowing. The quality varies from region to region and
over the course of the century in which Company paintings were produced
some of the finest were the product of direct patronage, while others were
made for the open market in the manner of postcard sets, especially as the
number of Europeans increased significantly in the early 19th century.
101
Such images are often depicted against a flat background, a characteristic
commonly seen in album sets produced between 1820 and 1850. The
figures are detached from their context; there is no intention to represent a
particular person, strata of society, moment or place. Craft activities,
occupations and public religious events are subjects in their own right.
Although the artists were Indian, the themes of these paintings appeal to a
European eye, and their aesthetic conventions mediate between the two.
These characteristics mark ‗Company‘ painting as a distinct phase in
South Asia‘s long pictorial tradition. Commissioned examples of
Company paintings often included portraits of the patron, his family and
servants or depictions of his home. An early 19th century example of a
commissioned album is in the India Office Collection of the British
Library. From the 1860s, Indian artists painting for a European audience
had to compete with the newly introduced medium of photography, which
soon came to dominate ethnographic and architectural studies; by the
1890s, the genre of Company painting had largely disappeared.
102
2:2 Fine Art Education in India and Raja Ravi Varma
2:2:1 Fine Art Education in India: In order to revive the lost glory of
Indian paintings many art schools were opened during 19th
Century. While
there are stray examples of short-lived art schools prior to the 1850s, the
Madras School of Arts and Craft (now renamed Government College of
Fine Arts) was the first institution to experiment with systematic art
training. Established in 1850 by Alexander Hunter, the school began
imparting lessons in subjects ranging from botanical drawings and
lithography to woodcarving and pottery. Soon, yet another art school
opened its doors in Calcutta. Established in 1854 by a group of Bengali
elite under the aegis of the Society for the Promotion of Industrial Art, the
Calcutta School of Art intended ―to develop inventiveness and originality,
to supply skilled draftsmen, designers, engravers, to meet increasing
demand, to provide employment, to promote taste and refinement in the
application of Art, among the upper classes to supply the community with
works of art at a moderate price.
In 1854 the first industrial Art society was set up in Calcutta by
Rajendra Lal Mitra, Jatindra Mohan Tagor and others. By 1864, this was
converted into the ―Calcutta Government College of Art‖216
With the
216
J.C.Bangal, History of Government College of Art and Craft, Centenary Volume, Calcutta College of Art and Crafts, Calcutta, 1966, pp-1-58
103
British Crown taking over the East India Company in 1857, and queen
Victoria becoming Empress of India, the Bombay Government Art
College (Later renamed J.J. School of Art) and the Madras Government
College of Art were also established.
By 1867, 22 Industrial Art Societies and three Government Art
school in the Presidency cities, were established. But the medium of
instruction remained European. The Indian method of painting was
dominated by European.
Although the art schools in Madras, Calcutta, and Bombay began as
private endeavours, they were gradually taken over by the British
government as part of an initiative to gain an increased control over
education in the colony.The department of public instruction was set up in
the three presidencies in 1855 which took control of these institutions. The
Madras School became a government institution in 1854, closely followed
by the Calcutta School in 1858, and the Bombay School in 1864. Aimed
solely at craft education, the Mayo School of Art, the youngest among the
colonial art schools, was established in Lahore with government support in
1875. With government patronage, there was a consorted effort to
redesign art school pedagogy in India, modeling art education in the
colony on South Kensington‘s design pedagogy. For instance, after the
104
Bombay School was taken over by the government, the curriculum was
restructured and South Kensington trained teachers such as Hugh
Stannaus, Michael John Higgins, John Lockwood Kipling and John
Griffiths were appointed. Similarly, with the appointment of the South
Kensington trained Henry Locke as the Principal of the Calcutta School,
the school‘s curriculum was reoriented with the introduction of South
Kensington‘s multi-stage pedagogic model.217
The introduction of art teaching on the basis of the British pattern
had far reaching implication on Indian Paintings because most of the
artists have been receiving their training in these institutions. The British
did not have a clear policy of art education. On one hand they wanted to
develop Indian taste and on the other were to train craftsmen so that the
excellent tradition of Indian crafts might survive and their deterioration
could be stopped. But the actual training given was based on realistic
rendering of objects and copying of western pattern. ―It was the taste of
European art which they wanted to inculcate by training Indians in
Western Representational and Techniques‘.218
217
In 1853, the Department of Science and Art at South Kensington put together the National Course of Art Instruction, a national curriculum for art and design education. Later known as the South Kensington system, the curriculum emphasized training in drawing. Beginning with flat objects and ornamental patterns, students incrementally progressed to more complex objects and drawings from plaster cast Reproductions of Greco-Roman art.
218 Major Trends in Indian Art-Pub by Lalit Kala Academy, New Delhi
105
According to Ratan Parimoo, Lord Napier (Governor of Madras) in
1871 recommended ―Indian artist could paint Indian mythology and life
with the power of European art.‖219
One dominating intention of British Art institutions could be
summarised by the following statement from the ‗Report of the Director
of Public Instructions, 1876-1877 ―The object of the institution was to
give native youth of India an idea of men and things in Europe both
present and past, not that they might learn to produce feeble imitation of
European art, but rather they might study European methods of imitation
and apply them to the representation of natural scenery, architectural
monuments ethical varieties and national costumes in their own
country‖220
The fine art education catered to European tastes, in terms of
themes and mediums - perspective, light and shade, portraiture, landscape.
The report further mentioned:
―The fine art education soon supported a package of oils on canvas
and clay modeling with an emphasis or portraiture landscapes, and still
life. This was coupled with a shift towards studding illusionistic – realism
rather than conceptual forms, especially within human figuration. The use
of chiaroscuro instead of flat colour platters of tonality rather than line,
and prospective instead of decorative compositions, were a few of the
other changes.‖221
219
Ratan Parimo, Studies in Modern Indian Art, Kanak Publications, New Delhi. p.17
220 Neville Tuli, The Flamed Mosaic-Indian Contemporary painting, First pub in 1997 by Tuli foundation
for holistic education and art in association with Mapin publication pvt. Ltd.1997.
221 Neville Tuli, op cit
106
The academic perspective was not the manner with which the
Indian vision had been fashioned. In India though, the perspective of the
mind‘s eye was for more relevant than representation.222
During 19th century the art as a whole was obviously of a very
inferior character made in the ―Bazaars‖ as at the trading stations and
showing little or elegance of its origin which were in ancient miniature
paintings. Thus India in the late 19th
Century presented a spectacle of
―art-barrenness‖, hard to imagine. It was in order to revive the lost glory
of traditional crafts that these art schools were started during 19th
century.
But these colleges were ineffective in salvaging the lost spirit, because
academic art was taught in these institutions. Less attention was paid to
Indian form and techniques. As a result traditional Indian paintings began
to decline.
2:2:2 Raja Ravi Varma (1848-1906): Towards the end of the 19th
century, one notable Indian artist, Ravi Verma, tried to reestablish Indian
art through western methods, techniques, principles and traits. He was
successful in his venture because he took Indian art back to feudal themes.
(With the coming of European painters the myth and religion was no more
important subject matter of paintings. Nature, festivals, common man‘s
222
Neville Tuli, op cit
107
life was introduced as a subject of Indian painting with Western
technique).
Raja Ravi Verma was among the first artists in the 19th Century to
introduce a radical change by focusing on themes of Indian mythology and
literature. He did this by resurrecting classical Indian sources from the
Mahabharat and from Kalidasa‘s Play, and by combining this with
European techniques of realism in colour, composition & perspective.223
Tapati Guha is of the opinion that, Ravi Varma appeared to fit ideally the
colonial prescriptions for a new improved Indian art. His mythological
paintings provided the answer to Lord Northbrook‘s address to students on
the opening of the Government Art Gallery in Calcutta in 1876.224
Tapati
Guha further mentioned that, the Calcutta school of Art was different from
the J.J.School of art, Bombay. Its strongest qualifications to be considered
a ‗school of Art‘could be traced to the existence of an adjoining Art
Gallery that had been founded by Viceroy Lord Northbrook in 1876, filled
with specimens of ‗fine arts‘from a range that was strictly European.
Through originals and copies, a representative selection of work of ‗the
good painters of Europe‘was to be introduced to the totally uninitiated
students, to inculcate in them ‗the right way of seeing‘; ‗so that the eyes of
223
Raja Ravi Varma, The painter Prince 1848- 1906, Parasram Mangharam, 2002
224 Thakurta Tapati Guha,The Making of New Indian Art, Cambridge University, 1992, p. 108.
108
the young might become accustomed to the observation of what is
beautiful in the form and colour of all objects.‘225
An artist who is credited with bringing about a momentous turn in
Indian art, Raja Ravi Varma, influenced future generations of artists. He
was the first Indian artist to master perspective and the use of the oil
medium. He was the first artist to cast the Indian gods and mythological
characters in natural, earthy surroundings using a European realism; the
first Indian artist to become famous. Before him, painters and craftsmen
were largely unidentified and he was the first to make his work available
not just to the rich elite but also to common people by way of his
oleographs. His paintings also provided answer to the famous speech of
Lord Napier, Governor of Madras, of 1871 ‗The Fine Arts of India‘, where
he called on the new Indian artists, trained in the European style of
painting, to enrich their ‗superior‘ skills with a true stuffing of India:
Indian people and costumes, Indian land-scape, and age old epic stories of
the Ramayana and the Mahabharata.226
Even Rabindranath Tagore expressed his admiration. Tagore noted:
―I spent the entire morning looking at Ravi Verma pictures. I must confess
I find them really attractive. After all, these pictures prove to us how dear
our own stories, our own image and expressions are to us. In some
225
Minute by the Lt. Governor of Bengal, Quoted in Tapati Guha, op cit. p. 64.
226 Thakurta Tapati Guha, op. cit. pp. 108-110.
109
paintings, the figures are not quite in proportion. Never mind! The total
effect is compelling.‖227
Tagore further said:
―The secret of their appeal is in reminding us how precious our own
culture is to us, in restoring to us our inheritance. Our mind here acts as an
ally of the artist. We can almost anticipate what he is about to
say........................ It is all too easy to find fault with him. But we must
remember that it is a lot easier to imagine a subject than to paint it. A
mental image, after all, has the freedom to be imprecise. But if that
mental image has to be turned into something as concrete as a picture,
with concern for even the minute aspects of representation, then that task
ceases to be facile.‖228
Raja Ravi Varma, ‗the artistic genius,‘ embodies the virtues
expected of an academic artist. The Modern Review described him as the
greatest artist of modern Indian, a nation builder, who showed the moral
courage of a gifted ‗high – born‘ in taking up the‘ degrading profession of
painting.229
Even Lord Curzon was impressed by the paintings of Ravi Varma.
He considered Ravi Varma‘s work as a ‗happy blend of Western technique
and Indian subject and free from oriental stiffness.‘ He recognized Varma
as ―One who for the first time in the history of Indian art, commenced a
new style of painting.‖230
227
Rabindranath Tagore, Chitravali Patrabali 1893, Quoted in Partha Mitter Art and Nationalism in Colonial India 1850-1922, Cambridge University Press, p-179
228 Rabindranath Tagore, Chitravali Patrabali 1893, Quoted in Partha Mitter Art and Nationalism in
Colonial India 1850-1922, Cambridge University Press, p-218.
229 Modern Review, 1, 1-6, Jan-Jun 1907, p-84.
230 Curzon quoted in Anonymous, Ravi Varma and the Indian Artist, Allhabad 1902, p-10.
110
Even the Prince of Wales on his Visit to India in 1875-76 expressed
‗great pleasure in (Varma‘s) works, (and) was presented with two of them
by the Maharaja of Travancore.231
Raja Ravi Varma was considered as a legend in his own time. He is
considered one of the world‘s most romantic and revolutionary painters of
the 19th Century. He was responsible in giving a new dimension to Indian
painting, and he carved a niche for himself in, thus bringing laurels to his
work not only in India but also worldwide.
Born on April 29, 1848, in Kilimanoor, a small village in the
southern state of Kerala, Ravi Verma belonged to a family of scholars.
From his early childhood he was interested in drawing. As a small boy, he
filled the walls of his home with pictures of animals, acts and scenes from
his daily life, which was noted by his uncle Raja Raja Varma who himself
was a painter of Tanjore style. ―He drew on walls and sketched incessantly
when he should have been memorizing his Sanskrit conjugations. The
prodigy was then duly ‗discovered‘ by his uncle Raja Raja Varma. The
child often watched him at work. Once in his uncle‘s absence, he even
dared to complete the figure of a bird in his uncle‘s painting. The older
231
Victoria Memorial Correspondence, I, Calcutta 1901-4
111
man was so impressed with the work that he predicted his future
greatness.‖232
His uncle Raja Raja Varma was instrumental in bringing him to
Thiruvananthapuram where Ayilyam Thriunal accorded him Royal
patronage. At the age of fourteen, Ravi Varma started living in
Thiruvananthpuram as the protege of the Ruler.233
Under the generous
patronage of Ayilyam Thirunal, Ravi Verma was exposed to a whole lot of
new influences, Western and Indian.
Incidently Ravi Varma used indigenous paints made from leaves,
flowers, tree bark and soil which his uncle Raja Raja Varma prepared for
him. But the technique of oil on canvas drew his attention, (the medium
was very new and the technique equally elusive in those days.) Only one
person in Travancore knew the technique of oil painting and he was
Ramaswamy Naickar a palace artist. He refused to teach him because he
recognized a ―potential rival‖ in Ravi Varma. 234
Even Theodore Jensen, a portrait painter of Dutch origin who came
to the capital with a letter of recommendation from the Viceroy and was
232
The Times 25-12-1906
233 Partha Mitter, Art and Nationalism in Colonial India 1850-1922, Cambridge University Press, p-181
234 Chaitanya Krishna, The History of Indian Painting, The Modern Period, Abhinav Publications, 1994, p.
128.
112
given commission by the ruler for his portraits, refused to teach Ravi
Varma and merely allowed him to see him at work. 235
Both the painters considered Ravi Varma as a threat. Perhaps one
can easily detect a clear trace of jealousy. Nevertheless, One of Naidu‘s
pupils helped Varma secretly. Ravi Varma was quick to learn on his own
and adopt any new technique.
Whatever may be one‘s appraisal of Ravi Varma‘s aesthetic
contribution, one cannot, deny him the credit for the first substantial
achievement in the modern context in India, in the new medium of oil
painting, and that too without the benefit of systematic training in an
academic institution or under a competent instructor.236
Ravi Varma was a ‗Self-taught‘ artist. He had none to guide and
instruct him in the technique and mysteries of oil painting ............. yet
nothing daunted (him)..............he worked till he overcame all
difficulties.237
B. Havell says, ―Though not trained in a school of art, all his (Ravi
Varma's) methods have been based on the academic rostrums of Anglo-
Indian schools, fine Arts societies and art critics‖ and G. Venkatachalam,
discussing the state of Art during the latter half of 19th century, says,
235
Ibid. p. 128.
236 Chaitanya Krishna, op. cit. p. 128.
237 Partha Mitter, Art and Nationalism in Colonial India 1850-1922, Cambridge University Press, p-181
113
―Painting, as such, there was none worth the name except the mongrelised
type imposed by the Government Schools of Art, of which Raja Ravi
Varma was the best example.‖ Ravi Varma had nothing to do with art
schools at any point of time. The Madras Art School was founded in 1853
and the Calcutta School in 1854 and for many years both of them had
taught only industrial crafts. When painting, was introduced as an
additional discipline, during the late 1870's, Raja Ravi Varma was already
an accomplished painter. And his paintings emerged as the first important
signifiers of 'modernity' and 'nationalism'. The notion of modernity, by
then, was fully appropriated with the agenda of Indian nationalism. Dr.
Anand Kentish Coomaraswamy's criticism was not based on his originals
but on his oleographs. He had not seen the originals ―I have not even seen
the painter's work, and known it only from coarse prints.‖ According to
Nanak Ganguly, the clue to the interpretive process in his work starts from
the fact that the portrait, a privileged form of European and therefore
colonial Indian art, is mapped over an indigenous albeit popular identity.
Ravi Varma's references for this came from Tanjore paintings with their
more elaborate Mysore antecedents, but these are superseded by what he
learnt of Western manner in the easel format in Trivandrum.238
238
Ganguly Nanak, Raja Ravi Varma: The painter who made the gods human, Essay published in Art news and views, July 2011,vol. 18.
114
A small Pamphlet, ―Ravi Varma, The Hindu artist of India‖, issued
in connection with the Chicago exhibition of 1893, stated ―Ravi Varma
started painting for amusement, not expecting this to be his life‘s work.
He had no one to instruct him or draw inspiration from when he
started‖.239
Raja Ravi Varma had the ability to produce a deceptive invitation
of real objects. As Ravi Varma‘s descendant Indira Verma writes, ―when a
European woman painter tried to deceive him with a trompe – L‘ oeil
umbrella, the artist invited the lady ......... to dinner, when she arrived, he
led her inside. She found many other guests seated on either side of a long
table in a large hall. The artist asked her to take her place, but when she
tried to do so, she found that the door, the large room, the table and the
guests, all formed part of one large canvas.‖240
Raja Ravi Verma‘s paintings drew inspiration from his uncle Raja
Raja and Tanjor painters at the court. Secondly, even though Ramaswami
Naidu refused to train Ravi Varma, he used to watch him working. The
court painter‘s canvases were on view in the palace. He was a well-
respected traditional oil painter. Naturalism had crept into other parts of
traditional Kerala, as, for instance, in the murals of the Padmanabhaswami
239
Mitter Parth, opcit p 181
240 Mitter Parth, op cit p 182.
115
temple in Trivandrum. This mixed world of Varma‘s youth provided the
ground work of his art.241
Another source of Ravi Varma‘s inspiration was a member of that
band of adventuring brush wielders who descended upon India carrying
letters of recommendation from eminent Englishmen, such as Theodore
Jenson who was working for the Travancore Maharaja in 1868 Raja Raja
Varma probably picked up the technique of academic oil from him.242
The next source of borrowing for Ravi Varma was Sanskrit poetry,
particularly dramatic poetry, and Kathakali literature of kerala. Ravi
Varma‘s mother, Uma Amba Bai, was a poetess of sorts in Manipravalam
and trained her daughter Mangala Bai as a musician. Mangala Bai, Ravi
Varma and C. Raja Varma, all three brothers and sister, illustrated many
a well- known Sanskrit text particularly Kalidas. These paintings grew to
be the items of national pride, drawing the attention of Bengal‘s leading
writers and critcs, and finding their way into exclusive journals like
Sadhana, Prabasi, Bharati and the Modern Review.243
Ravi Varma‘s Paintings won virtually all the accolades that were
possible for an Indian painter of his times. Starting out with portraiture
and genre painting, he achieved national fame through his explicit
241
Ibid. p 184.
242 Ibid. p 184.
243 Thakurta Tapati Guha, op. cit. p. 110.
116
project of figuring ‗Indianess‘ through reinterpretations of the epic
narratives of the Ramayana and Mahabharat, and the mythological stories
of the Purans.
According to Guha, Ravi Varma‘s project bolstered the central
premises of both European Orientalism and Indian nationalism. In its
selection of specific canon, from the Ramayana, Mahabharata and
Kalidas‘s epics, it invoked and reinforced a well-certified notion of India‘s
‗classical‘ past. Within this ‗classical‘ canon, the choice of themes-
particularly, the romantic themes of love, longing and bereavement-was
seen to uphold the loftiest and lyrical values embedded in Indian literature
and mythology. His mythic personages, especially his heroines like
Shakuntala or Damayanti, came consciously to represent a Pan- Indian
type- individualized, often regionally placeable, yet standing forth as
certain ideal national prototypes.244
Ravi Varma‘s mythological paintings provided the Indian cultural
elite with their independent variety of ‗high art‘and a new ‗national‘
iconography. To a growing middle- class public for ‗art‘ in Bengal, these
paintings were projected as the epitome of a new ‗artistic‘ and ‗Indian‘
sensibility‘.245
Ravi Varma‘s paintings were said to embody the right
244
Ibid. p. 110
245 Balendranath Tagore, ‘ Ravi Varma’ and Hindu Debdebir Chitra’ Quoted in Thakurta Tapita Guha, op.
cit. p. 110
117
blend of lyrical emotions and ideals with a sense of beauty of form and
colour.246
Raja Ravi Varma was also inspired by Marathi theatre to infuse a
dramatic quality into his paintings. The female figure was much favored
by him and heroines of Puranic and classical Indian themes and neo -
classical Manipravala Malayalam Literatures, High class ladies, including
from his own community, women from other strata of society, all come to
life with the absolute sureness of touch of his strokes and sweeps. They
arrived in a vast variety of moods and costumes like women engrossed in
beautification, playing musical instruments and at temples and trysts or in
light banter.247
Raja Ravi Varma was one of the greatest portrait painters of his
time. He painted the portraits of many British governors and was invited
by the rulers of Mysore, Baroda and Udaipur to paint – portraits and
mythological scenes. In the course of their career they received
commission from the leading princely states, and English and Indian
dignitaries. The Duke of Buckingham is said to have remarked that he had
246
Balendranath Tagore,‘ Ravi Varma’ and Hindu Debdebir Chitra’ Quoted in Thakurta Tapita Guha, op.
cit. p. 110.
247 See Plates No.39.
118
once given eighteen sittings to a European painter, who was unable to do
half as well as Ravi Varma with so few sittings.248
Ravi Varma‘s talent never went unrecognized. In 1873 he won the
first prize at the Madras Painting Exhibition, Patronized by the then
‗Governor Lord Hobart.‘ His Painting ‗Nair Lady at the Toilet‘,249
Won
the first prize, the Governor‘s Gold Medal and later in 1873, for the
same work he secured the most distinguished award at the International
exhibition in Vienna. In 1876, his large figurative composition
‗Shakuntala‘s Love Letter,‘250
was exhibited in Madras and was purchased
by Lord Buckingham. His painting ‗A Tamil Lady Playing the Sarabat,‘251
also won the Governor‘s Gold Medal in 1894 in Madras Exhibition.
The Maharaja of Travancore, who was so generous in honoring him
for the State, gifted this painting (The Nair Lady at the Toilet), along with
two other– one of a Malayalee lady on a couch under a transparent curtain
and another of a fine tusker and its mate in water, to the Prince of Wales
(Later King Edward-VII), during his royal visit to Madras in 1875. The
Prince had all admiration for this display of talent. The year 1876 saw the
now-world famous ‗Shakuntala‘s Love Letter to Dushyantha ‗as Ravi
248
Mitter Parth, Art and Nationalism in Colonial India 1850-1922, Cambridge University Press, p-190.
249 See Plate No.40.
250 See Plate No.41.
251 See Plate No.42.
119
Varma‘s entry. It was a well- known episode from Kalidasa‘s immortal
Sanskrit play and set in motion a new vision to Indian art itself, as for the
first time ever, the theme came from a totally literary source. This portrait
was a masterpiece in every sense of the term, its treatment of the face,
figure expression and posture was brilliant, and it was possible, that many
would have fallen in love with her, like her royal sire of yore. Lord
Buckingham the them governor, announced his desire to purchase the
painting, and Sir Moniar Williams who translated ―Shankuntalam‖
requested Ravi Varma‘s permission to use it as the frontispiece in the
subsequent edition of the book.252
In 1893 at World‘s Columbian Exhibition in Chicago, Ravi Varma
represented India. He sent his series of painting of Indian women, and for
which he received two awards.
In the year 1894, Ravi Varma started his Lithographic press in
Bombay. He was the first artist to make his work available not just to the
rich elite but also to common people by way of his oleographs.
Even while catering to a specific class of patrons with his oil
paintings, Ravi Varma wanted to make his works accessible to the
common man. The artist‘s Biography in Malayalam by Balakrishnan Nair
elaborates this point. It records an exchange between Ravi Varma and a
252
Raja Ravi Varma, The Painter Prince, 1848- 1906, published by, Parasram Mangharam, Bangalor, India.2002.
120
Brahmin Scholar at his studio in Kilimanoor, Kerala. The artist had asked
a bystander for his opinion of a certain painting and the scholar argued on
the pretext of how could the artist expect a commoner to express an
opinion on a work of art? ―True‖ said Ravi Varma, ―these people do not
have the means to get the pictures painted, but who know if in the time of
their children, these very pictures now painted for Maharajas and nobles
will find their way into museums. I have heard that there are public
galleries in Western countries‖253
The idea of printing and distribution oleographs was given to Ravi
Varma by T. Madhava Rao, Former Dewan of Travancore and later
Baroda wrote to him in 1884, ―There are many friends who are desirous of
possessing your works. It would be hardly possible for you, with only a
pair of hands, to meet such a large demand. Send, therefore, a few of your
select works to Europe and have them oleographed. You will thereby not
only extend your reputation, but will be doing a real service to the
country.254
According to Krisha Chaitanya ―The artist started his own
venture, The Ravi Varma Lithographic Press, in Bombay in 1894, with a
small staff of German technicians.‖ 255
253
Sihare Manjari, Raja Ravi Varma Oleographs: The Making Of National Identity, 2013,
254 Quoted in Parth Mitter,op. cit. p. 208.
255 Chaitanya Krishna, The History of Indian Painting the Modern Period, Abhinav Publicatins, 1994,
p.127.
121
In order to influence vast majority Raja Ravi Varma‘s choice for
representation was religious themes, God picturised in various situations,
female figures, puranic heroines. Straying from his usual choices are the
three paintings of great patriotic characters, Rana Pratap, Shivaji Maharaj
and Bal Gangadhar Tilak. The Last was done at time when political
upheavals were boiling and spilling all over nation. According to E.M.J.
Venniyoor ―Thus ...... Ravi Varma Achieved such fame as was never
achieved by any artist in the annals of Indian Art- to this day. In world art
too, except for a Picasso of a later date, no artist seems to have
commanded such reputation among his people during his lifetime.256
By the end of 19th Century, Raja Ravi Varma had attained his goal
as a national hero. In 1904 The Imperial Government announced the
Kaiser-i-Hind medal to be awarded to Ravi Varma. According to Raja
Raja Varma, Raja Ravi Varma brother:
―The Honour bestowed on my brother comes without our seeking. We
never spoke to anyone about it, nor have we worked for it........ This is the
first time an artist is honoured in Indian history. The honours so far were
given to officials and rich men who donated liberally to charitable causes.
This honor will never fail to progress of art in India......... When I consider
that, as the first Indian artist of worldwide reputation, the Government has
recognized his love and devotion for art, I have reason for great happiness
being his inseparable companion,colleague and helper ............... ―257
256
Raja Ravi Varma, The Painter Prince, 1848-1906, pub by, Parasram Mangharam, Banglalore, India, 2002.
257 Raja Ravi Varma, The Painter Prince, 1848-1906, pub by, Parasram Mangharam, Banglalore, India,
2002.
122
Varma‘s reputation was well established by the late 19th century. By 1903,
Varma had become something of a national hero258
.That Varma was not a
product of the colonial art school system, yet was proficient in European
techniques of trompe-l‘oeil added to the artist‘s charisma.259
Befriended
by Congress leaders including Gopal Krishna Gokhale and Dadabhai
Naoroji, and felicitated in 1904 by the Congress for his contributions to
the nationalist movement, Varma‘s early biographers described him as a
key protagonist in the task of nation-building.260
At the 1903 Congress exhibition in Madras, Varma displayed his oil
on canvas ―Lady in Moonlight‖261
. While sartorial markings such as the
use of regional attire and jewelry ensured easy identification with the
figure for its local audiences, the image simultaneously located the figure
of the waiting woman within romantic tropes already well established in
pre-colonial Sanskrit poetry. Paintings such as these acquired multilayered
meanings, especially in the context of contemporaneous nationalist
impetus for reviving Sanskrit literary traditions.
Simultaneously, the Ravi Varma Press, established by the artist at
Lonavala in the 1890s, disseminated Varma‘s portraits of nationalist
258
Author Unknown, Ravi Varma: The Indian Artist, Allahabad, 1903.
259 Padmanabhan Tampy K. P., Ravi Varma: A Monograph, Trivandrum, 1934, p. 7
260 Chatterjee Ramananda, “Ravi Varma”, Modern Review vol.1, No. 1-6, 1907, pp. 88-89.
261 See Plate No. 43
123
leaders to a wider audience. For Varma‘s early 20th-century biographers,
it is the establishment of this press that bore testimony to the artist‘s
patriotism. Varma‘s mass-disseminated oleographs functioned just like
nationalist speeches, the Congress leader Surendranath Banerjee is
reported to have remarked.262
Varma‘s status as the foremost Indian artist was soon eclipsed by
Abanindranath Tagore (1871-1951), whose works were also displayed at
the 1903 Congress exhibition.
Ravi Varma died on 2nd
October, 1906. The news of his death was
in the evening edition of the Times of India which wrote ―with Ravi
Varma ended the optimistic phase of Colonial art in India‖263
Ravi Varma‘s Contribution has been far – reaching. He awakened a
national feeling or consciousness through his chosen medium, projected
India into rarified realms of high class art, and for the first time elevated
the Indian artist to a position of dignity. He made the outside world more
acutely aware of the infinite variety and incredible charm that this ancient
land has to offer, an Indianism which survived extended alien influences.
The most profound service he rendered was to invest the Hindu pantheon
262
Nair Balakrishnan N, Raja Ravi Varma, Trivandrum, 1953, p. 141.
263 Quoted in Parth Mitter, Art and Nationalism in Colonial India, 1850- 1922, Cambridge University
Press, p. 217.
124
of gods and goddesses with face, figure and forms and to enable them to
find places in the hearts and homes of the poor and rich.
The picture–prints of Saraswati, Lakshmi, Krishna, coronation of
Shree Ram, which adorn the prayer rooms, shops and commercial
establishments all over India, owe their origion to Ravi Varma and mass
produced colour prints to his press, with the specific aim to making them
affordable for the commoner‘s purse.
125
Colonial Painting-II
3:1 E.B. Havell and Changing Art Tradition in India: Beginning with
the arrival of European artists to India in the late 18th Century, before
India was officially ruled by the British crown, the popular perceptions
and idea of art and artist on the ground began to change. In 1854,
Industrial Art School was founded in Calcutta.264
(In 1864, this was
converted into the Calcutta Government College of Art). With the British
crown taking over the East India territories in 1858 and Queen Victoria
becoming Empress of India, the Bombay Government Art College (later
renamed J. J. School of Art) and the Madras Government Collage of art
were also established.
When the British consolidated their power in India they introduced
English education to produce English educated native citizens for the
purpose of colonial governance. These art schools were established, where
western methods were given greater attention; therefore the traditional
Indian painting began to decline. According to Tapati Guha- Thakurta the
popular enrollment of the Indian student into this school, as well as its
264
This school was started as a private enterprise by number of Indian and European gentlemen who formed themselves into a society under the name of the Industrial Art Society. Their institution was known as the school of Industrial Art during the time of Dr. Rajendra Lal Mitter. This was afterwards turned into Government School of Art Calcutta, when Lord Northbrook was the Governor General.
126
sister school, throughout the country, may be read as the
institutionalization and public acceptance of a new definition of "artist" in
India, which had been fermenting since the late 18th century. The students
that matriculated into this new type of state-operated art schools did so "to
master the art of realistic and illusionist oil painting to secure commissions
for portraits and to gain entry to the prestigious chain of ' Fine art
exhibitions,265
which were all distinctly European traditions. In the early
years of the 20th Century, it was soon realized that the new trend started
by Europeans in the art of painting and adopted by some Indian painters
like Ravi Verma was bound to distract Indian painters from its past which
has a glorious history of many years.
It is against this general backdrop of westernization of perception of
the artist that the effort to create a new, distinctly Indian art emerged. In
July 1896, the English art historian and teacher Earnest Benfield Havell,
popularly known as E.B. Havell became the superintendent of the
Government school of Art in Calcutta, after holding the same position at
the Madras School of Art for about decade.266
265 Tapati Guha-Thakurta. The Making of a New ‘Indian’ Art: Artists Aesthetics and Nationalism in
Bengal, c. 1850 – 1920, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992, p-11.
266 Kar Sri Chintamoni and Dey Mukul, History of Government College of Art and Craft, Centenary
publication, Calcutta, 1966, p 21
127
A European himself, Havell was a firm believer that the practice of
art education in India unquestionably had to be based on the Indian arts
tradition.267
In a statement expressing his grievances with the arts
education system in Calcutta before his arrival, Havell complains:
"The study of design, the foundation of all art, was entirely ignored
and throughout, the general drawing and painting classes, the worst
traditions of the English provincial art school forty years ago, where
followed ......................... Oriental art was more or less ignored, thereby
taking the Indian art students in a wrong direction."268
According to Havell:
―Twenty four years ago I was sent out to India to instruct Indians in
Art, and having instructed them and myself to the best of my ability, I
returned amazed at the insularity of Anglo- Saxon mentality which has
taken a century to discover that we have more to learn from India than
India has to learn from Europe............... There will never be a true
renaissance of art in India until the fine arts are restored to their proper
place in National life"269
Havell's efforts at reorganizing the educational policy at the
Government School of Art were driven by the desire to change the school
"from a fine art academy into a school of design and applied arts, with a
special focus on the traditions of decorative arts."270
He introduced the
curriculum which could recognize Indian traditional arts. Throughout the
1890s, Havell spilled all his energy into his role as an education reformer
267
Hoskote, Ranjit.“E.B.Havell and A.K.Coomaraswamy” Art India, 2001.
268 Sri Chintamoni Kar, opcit p-22
269 E.B.Havell,The studio 44. 184 (15 July 1908), Rpt. in ,The basis for Artistic and Industrial Revival in
India, Madras. Thesophist Office, 1912.
270 Tapati Guha-Thakurta.Op cit. p-151.
128
creating crafts programs at the school that taught "decorative design",
classes such as stenciling, fresco painting lacquer-work on wood, and the
preparation for stained-glass windows.271
His efforts to promote Indian
traditions of design and craft work within the Calcutta School of Art were
of limited success. His efforts at "Indianising" the school's curriculum at
this stage in his career however was focused solely on revitalizing the
"decorated" art portions; He left the "fine" art areas almost totally
untouched, therefore creating an implied dichotomy that assigned the "fine
arts" as a purely European area of study, and the "decorative arts" its
Indian counterpart and only area of concern for reforms.272
Towards the late 1890s, Havell's focus began to shift from
education reform to the engagement of a new emerging Indian fine arts
scene and his role within that scene was not only as an educator, but now
as an ideologue as well.273
His efforts at revamping the collection at the
Government Art Gallery adjacent to the Government School of Art,
specifically with example of Mughal Miniature Painting and samples of
the Ajanta murals as well as reproduction of Byzantine and early pre-
Renaissance Italian art was the initial precursu to this shift.274
271
Thakurta Tapita Guha, op cit, p 151.
272 Thakurta Tapita Guha, op cit, p 151-152
273 Ibid p 153
274 Ibid p 154
129
Nanak Gangly in one of his article has written that when E.B.
Havell took charge of the Art School in Calcutta in 1896, he felt it was
injurious to teach an Indian to paint cheap pastiche of Royal Academy. He
realized Oriental art was more or less ignored, thereby taking the Indian
students in a wrong direction. Nanak Ganguly further states that by 1904
he sold out almost all the Western Painting and plaster casts of the
antiques from the School's Art gallery, and had them replaced by Indian
paintings.275
Havell's acknowledgement of an Indian "fine arts" tradition and his
presentation of it in tandem with pre-Renaissance European art, may
signal a dissolving of his conceived dichotomy between the purely "fine"
and purely "decorative" arts, which itself allowed him later to promote, in
a highly paternalistic manner,276
the new painting, of the artist,
Abanindranath Tagore, as distinctly ‗original and Indian‘. Havell even
went so far to say, as Tapati Guha – Thakurta reveals, that
Abanindranath's evolution as an ' Indian' artist was owed 'entirely to the
new collections of the Art Gallery.' despite the fact that Abanindranath
had independently experimented with his own Indian - style of painting
since 1895.277
275
Nanak Ganguly, Major Trends in Indian Art, lalit Kala Academy, New Delhi
276 Thakurta,Tapati Guha, p-155.
277 Ibid p 155.
130
Even Parth Mitter in his article ―Art and Nationalism in India‖ has
mentioned that during the initial era of Westernization under the Raj, the
Indian elite had suffered a severe crisis of intellectual confidence, bruised
buy Macaulay's famous Minute on Education278
who wanted to create a
class " Indian in blood and color but English in tastes, in opinions, in
morals and in intellect." He further states two developments helped their
recovery. First, modern Bengali language and literature serving as a
vehicle of nationalist aspirations, initial Bengali aspirations flowing into
larger Indian ones; second, Hinduism receiving a boost with Theosophists
presents it as a spiritual alternative to the materialist west. Earnest
Benfield Havell‘s disillusions with Renaissance Art, as a symbol of the
materialist west were almost as intense as Annie Besant's disenchantment
with European society. As the principal of Calcutta Art School in 1896,
Havell engaged in wresting 'just' recognition for Indian art in the West on
the one hand, and in encouraging a 'genuine' contemporary Indian art
among students on the other, for he believed that the two went together.
Paradoxically, his two measures, the removal of classical antiques from
classrooms and replacing European painting in the Gallery with fine
Mughal art met with hostility from the students within the school, and by
the national press. This shows how deep Western taste had penetrated
278
Mitter Parth, Art and Nationalism in India, History Today, July, 1982, vol. 32, issue, 7.
131
Bengal. The surprising fact is that the British Viceroy Lord Curzon,
otherwise known for his pronounced antipathy to Bengal nationalism,
wholly supported Havell in his measures.279
Thus E.B. Havell, through his experience, draws the conclusion that
the Western art could never prosper in India. He believed that painting in
India must remain Indian in spirit even when it adopted western
techniques of execution, It was due to his sincere efforts that the new art
movement started in India for the revival of the lost values. Through his
efforts there emerged a distinct-school of Indian painting that came to be
known as the Modern School of artists. The pioneer of the new school was
Abanindranath Tagore. His work was twofold, to rediscover the best in the
Indian art of the ancient and medieval eras, and to regenerate art in its
modern setting. Abanindranath Tagore, the founder of the Bengal school,
was the first to evolve a typical Indian Style, characterized by a delicacy
of line and color and lyrical romanticism. The "Indian style" that emerged
soon spread throughout the country and the Bengal school assumed a
national character.
279 Mitter Parth, Art and Nationalism in India, op.cit.
132
3:2 Abanindra Nath Tagore, Nationalism and painting in colonial
Bengal
3:2:1 Personal life and background of Abanindra Nath Tagore:
Abanindranath Tagore was an artist who lived in the cononial urban
center of Calcutta, at a time when India was under British rule. As part of
a widespread manifestation of Indian cultural politics around the turn of
the 19th century, Abanindranath Tagore is well known as founder of an art
movement, later to be called the Bengal school.
Dr. Abanindranath Tagore, the famous artist of modern India, was
born in Calcutta on August 7, 1871, at the Jorasanko residence of the
Tagore family. He was the youngest son of the late Gunendranath Tagore
and grandson of late Girindra Nath, the second son of Prince Dwarkanth
Tagore.
According to Mukul Dey, when Abanindranath was about five years
old his father sent him to the normal school, then situated on the site of
Mr. Harran Sill's house in Chitpore Road, Jarasanko. He studied there for
about two or three years. One day English teacher pronounced "pudding"
as "padding" and when Abanindranath pointed out the mistake, as he had
pudding for dinner every night; his teacher flew into a face, flogged him
severely and tied him up with the punkha rope to the school bench.
133
He was left there confined till the school was over at 4 o'clock,
when he unfastened the rope and ran home. This kind of punishment
annoyed his father very much and Abanindranath's connection with the
normal school was there upon ended.280
After leaving the normal school,
Abanindranath made use of his father's paint box to paint rural scenes with
cottages and palm trees.
When Abanindranath was ten years of age his father passed away.
Abanindranath's mother desired once more to give him an ordinary school
education, so he was sent to Sanskrit College. While studying here he
composed a hymn on Saraswati. He also received many Sanskrit books as
prizes. There was no drawing class in the school but, with his classical,
studies Abanindranath began to write Bengali verses, illustrating them
with picture of dilapidated temples, moonlight scenes etc.
While still at Sanskrit College (1881-1890) Abanindranath took a
few lessons in Art from his class mate Anukul Chatterji of Bhawanipur. In
1889 he married Suhasini Devi. At this time he left the Sanskrit college.
In the year 1897 when Abanindranth was about twenty -five years
of age, he took private lesson from Signor Gilhardi, an Italian artist (then
vice principal of the Calcutta Government School of Art) on caste drawing
foliage drawing pastel and life study. Later Mr. Charles L. Palmer taught
280
Dey Mukul , Abindranath Tagore, A Survey of Master’s life and work, Vishwa Bharti Quarterly, May-Oct 1942
134
him for three years.281
Abanindranath attained such a proficiency in
portrait painting in oils that he could finish a picture within two hours.
In 1900, Abanindranath went to Monghyr where a complete change
took place in his artistic activities. He gave up painting in oil after
European style and took up painting in water color.
According to Mukul Dey, the turning point in his artistic career
came when one day; in his ancestral library at Jorasanko house he came
across an old illustrated Indo-Persian manuscript.282
The marvellous
drawings and Calligraphy in the book fired his imagination and inspired
him to reveal his own self in his art.
Abanindranath then began his famous Krishna Leela.283
This led
him to give up his once cherished hope of becoming the Titian of
Bengal.284
He found his own exertions for his art. Once for all he
abandoned the European style.285
In his article Art and Nationalism Parth Mitter write that with
'Krishna Leela' Series Abanindranath was already moving towards a more
281
Gangoly O.C., Abindranath Tagore, His early work edited by Ramendranath Chakravorty, Indian Museum Kolkata 2006, p-13
282 Dey Mukul , Abindranath Tagore, A Survey of Master’s life and work, Vishwa Bharti Quarterly, May-
Oct 1942
283 Dey Mukul , Abindranath Tagore, A Survey of Master’s life and work, Vishwa Bharti Quarterly,
May-Oct 1942.
284 Ibid
285Ibid
135
indigenous expression, because he considered his own Western training
unfulfilling.286
The course of art in India changed when Havell met Abanindranath.
Abanindranath's discovery of the delicacy of Mughal art was through
Havell. According to Mukul Dey:
―The orientation in the artistic outlook of Abanindranath created a new
awakening in India and brought about a revival of the Indian Art which for
centuries lay decadent and hidden from the public view. Just as in the
period of Renaissance the savants of Europe, after ages of gloom and
desolation, discovered the ancient culture, so it was Abanindranath who
found out India‘s lost art treasures. This awakening from darkness and the
new understanding which followed impressed its mark on almost all
branches of artistic activity, in painting, sculpture, architecture, book
illustration, design, commercial art, lithography, engraving etc.‖
Some of his famous paintings, which got admiration not only in
India, but in western countries also are ―Avisarika‖ (1892), ―Passing of
Shah Jahan‖ (1900), ―Buddha and Sujata‖ (1901), ―Krishna Leela‖ series
(1901 to 1903), ―Banished Yaksha‖ (1904), ―Summer‖ from Ritu Sanghar
of Kalidasa (1905), ―Moonlight Music Party‖ (1906), ―The Feast of
Lamps‖ (1907), ―Kacha and Devajani‖ (1908), ―Shah Jahan Dreaming of
Taj‖ (1909), illustrations of ―Omar Khayyam‖ (1909), ―The Call of the
Flute‖ (1910), ―Asoka‘s Queen‖ (1910: painted for her Majesty Queen
Mary), ―Veena Player‖ (1911), ―Aurangzeb examining the head of Dara‖
(1911), ―Temple Dancer‖ (1912), ―Pushpa-Radha‖ (1912), ―Sri Radha by
286
Mitter Parth, Art and Nationalism in India,op.cit
136
the River Jamuna‖ (1913), ―Radhika gazing at the portrait of Sri Krishna‖
(1913), ―Moonrise at Mussouri Hills‖ (1916), ―Poet‘s Baul-dance in
Falgurni‖ (1916), ―Chaitanya with his followers on the sea beach of Puri‖
(1915), ―Baba Ganesh‖ (1937), ―End of Dalliance‖ (1939).
The famous picture ―Alamgir‖ is a sublime masterpiece. The
Moghul Emperor is standing bent with age, his hands at the back clasping
a book inside which the blade of the sword is seen as a bookmark. The
fingers of the aged monarch are like the iron claws of an eagle which
catch its prey without mercy. There are many other pictures such as the
―Birds and Animals‖ series (1915), ―The Last Journey‖ 287
(1914), which
have also been very much admired. The ―Passing of Shah Jahan‖288
is an
oil painting in wood and looks like a superb Dutch miniature. One of the
latest works from his brush is a series of illustrations of the Tales of
Arabian Nights (1928) where the age-old desert tales spread themselves
before the eye with all their romance and mystery unimpaired.
Apart from paintings Abanindranath, contributed in the field of
literature also. Some of his valuable contributions are ―Raj-Kahani‖,
―Sakuntala‖, ―Kshirer-Putul‖, ―Bhutapatri‖, ―Nalaka‖, ―Nahush‖, ―Buro-
Angla‖ which please the old and the young alike.
287
See Plate No.44.
288See Plate No. 45.
137
The literature on art has been considerably enriched by his works
―Bharat Silpa‖, ―Six Limbs of Painting‖ and ‖ Artistic Anatomy‖, and his
various contributions to the Journal of Indian Society of Oriental Art.
Abanindranath was also interested in music and could play
beautifully instruments like sitar, veena, esraj and reed pipe. The drama
and stage decorations are also among the various subjects of
Abanindranath‘s interest. He was himself an actor of no mean merit. The
success of many of Rabindranath‘s famous plays was due in no small
measure to the artistic setting designed by Abanindranath‘s imaginative
mind.
According to Mukul Dey, ―Abanindranath use to make post-card
paintings and sketches which he was in the habit of sending to his pupils
as a sort of encouragement to them in their pursuit of art.‖ A small thing in
itself, this however reveals an important trait in his character. Of warm
and affectionate disposition, Abanindranath has always looked after the
welfare of his pupils, and besides ungrudgingly giving his help and
encouragement in their work he was always ready to help them out of their
difficulties with financial aid. Indeed his timely and secret financial
assistance has enabled many of his students, whose careers would
otherwise have come to an end, to attain success for themselves.
138
Abanindranath‘s work has been of great value in the regeneration of
national culture in India. It is not often in the history of a nation that a
genius like Abanindranath is born. It may sound strange to many, but it
is a fact nevertheless, that Abanindranath had a wide recognition in
Europe as an artist of great merit long before Rabindranath Tagore was
known there. It was the friends of Abanindranath and Gaganendranath,
like E. B. Havell, Thomas Sturge-Moore, Sir William Rothenstein, H.
Ponten-Moller, Norman Blunt, Sir John G. Woodroffe who encouraged
the Poet to publish his Gitanjali in English through the India Society,
London, which brought him international fame.
3:2:2 The paintings of Abanindranth Tagore: The beginning of
Abanindranath's effort at creating an "Indian-style" painting is often traced
to the year 1897, when he made two artists encounters that were to change
the course of the content and form of his painting towards the direction of
the style that characterized his early paintings. The first encounter was his
contact with the painter Frances Martindale, who gifted Abanindranath a
set of Irish Melodies illumined by her.289
At the same time, his brother in
law Sheshendrabhusan Chattopadhyay gave him a set of Indian
miniatures; it has been inferred by scholars that this album of miniatures
were likely examples of late Mughal painting, and possibly a product of
289
.Siva Kumar, The paintings of Abindranath Tagore, (Kolkata: Pratikshan, 2008,p-35
139
provincial Mughal school in Delhi from the nineteenth century.290
Both of
these samples introduced to Abanindranath a new kind of art in teams of
scale, format and medium,291
that agreed not only with his aversion to
European style naturalistic oil painting, but also with his sudden
inspiration to create art that was distinctly Indian. According to Tapati
Guha- Thakurta, "The artist himself fell that he had found the path of
Indian art" and in it the direction of his own true development. Memories
of previous dissatisfaction with the painting skill he had learnt from his
European tutors, added to this sent of elation at the new prospects before
him"292
The first painting made under the influence of 'distinctly Indian' was
Aviskar. This small painting made in watercolor is fully Indian in content,
it depicts Radha out on her tryst, a scene pulled from the Vaishnav verses
of Govindadas. As both, R.Siva Kumar and Tapati Guha Thakurta point
out, however, the format of the painting is modeled almost completely
after the illuminated manuscripts painted by Frances Martindale.293
Although the artist himself described the painting as his first
attempt at painting, "In the Indian manner," he was to later reflect on it
290
Ibid. p. 35.
291 Ibid. p. 36.
292 Thakurta, Tapati Guha, op. cit. p. 235.
293 R.Shiv Kumar, op cit,p-26 and Tapti Guha ,op cit, p-235
140
with a suggestion that he was unsuccessful, saying that the subject of the
painting looked less like Radha and more like a "European woman clothed
in a Sari and set out in the open on a cold winter night.294
It was his
dissatisfaction with this painting that led Abanindranath to train directly
within indigenous painting techniques, and so he set out to learn from a
local artisan the methods of applying gold leaf to paintings.295
It was in his next series of paintings called the Krishna Leela series
that Abanindranath moved even closer towards the tradition of Mughal
painting, employing devices like intricate borders, calligraphic text, dense
application of colors,296
and an abundance of gold leaf.297
The composition of the painting was inspired by Rajput painting,
the Persian-like Calligraphy surrounded by cloud-borders was inspired by
Mughal painting, and most likely by those he received from his brother -
in-law.298
While Abanindranath was successful in combining Indian form and
subject matter in this series, it is interesting to observe the "aesthetic
secularization" involved in its presentation. while the theme of Krishna
294
R.Shiv Kumar, op cit,p-36.
295 Thakurta Tapti Guha, op cit, p-235.
296 R.Shiv Kumar, op cit, p-37.
297 Thakurta Tapati Guha, op cit p-235.
298 R.Shiv Kumar, opcit,p-38
141
leela came from medieval Vaishnava literature, the casting of this story
into a format that recalls Mughal miniatures is exemplary of the bricologe
effect delivered by the paintings,. In Krishna Leela, Abanindranath does
revive the indigenous, but does so within "the contours of a new
heterogeneity, a new cultural space, growing out of cultural cross
connection beginning to emerge from this eclectic conundrum.299
Soon After finishing the Krishna Leela series, Abanindranath met
E.B.Havell, who was the principal of Government Art School and was
making reforms at Government Art School. It was a meeting that changed
the course of Art in India Havell had learned the Indian art tradition, and
he was facing resistance from the students who were not convinced about
the necessity for his reforms. In 1897 the students of the Calcutta school
went on strike against the reorientation of teaching by Havell and
established the Jubilee Art Academy headed by Ranada Prasad Gupta.300
Havell had trouble with students throughout his term in Calcutta and in a
diplomatic move to win them over that in 1905 when Ghilardi the Vice-
principal died, he got Abanindranath Tagore appointed to the post.
Abanindranath on the other end, was already deeply committed to creating
a new Indian style of painting, and was at that point completely detached
299
R. Shiv Kumar, op cit, p 40.
300 Thakurta, Tapati Guha, op. cit. p. 216.
142
from the art school, since he had never enrolled in one and in that point
has several ties with his private European tutors. It was under this
circumstance that "Havell found in him [Abaindranath] a 'Collaborator'
and Abanindranath ..................found in Havell his mentor and Guru.301
During the years following the formation of their friendship,
Abanindranath made an even more distinct effort to distance him from
Western art, and was drawn particularly to a winder range of Mughal and
Pahari miniatures that were made available by Havell.302
In Abhisarika, the image of which symbolized the sprit of the
monsoon night,303
the artist borrows both theme and compositional model
from indigenous sources,304
the subject matter is familiar to the Indian
viewer, and it is delivered within a decorative border that is also familiar
to those acquainted with Mughal art. This painting is an early example of
Abanindranath infusing into his work a distinclty individualized sense of
bhava or emotion.
Abanindranath was first fully successful in infusing Bhava into
style of Mughal painting in his famous, the passing of Shahjahan. The
artist succeeds here in capturing the details in the Mughal architecture of
301
R. Shiv Kumar, op. cit, p 67
302 Ibid, p 68
303Thakurta, Tapati Guha, op. cit, p241
304 R.Shiv Kumar, op. cit, p 68
143
the scene, doing true justice to the "delicate details and meticulous
workmanship of the miniature compositions.305
To him, ‗The Passing of
Shah Jahan was the painting which epitomized the infusion of bhava into
Mughal pictorial conventions.306
Abanindranath captures the 'Central
theme of death and eternal separation and the symbolism of the
transitoriness of life vis-a-vis the immortality of art.307
It is not the
rendering of architectural details here that speaks to the viewer, but
instead the simplistic forms of the dying emperor and his daughter at his
feet, as well as the tinty Taj Mahal in the distance that causes the space.
"Abanindranath according to his own account, powered into his image of
Shahjahan remembering his beloved in his dying moments his own grief at
the death of his daughter," who had just died in the year of 1902. This
poignant work stands as a perfect example of the truly personal nature of
Abanindranath‘s work.
All of these paintings are extremely important in understanding
Abanindranath as an artist above all the nationalist contextual history, but
all of them preclude his introduction to the ―wash‖ technique that he
developed after 1903. It was his interaction with two Japanese artists,
Taikan Yokoyama and Hishida Shunso, both students of the famous Pan-
305
Thakurta, Tapti Guha, opcit, p 243.
306 Ibid p 243.
307 Ibid p 243.
144
Asianist Okakura Kakuzo that allowed him to adapt this style. He noticed
that while painting, Taiwan Yokoyama would intermittently go over his
painting with a large brush dipped in water to softer its forms. This
inspired Abanindranath to adopt this technique by dipping his entire
paintings in water instead of merely using a brush. Early examples of this
teaching include Dewali, which in its elongation of the figure, naturalism,
and marked rendering of drapery is characteristic of Abanindranath's older
work,308
and serve as a perfect example of transition for the artist.
Abanindranath made his most famous painting, Bharat Mata,
around the climax of the Swadeshi movement in 1905. This work, which
was originally conceived as a representation of the regional linguistic
community of Bengal as Banga Mata (Mother Bengal)309
is considered
now as emblematic symbol of the Swadeshi movement as a symbolic
image of Mother India. While Bharat Mata still remains the most straight
forwardly Political painting in Abanindranath's oeuvre, and possibly the
only one used in political action (It was enlarged by one Japanese artists
and carried in fund raising Swadeshi processions much of its significance
comes once again from the rhetoric surrounding it.)
308
Thakurta, Tapati Guha, op. cit. pp. 250- 255.
309 Banerji, Debashish, The Alternate Nation of Abanindranath Tagore, SAGA publication, New
Delhi,2010, p xx.
145
Abanindranath Tagore was inspired by the Swadeshi Movement. In
one of her articles, Tapati Guha mentioned Abanindranath's personal
remembrance of the impact of the Swadeshi movement on his famous
Jorasanko household, "As I felt the tug of the wind, I tore out the ropes
and flung myself in; I let the boat float in the face of the current. Getting
rid of Western art, I now took up Indian art."310
When the Swadeshi spirit
began to pale in Jorasanko, Abanindranath wrote that "What remained of
it was a certain spirit and commitment" that he gave over fully to the
world of painting.311
In fact, Bharat Mata is considered the most
nationalist or political or Swadeshi painting of Abanindranath's period.
By the first decade of the 20th century, displacing Varma‘s Neo-
Classical academic realism, Tagore‘s ―Indian style‖ or ―Oriental style‖
painting emerged as the locus of a new ―national art.‖ Abanindranath
Tagore soon gathered around himself a group of dedicated pupils. With
Tagore as the progenitor, this new group of artists – known as the New
Calcutta School or the Bengal School – developed a style, which
privileged emotive qualities over correctness in form and proportions. The
Bengal School‘s rejection of oil painting and academic realism for
tempera and indigenous artistic traditions began as a localized, regional
310
Thakurta, Tapati Guha, op. cit. p. 242.
311 Ibid. p. 259.
146
trend, which found a national support base in the swadeshi movement. Art
historians and critics such as E. B. Havell and Ananda Coomaraswamy, as
well as nationalist leaders including the Anglo-Irish social worker Sister
Nivedita (Margaret Elizabeth Noble) and the Irish Theosophist Annie
Besant, played an important role in framing discourses of art and swadeshi
around Tagore and his pupils. Varma now stood identified as derivative,
―vulgar‖ in his imitation of a foreign artistic repertoire.312
In contrast, Tagore‘s Japanese wash-style 1904-1905 painting Bharat-
mata313
or Mother India became an iconic image of anti-partition
Swadeshi in Bengal. The nation, here imagined as a young ascetic woman
dressed in saffron and wearing rudrakshya (the markers of renunciation),
holds in her four hands a rosary, a sheaf of grain, cloth, and a manuscript –
symbolizing the promise of food, clothing, spiritual salvation, and
education. The abstract ideal of nationalism was thus given a tangible
(Hindu) form in this iconic image. Bharat-mata was enlarged on a silk
banner and carried in swadeshi processions in Calcutta.
However, even as the Bengal School stood identified with
swadeshi, from the1920s onwards Abanindranath Tagore, the doyen of
this movement, increasingly distanced himself both from politics and from
312
Ibid. p. 187.
313 See Plate No.46
147
the gouaches that stood identified as the Bengal School style. The
watercolor ‗The Hunchback of Fishbone‘ from the artist‘s ‗Arabian Nights
series‘ is often read as symptomatic of the artist‘s disengagement from
politics.314
By placing the narrative within the artist‘s three-storied
residence, Tagore reproduced a hierarchical structure for the art world
where the creative artist occupied the uppermost level, disengaged both
from craftsmanly practices and nationalist politics. Craftsmen – the tailor,
the potter, and the metalworker – inhabit the first floor of the mansion.
Intellectuals, politicians, and bureaucrats occupy the second floor. The
individual artist genius places himself at the uppermost level of the
mansion.
In contrast to the nationalist public sphere marked by political
action, the true habitat of the artist genius was then the andarmahal, the
inner spheres of the home, and the antarmahal, the inner creative world, as
Tagore noted in his memoir. Over the subsequent years, Abanindranath
withdrew further into an idiosyncratic world of personal metaphors and
symbols, creating toy-like forms with driftwood. For scholars writing on
the Bengal School, Tagore‘s withdrawal into a self-referential and
autonomous domain of art becomes a parable of art‘s disengagement from
politics. As Tapati Guha-Thakurta writes, ―Clearly, Abanindranath‘s art
314
Thakurta Tapati Guha, op. cit. pp. 267- 268
148
movement represented a major break: it marked the coming of age of
‗Indian‘ art and ‗artists,‘ in the new modern sense of the terms.‖315
3:2:3 Abanidranath Tagore and "the Bengal School": Besides
producing art, Abanindranth also played a very important role as a teacher
of painting in the Government School of Art. In fact, it was through this
role that he gained his own students and the seeds of "the Bengal school"
were planted. Ironically, Abanindranath started to teach at the Government
School in 1905, the same year he produced "Bharat Mata" and the same
year the first Swadeshi boycott of all schools and colleges was called for.
Abanindranath accepted the job at Government College "on the
assurance that he would have the freedom to work independently in his
own studio in the school.316
Although Abanindranath was finally
convinced to teach at the Government School by Havell, their styles of
teaching were not exactly the same. While the Havell's mission was to
revive certain "Indigeneous" techniques and aesthetics in order to
reconnect the chord that had been torn from past tradition, Abanindranath
was focused almost completely on instilling a sense of cultural identity
within each individual artist that was ment to inspire the powers of
imagination. For example, in an often cited instance of Abanindranath
315
Thakurta Tapati Guha, op. cit. p. 5.
316 Tapti Guha, 1992, p 270
149
telling his students to first read the poetry of Kalidas and then attempt to
paint nature.317
According to R.Shiv Kumar, Abanindranath was not
aiming for his students to practice either revivalism or illustration of
literature. Instead, he was seeking to encourage the use of imagination
within a clear, grounded cultural framework. This is supported in the
quote by the artist, translated by Tapati Guha-Thakurta: "Aesthetic
sensibility, intense thought and emotion, a discerning taste, a discerning
eye, enthusiasm, single-minded dedication, self control, a thirst for
knowledge, a deep attachment to one's country, and skills in drawing and
painting-only through such an aggregation of numerous qualities in an
artist made".318
The individualist nature Abanindranath sought to instill in his
students was evident in his idiosyncratic behaviour as a painting teacher.
Instead of teaching a specific way to paint "Indian art", he would instead
sit and work on his own paintings, surrounded by a group of his students
who would watch him paint.319
They would then work on their own
paintings, and bring him their work for his input.320
317
Thakurta, Tapati Guha, op. cit. p 204
318Ibid. p 262
319 Ibid, p 270
320 Ibid, p 270
150
Abanindranath's first two students were Nanadalal Bose and
Surendranath Ganguly and following these two students came another
wave of pupils that comprised the first wave of the new art movement,
soon to be called the Bangal School. This group included names like Asit
Kumar Haldar, Kshitindranath Majumdar, Sailendranath Dey,
Samarendranath Gupta, Surendranath Kar, Sarada Ukil and K.
Venkattapa.321
These students were taught by Abanindranath in his
eclectic pedagogic style, but not before they learned traditional techniques
of painting and colour preparation by the painter Ishwari Prasad.322
The Government College of Art began to pick up speed around
1906-7, with its new circle of Indian students producing an outpouring of
paintings that corresponded to "the master's" formula for an 'Indian –
style".323
During this time Abanindranath founded the Bichitra Club,
which served as an art class and studio during the day and hosted various
cultural events like concerts and art salons at night.324
Although he did not
resign until 1915, Abanindranath wrote to Havell as early as 1911 that he
was thinking about resigning from the Government College, and spoke of
321
Thakurta Tapati Guha, pp. 270- 274.
322 Ibid, pp 270- 274
323 Ibid. p 273
324 Ibid, p 275
151
a small studio at his own house where "Naandalal Bose and other boys
form the school would come and work every day."325
Bichitra Club was officially established in 1915 when
Abanindranath resigned from the Government College of Art. The
establishment of the Bichitra Club at Jorasanko corresponded with two
parallel developing paths that disseminated the paintings of the then-
dubbed "New Calcutta School." One of these paths was that of European
exhibition and patronage of painting, based on the institutional frame work
of the Society of Oriental Art, Which was established seven years earlier
in 1907, did not totally co-opt the art movement until 1915. The two main
functions of the Society of Oriental Art were to organize annual
exhibitions of Abanindranath and his students, paintings and to host
periodic talks on oriental art.326
These exhibitions and popular patronage
from rich Europeans is one half of the causes for solidifying the
movement as "India's most authentic new 'National Art"327
It was this dissemination and consolidation of the art movement that
created what we call "The Bengal School" today. The paradox at the heart
of the situation is that it was the very creation of a "school" of art which
325
Thakurta Tapati Guha, p 275
326 Ibid, p 278
327 Ibid, p 280
152
came from the solidification of the "movement" that drained it of its
revolutionary, nationalist, innovative zeal.
The main aesthetic trademark of "The Bengal School" was the wash
technique, which gave each painting the effect of either delicate, subtle
monotones or dank, murky layers of colour.328
These visual attributes
served to express moods and ideas more than representations of concrete
beings, and also obscured the physical setting of the story being told by
removing the specificity of the physical environments.329
It was this
expression of bhava or emotion that lent the paintings to interpretation by
the nationalist or Orientalist bystanders. For example, Nandalal Bose's
1907 painting of Sati330
was praised by Sister Nivedita as symbolizing "a
glorious Hindu ideal of womanhood in its attributes of tranquility, and
selflessness sacrifice."331
According to K.G. Subramanyan, ―to counter the Western
Academic style, the Bengal School offered their own formulae of an
‗Indian- Style.‘As formulae replaced formulae, what began as a
‗movement‘, a creative urge towards change and a new identity, folded
inwards into a ‗school‘, stagnating even as it reached its peak of
328
Tapti Guha, 1992, p 286
329 Ibid p 286
330 See Plate No.47
331 Ibid p 286
153
success.‖332
It was, therefore, inevitable that new innovative trends and
more self-conscious waves of modernism in Indian Painting emerged
outside the bounds of the school, defying classification under its set
categories of an ‗Indian-style‘333
.
According to Tapati Guha, ―At one level, the school threw up its
own avant-garde, opening up fresh potential and possibilities in the
experiments with Indian techniques and in the representations of Indian
mythology. The best evidence of this is to be found in the direction of
Nandalal Bose‘s work as he took charge of Santiniketan Kala Bhavan.
While, Nandalal had earlier contributed most effectively to the prototype
of ‗Indian-style‘ painting, in the twenties, it was he who pioneered a range
of bold experiments in form and composition. His forte lay in both the
ornamental and the linear, and in more vigorous and naturalistic work, as
he began to paint on an enlarged and open scale. Much of this new
creative energy found its outlet in the mural painting projects he undertook
in Santiniketan and elsewhere, culminating in his famous colourful murals
on Indian life for the Haripura Congress Session of 1937-38. In Nandalal,
and in the Santiniketan School that grew under him, ‗national art‘found a
332
Ibid. p. 314.
333 Thakurta Tapati Guha, op. cit. p. 314.
154
new invigorated life-line, retaining through institutions and alliances a
spirit of continuity with its earlier phase.334
3:3 Nandlal Bose: With the disappearance of the families known for their
rich contribution to Indian miniature paintings, there was a vacuum for
almost a decade. Nature fills the vacuum, so the British artist took over
and began to introduce Western style and techniques as part of their
civilising mission.
Thus emerged a company painting which has no artistic merit and
significance. At Government Art School in Calcutta, Madras and Bombay
students were told to copy in western academic style in oil colour.
Naturally the Indian were bound to react sooner or later against such
practices and they reacted sooner. Thus was born ‗THE BENGAL
SCHOOL‘ under the leadership of E. B. Havell, the Principal of the
Government School of Art Calcutta.
He wanted to revive traditional Indian values, norms and technique.
In this he was assisted by Abanindranath Tagore and his student Nandalal
Bose. They rejected the academic style and went back to Ajanta, the
Mughal miniature and Rajput paintings for their inspiration. In wake of
this vigorous Renaissance, inspired and pioneered by E. B. Havell and
334
Ibid. p. 314.
155
Abanindranath Tagore, Nandalal contribution was not only great but
diverse in subject matter.
Nandalal Bose was born on December 3rd
, 1882 in the village of
Kharaghpur, Monghyr, Bihar. His father Puranachandra Bose was a forest
officer in Darbanga. His mother Kehetramoni was adept in needle work
and various domestic crafts. Nandalal had his early education in
Kharagpur Monghur. From his early days Nandalal began to take interest
in modelling images. Images of Durga, Ganesh, elephant, bulls, were often
produced and can be seen in village fair and festivals. Decorating pooja
pandals or tajia structure was form of community work and Nandalal was
interested in such activities. While on his daily round to village school he
came across various crafts which delighted him.
―This fascination‖, K. G. Subramanyan writes, ―fed his desire to
become an artist. … Even after he became a renowned artist and educator,
he continued to see art and artisan practice as a connected panorama that
ensured aesthetic creativity in a modem environment.‖335
Nandalal keenly followed their methods and picked up certain
technical nuances like a faithful disciple. He had observed that rural areas
of India were adventurous in the use of colour on person, in textiles, in
toys and in paintings. He clearly saw that the art which harnessed the
335
Subramanyam, K.G., ‘The Rhythms of India,’ The Art of Nandalal Bose, San Diego Museum of Art, California, 2008, p. 92
156
vitality of folk art and rural simplicity could stand against the general rot
ushered by a misconstrued industrial revolution. E. B. Havell and Ananda
Coomaraswamy had already drawn attention to the indigenous craft
conventions of our country and made it an imperative concern for the
Swadeshi Art.
Nandalal had his early education at Kharaghpur, Monghyr. He
moved to Calcutta in the year 1897, for his high school. As he had no
interest in general education his parents wanted to put him in medical
college, but they failed and therefore he was admitted to commerce
stream, attach to the Presidency College in the year 1905.336
It was now
clear that he had no likening for formal education; he just wanted to be a
painter. Between, 1897- 1905 Nandalal saw Renaissance in cultural life of
Bengal. Swami Vivekanand had become prominent figure in India and
abroad for the praise of the national heritage of India. Bankim Chandra,
Rabindranath Tagore was in the forefront of the revival.
The literary journal Prabasi, which was launched by Ramananda
Chatterjee in 1901 from Allahabad,337
had within short time gained wide
circulation among the educated middle class. Numerous other journals
covered a wide area of interest, from political discussion, economic
336
Roop-Lekha, vol. xxvi Nos 1 and 2
337 The term Prabasi refers to a person or a community residing outside their native region and was
used in association with the large number of Bengali professionals who moved to northen India over the late 19
th century.
157
analyses, to poetry, history and studies of ancient texts. Besides articles
many known painters and artist found forum in which there work was
presented in reproductions.
Young Nandalal with such exhilarating air around him looked
forward to the new issue of Prabasi. His aim was to study the picture
plates published in the journal. His real education in art began from these
journals. Running around old book shops in North Calcutta, he would
browse through foreign illustrated magazines, to discover reproduction of
European old masters like Raphel. It was through Prabasi that Nandalal
was acquainted with works of Ravi Varma and Abanindranath
Tagore.338
The paintings Sujata and Buddha339
and Vajra Mukut by
Abanindranath left an abiding mark on Nandalal, and he started working
on similar themes.
Nandalal‘s debut as a painter in 1905 had coincided with the
Swadeshi movement that swept Bengal. The immediate impetus for the
Swadeshi movement was the decision by Lord Curzon, the Viceroy of
India, to partition Bengal into a Hindu majority west and Muslim majority
east. The politics of anti partition agitation came to be suffused with the
new flowering of Bengali literature, art, culture, and music.
338
The paintings of Ravi Varma and Abanindranath was reproduced in this journal. The star of the first issue of the journal was Ravi Varma, with seven of his mythological paintings reproduced with article on the artist by the editor.
339 See Plate No.48
158
Rabindranath Tagore, the doyen of Bengali intelligentsia raised his
voice against it. He wrote songs and led procession in the street of
Calcutta. He sang in the poetic challenge to the British ―You will cut the
bond decreed by providences you are so powerful, are you‖340
In 1905, Abindranath Tagore created the iconic image of the nation
as mother: robed in ascetic saffron, she carried the gift of food, clothing,
learning and spiritual salvation in her four hands, originally titled
Bangmata, the painting was renamed Bharatmata as example of Bengal‘s
generosity towards the cause of India as a whole.341
In 1902, at the age of twenty, Bose had first started painting in
secret during his years as a student of Commerce at the Presidency
College, Calcutta. Subsequently, he started taking lessons from Atul
Mitra, a student at the Government School of Art, Calcutta. Given that
Mitra was a student at the Draftmanship division, it is likely that Bose‘s
early training under Mitra was restricted to figurative and still life painting
in the academic realist style. Indeed, Bose‘s early paintings, for instance a
copy of Raphael‘s Madonna, reflects this academicism, as Kamal Sarkar
has pointed out342
. It was only in 1905, at the height of anti-Partition
340
Bose Sugata, This article was originally published in a catalogue accompanying the exhibit “Rhythms of India: The Art of Nandalal Bose (1882–1966).” The exhibit was organized by the San Diego Museum of Art in collaboration with the National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi.
341 Bose Sugata, op cit.
342 Sarkar Kamal, Bharater O Bhashkar O Chitrashilpi, Calcutta, 1984, p. 88.
159
swadeshi movement in Bengal and the public display of Abanindranath
Tagore‘s Bharat-Mata, that Bose discovered his mentor. In the same year,
Bose sought out Tagore and enrolled himself at the Government School of
Art as a student in Tagore‘s advanced design class. This was the beginning
of Bose‘s formal art training. Bose‘s paintings produced between 1905
and 1910 bear testimony to the profound impact Tagore had made on the
artist.
In 1905 Nandalal joined the Government School of Art in Calcutta,
where Havell was the Principal and Abanindranath Tagore vice Principal.
Nandalal told them his ambition. He showed him few specimens of his art,
imitation of Raphel‘s, Madona, some crayon, studies of Greek sculpture
and some of his own drawings. Principal Havell approved his original
drawings.343
He was thus admitted to the Government Art School. After
attending the decorative art classes under Ishwari Prasad, he switched on
to Abanindranath classes.344
He quickely became the figure in the
movement to fashion a new Indian Art, a movement pioneered by his
teacher.
One day a famous scientist Jagadish Chand Bose along with Sister
Nivedita visited the School. Sister Nivedita was so delighted to see some
343
Roop- Lekha, op cit.
344 Ibid.
160
of Nandalal original drawings that she recommended his name to Lady
Herringham, who wanted to copy Ajanta mural.
Even Jagadish Chand Bose commissioned him to decorate his house
and Bose Institute (Basu Vijnana Mandir) in 1917. The greyish- purple
sandstone building of the Institute was of Pre- Islamic architecture, with
its ceilings painting in the great lecture hall, emulating Ajanta. For the
front wall, Nandalal chose the figure of Surya, the sun god driving a
seven-horsed chariot, while the rear wall was decorated with an elaborate
allegorical frieze, ‗The Triumph of Science and Imagination‘. It
represented intellect brandishing a naked sword, sailing down the sacred
river towards the true knowledge with his bride imagination playing the
flute by his side.345
In 1907, Nandalal got the prize for his painting Shiva Sati, in the
exhibition organised by the Indian Society of Oriental Art, which was
formed in 1907 by some English enthusiasts of Indian culture and few
Indian artists and scholars. Sir John Woodroffe, the chief justice of
Calcutta High Court, was the moving spirit behind the activities of the
society. The other member of the society was Thornton, an engineer by
profession and an amateur painter, and Norman Blunt an influential
345
Mitter, Partha, The Triumph of Modernism, India’s Artists and the avant garde 1922-1947, London, 2007, pp. 85-86
161
member of the English community in Calcutta.346
Sister Nivedita,
Abanindranath and Gaganendranath Tagore also became its active
member whose work was to spearheading the newly ushered Bengal
School. Ordhendu Coomar Ganguly, also became its influential members
who later became the editor of prestigious art journal ‗Rupam‘347
which
was published from the society. Apart from an annual programme of
exhibitions and publications the society took interest in promoting Indian
art and artists.
The prize which Nandalal got for his painting Shiva Sati, he spent
the whole amount of Rs.500, on an art pilgrimage to discover the land of
his birth. He wanted to see the ancient and historical sites of art. He started
his tour from north, first he went to Patna then Banaras. Nandalal was
impressed by his north Indian tour and showed considerable enthusiasm
about the images of Buddha at Sarnath and the carved railings at Boddha
Gaya. The pages of his sketch book were filled with the sketching of the
elegant intricacies.348
When he visited Sasaram and saw Sher Shah‘s
Tomb, he was overpowered by the massive structure. But his response to
the geometrical or floral encrustations of Islamic architecture was
comparatively cool. We can find that most of his paintings illustrate non
346
Kowshik Dinker, Nandalal Bose, The Doyen of Indian Art, and Thakurta Tapati Guha, op. cit. p. 277.
347 Thakurta, Tapati Guha, op. cit. p. 225.
348 Kowshik Dinker, op cit.
162
Islamic themes. Sati, Kaikeyi, Padmini, Dhritrashtra, Arjun were subject
of his paintings. On the other hand Abanindranath Tagore‘s paintings were
based on Islamic themes, like Shahjehan, Alamgir, Omar Khayyam and
more.
Nandalal‘s liking for Hindu and Buddhist themes was further
deepened by his encounter with South Indian art. The Shiva Nataraja, in
his cosmic Tandava dance, was a moving factor and he felt its power. The
elegant and asymmetrical temple structures of Kanchipuram, Tanjavur and
Maduri had more meaning then the famed Taj Mahal of Agra. The shore
temple at Mahabalipuram and the temples that raised their ‗Shikharas‘ on
the landscape of Southern plains appeared to him the epitome of the
Indian Vision.349
In 1910, Lady Herringham, a meticulous artist and an enthusiast of
Indian art visited India with the desire to copy the mural paintings in
Ajanta because after seeing Griffith‘s copies reproduce in the volume on
Ajanta, she felt that reproductions were probably not faithful to the
originals, because the material used in copying was oil, whereas the
murals in the caves of Ajanta were in water tempera.350
Oil was the heavy
medium and not easily amenable to free movement of the brush. With
349
Kowshik Dinker, op cit.
350 Kowshik Dinker, op. cit.
163
Havell‘s encouragement, she wanted to make fresh copies of these murals.
She came to India with her two assistants, Miss Dorothy Larcher and Miss
Luke 351
and on the request of Sister Nivedita, Nandalal and Asit Kumar
Haldar joined her at Ajanta.352
Nandalal was overwhelmed by the profound beauty of these murals.
At Ajanta, Nandalal‘s sessions of learning from the original springs of
Indian art was resumed with vigour. Till now he had seen only the
splendours of architecture and sculpture in his north and south Indian
tours. He had seen the forms of sculpted images at Konark,
Mahablipuram, Sarnath and Buddha Gaya. These were in solid volumes
tactile, rounded and full of vitality. But at Ajanta figures were released
from the grossness of stone, they were lithe and mobile and filled with
movement-walking, dancing, conversing, flying and praying in meditation
and in every conceivable attitude.353
The Ajanta, tour added new
dimension to Nandalal vision by acquainting himself with classical Indian
style of Ajanta which had a far reaching influence on his art.
In 1912 Nandalal got the opportunity to meet Japanese painter
Okakur. Nandalal was very much impressed by his philosophy of art
teaching and later he adopted the same in his teachings. According to
351
Kowshik Dinker, op cit.
352 Roop- Lekha , op cit.
353 Kowshik Dinker, op.cit. p. 27.
164
Okakura ―Art was a triangle with its three arms standing for tradition,
observation and originality,‖ he further says that if one relied only on
tradition the result would be vapid repetitions of old conventions and end
in boredom. If the second arm of the triangle, observation, was
emphasised then again the outcome would end in limitation of things and
would not attain the varieties of art. Finally, if one indulged in
indiscriminate originality, this would land one in utter confusion of a mad
house. Unless art was able to strike balance, to hold these three in poise, it
would fail to become aesthetically valid.354
It was largely through the influence and encouragement of the
Tagores that Nandalal was exposed to the art and ideals of East Asia.
Rabindranath‘s direct encounter with the power and scale of art in Japan
during his 1916 visit to that country led him to urge Indian artists to look
east in order to pioneer a fresh departure from the Swadeshi corpus of
ideals. He asked his host, Taikan, to send one of his students to India, and
artist Arai Kampo (1878–1945), traveled to Kolkata that year.355
His
arrival triggered a fruitful collaboration with Nandalal; Arai taught
Nandalal Japanese brush techniques while Nandalal explained the
354
Koshwik, Dinker, opcit. P.32.
355 Bose Sugata, This article was originally published in a catalogue accompanying the exhibit “Rhythms
of India: The Art of Nandalal Bose (1882–1966).” The exhibit was organized by the San Diego Museum of Art in collaboration with the National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi.
165
intricacies of the thirteenth-century eastern Indian sculptures of Konarak
in Orissa to the Japanese visitor.
In 1913, Nandalal joined ‗Bichitra‘356
as an art teacher on
Abindranath instance, which was located in Jorasanko House (House of
Tagore) where he came into contact with few Japanese artists. Among
them Okakura, Taikan, Hishiok, and Kampo Arai were some to name. In
1917 Nandalal Bose along with Kampo Arai visited Puri and Konark.
Kampo Arai worked with Nandalal in Bichitra studio also.
In 1919, Nandalal Bose joined Kala Bhavan in Shantiniketan as an art
teacher on Rabindranath Tagore invitation and quit his job at Indian
Society of Oriental Art in Calcutta. Nandalal‘s job at Shantiniketan gave
him the opportunity to experiment with murals.
In 1924 Nandalal was offered a unique opportunity to travel with
Rabindranath to Burma, China, and Japan. The poet‘s entourage on his
travels typically included a small but formidable team of intellectuals and
artists. Mukul Dey (1895–1989) was the artist who had accompanied
Rabindranath to Japan in 1916; Surendranath Kar (1892–1970) who
traveled with him on a voyage to Southeast Asia in 1927. In 1924, on the
356
It was the art club started by Abanindranath and Gaganendranath.Many prominent Bengali litterateurs, artistes and intellectuals were its member. And it would host evening gatherings around talks, poetry reading, dramatic performances or musical sorees. During the day it would function as an art class and studio- here the master and his first batch of students worked together, spreading an interest in new pictorial model of ‘Indian-style’ paintings.Visiting Japanese artist, Kampo Arai gave lessons in Japanese brush painting.
166
journey to East Asia, Rabindranath‘s two companions from Santiniketan
were Nandalal and Kshitimohan Sen (1880–1960), an erudite scholar of
Sanskrit and comparative religion. On this trip Rabindranath preached the
virtues of close interaction among Asian cultures. Stung by the passage of
the Immigration Act of 1924 (sometimes referred to as the Orientals
Exclusion Act) in the United States, some of Rabindranath‘s admirers
even established an Asiatic Association in Shanghai to foster solidarity
among all Asians.357
As the group travelled, Nandalal was somewhat disappointed to see
that painting and the other higher arts in China had ―become infected by
the Western virus,‖ as he termed it. He also noticed ―marvellous
paintings‖ (even though the value of a work Rabindranath received as a
gift from the titular emperor derived only from the ―seal impressed on
it‖).358
Nandalal also collected a few beautiful old rubbings and picked up
―prints, post cards, and books and also life stories of painters.‖ He himself
did a number of sketches as picture postcards and documented the trip in
photographs.
357
Bose Sugata, This article was originally published in a catalogue accompanying the exhibit “Rhythms of India: The Art of Nandalal Bose (1882–1966).” The exhibit was organized by the San Diego Museum of Art in collaboration with the National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi.
358 Ibid.
167
In Japan Nandalal had the privilege of being hosted by Taikan,
Rabindranath‘s friend and the artist who had visited India, and was
introduced to masterpieces of Japanese art.
In 1921 he along with Asitkumar Haldar and Surendranath Kar,
was commissioned by Gwalior Darbar to copy murals at Bagh and
Ramgarh caves.359
These caves are situated in Madhya Pradesh and were
second only to Ajanta in importance. (Asitkumar Haldar had earlier been
requested by the Archaeological Department of Gwalior to submit a report
on the condition of these murals) The work of copying the Bagh murals,
gave Nandalal more idea of the traditions of paintings in India. Nandalal
Bose along with his colleague made some excellent copies for the Gwalior
state. At Bagh, Nandalal had some rough but delightful experiences. He
used his experience to teach his students, the technical aspect of ancient
Indian frescoes.
After Ajanta and Bagh experience Nandalal resolve to make mural
painting rather than miniature watercolour the cornerstone of his
teachings.360
He even wanted to learn from other traditions including
Western tempera.
359
Mitter Parth, 2007, op. cit. p. 86.
360 Ibid. p. 86.
168
According to Nandalal Bose, ―we seek access now to all the artistic
traditions of the world. After knowing all that, if we still find Indian art
the best, we shall stick to it with great determination.... I don‘t see
anything wrong in such borrowing.‖Nandalal Bose even tried egg tempera
method in the Cheena Bhavan building.361
Nandalal exhorted his students
to observe minutely the envirous around them. He would say that endless
themes were strewn around and what one had to do was to observe,
understand and love them.If one is to strike an acquaintance with a tree,
the best way is to watch it continuously in the morning and noon, in the
evening and night.362
Having gained experience in egg tempera, Nandalal turned to
indigenous fresco technique, because Kala Bhavan library is an example
of Nandalal‘s first unsure attempt to emulate Ajanta and Bagh.
In 1927, Nandalal along with Narsingh Lal,363
completed the mural
on the front wall of the library.
Most of the murals at Kala Bhavan were adaptations from different
sources such as Ajanta, Egyptian murals, Persian miniatures or Chinese
motifs. The panels of eastern and western walls were of original
361
Ibid. p. 86.
362 Nandalal Bose, Roop- Lekha, vol.-xxvi, nos. 1 and 2.
363 A, traditional Jaipur painter who stayed in Santiniketan till 1933. And was a skilled craftsman in the
technique of Jaipur frescoes.
169
compositions. The western panel was painted by Nandalal which depicted
early morning Vaitalik in Shantiniketan where Rabindranath is shown
between group of girls and boys who are singing. The eastern panel had a
composition which illustrated the morning upasana held under a sal
trees.364
Nandalal‘s achievement was to assimilate the diverse techniques he
had experimented with, in a unified expression. In 1930, he completed his
first ambitious mural in Shantineketan, the agricultural science building,
based on Italian wet fresco technique. In this multiple-figure composition,
a lively observation of nature was firmly controlled by a fine sense of
design.365
The subject was Halakarshan (ploughing), a ceremony with which
Tagore inaugurated seasonal cultivation every year by ritually turning up
the earth with plough. Vriksha Ropan and Halakarshan were the two
rituals introduced in 1928 in Shantineketan as a part of Tagore concern for
environment.366
The design is divided into several panels. Gurudev is seen
lending a hand at ploughing the first furrow, with a plough drawn by three
pairs of bulls. In front of these a priest with offerings of coconut and
364
Mitter Parth, 2007, op. cit. p.88.
365 Mitter Parth, 2007, op. cit. p.88.
366 Ibid. p.88.
170
flowers held in his hands is sitting on an asana. Santhal girls are seen
following Gurudev blowing the conch and carrying fruits and flowers.367
According to Partha Mitter, in these work Nandalal replaced
historic murals with everyday life, such as cultivation and other form of
seasonal work, making Santhals the central figure in his composition,368
because murals were a kind of social art.
Nandalal‘s more impressive murals were produced between 1938
and 1945. In 1938, in keeping with Maharaja Sayaji Rao‘s tradition of
supporting national culture, the Gaekwad family invited him to decorate
the ancestral memorial, Kirti Mandir (Temple of Glory), in their capital,
Baroda.369
For these murals Nandalal went back to historicism as he felt the
commission demanded subjects more majestic than genre scenes. He made
a preliminary visit to Baroda on his way back from the Congress session at
Faizpur in 1938, revisiting the state in October 1939, and eventually
undertaking seven visits to Baroda to complete the project.
Nandalal had originally planned the whole work as interplay of
black and white to complement the predominantly white walls, relieving
the monotony with brightly coloured wall insets. This however proved to
367
Koswik Dinker, op.cit.
368 Mitter Parth, 2007, p.88.
369 Mitter Parth, 2007, op.cit. p. 89.
171
be unattainable. The actual production was shared with his students, the
master producing the outline drawing, to be filled in with colours by
student assistants. However, in order to impose an overall structural unity,
Nandalal made the finishing touches himself.370
The overall inspiration for the four large egg tempera panels was
the Buddhist Stupa.371
Nandalal‘s narrative sources ranged from the epics
and mythology to historic figures. In 1939, he completed the
Gangavatarana (Descent of the River Ganges) based on the mythology of
Shiva, on the South wall of the cenotaph, selecting the North wall the
following year for his painting of the medieval female saint Mirabai.
In 1943, after a gap of several years, he represented Tagore‘s play,
Natir Puja, inspired by a Buddhist story, on the East Wall.372
Finally, in
1945, for the remaining West Wall, he turned to the great epic
Mahabharata. Treated in a ‗wiry‘ linear style reminiscent of the Tibetan
thang-ka, the impressive Abhimanyu Vadha (Slaying of the Young Hero
Abhimanyu), consists of a complex linear composition endowed with
febrile energy, a scene full of frenzied movement and furious action. This
as well as several other scenes at Baroda, including the second version of
the Gangavatarana, show influence of Tibetan painting. The Kirti Mandir
370
Mitter Parth, 2007, op. cit. p. 89.
371 Mitter Parth, 2007, op. cit. p. 89.
372 Mitter, Parth, 2007, op.cit.p. 90.
172
was a grand project covering 502 meter square, a work that brought to a
climax Nandalal‘s ideas about murals as well as vindicating his strong
sense of design.373
Nandalal remained alive as an artist for another two-and-a-half
decades. Although the 1940s were a turbulent decade for Bengal, India,
and indeed, the whole of Asia, Nandalal did not paint the horrors of
famine and partition that was left to his younger contemporaries,
Somenath Hore (1921–2006) and Zainul Abedin (1914–1976). There is,
however, a deep sense of irony in his painting Annapurna,374
which was
created in 1943, the year of the great Bengal famine in which three million
people died. More than three decades earlier, Nandalal had painted a
serene picture titled Annapurna and Shiva. Now, in a combination of
tempera and wash, he created the haunting Annapurna and Rudra (later
simply titled Annapurna). Annapurna, who is seated on a lotus, holds a
bowl of rice in her hands. Before her stands Shiva, reduced to a skeleton
holding a begging bowl. Nandalal‘s mood in the year of the great Bengal
famine is captured in one of his letters: ―I have realized the following in a
373
Mitter Parth, 2007, op. cit. p. 90.
374 See Plate No. 49.
173
dream,‖ he wrote. ―Give up your attempts to find God; go on creating
what you like; you are an artist, paint picture after picture.‖375
Speaking of the Indian style of painting, he said, ―We see things
with our mind‘s eye, see it from the top and sides or from below as we
please. Once you develop a love for a thing you can see it from all angles.
This is the Indian way. The west is totaly different; you have to sit before
the physical gross body and then draw and paint.‖376
He further said that,
―Their art, instead of being universal, tends to become intellectual. They
have no truck with the heart, they are all for the head. Unless it is heart
oriented art it cannot touch the heart. Art cannot have universal appeal
unless it touched the heart and starts from within.‖377
Thus for Nandalal art
must be closely related to comman men.
3:3:1 Nandalal Bose’s association with Mahatma Gandhi: For Gandhi,
art and Nandalal were synonymous and he was proud and happy to have
'discovered' Nandalal as the artist of the Indian National Congress. On the
other hand Nandalal too was witnessing how Gandhi strove to emancipate
the country from colonial rule and soon became one of Gandhi's admirers.
375
Bose Sugata, This article was originally published in a catalogue accompanying the exhibit “Rhythms
of India: The Art of Nandalal Bose (1882–1966).” The exhibit was organized by the San Diego Museum
of Art in collaboration with the National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi.
376 Nandalal Bose, Roop- Lekha, vol.-xxvi, nos. 1 and 2.
377Nandalal Bose, Roop- Lekha, vol.-xxvi, nos. 1 and 2.
174
His respect for the Mahatma increased when his action program
broadened its purview to include the economic independence of India and
the strengthening of its widespread artisan traditions to achieve this.
However, it was Rabindranath Tagore‘s art school Kala Bhavan at
Santiniketan that became the critical ground for Bose‘s experiments with
the ideals of Gandhian Swadeshi in art and education. The institution had
first begun as a primary education center in response to the swadeshi
impetus for indigenous education systems in 1901. In 1919, Tagore set up
the art school Kala Bhavan and invited Nandalal Bose to direct the school.
The institution gradually expanded to include Shantiniketan, the Institute
for Rural Reconstruction, in the neighboring village of Surul in 1921. In
certain ways, the education philosophy of Santiniketan anticipated
Gandhi‘s ideals of indigenous education and rural revival. For Tagore, the
founder of Santiniketan, proactive communitarian action, mobilization of
indigenous knowledge systems, and judicial use of natural resources far
overweighed the imperatives for immediate political sovereignty of the
nation. This idea shaped the pedagogic impetus at Santiniketan.378
At
Santiniketan, Bose‘s art training was thus aligned with Gandhi‘s ideals of
indigenous education and rural revival. Gandhi was intimately familiar
378
Tagore Rabindranath,City and Village, Viswa –Bharti, 1928.
175
with the pedagogic ideals of Santiniketan, having visited the institution a
number of times.
Obviously, Gandhi's focus on India's artisan traditions had a special
appeal for Nandalal. Nandalal Bose‘s contact with Mahatma Gandhi woke
up the patriot in him. Gandhi‘s Non Cooperation Movement of 1921 left
an everlasting impact on his mind and he became an ardent follower of
Khadi and Charkha. He considered himself the spiritual disciple of
Mahatma Gandhi. The upheaval of the Non Cooperation Movement made
him restless and uneasy in his mind. During the movement, Calcutta was
full of patriotic fervor. Young and old left their work. Meetings and
processions were in full swing.
Nandalal was moved by Gandhi‘s respect for the common man. His
concern for the common man led him to give simple art lessons to
housewives and to incorporate women‘s domestic art, such as alpana, in
the Kala Bhavan curriculum. He took personal interest in training, women
students in decorative art. He wanted to arouse an aesthetic sense in
women who in their turn would influence their families.379
In 1922, Gandhiji visited Shantiniketan where he came to know of
Nandlal‘s role in rural reconstruction programme at the University. This
common interest brought them together. The base of Gandhiji‘s political
379
Deb, C. Quoted in Parth Mitter, 2007, op. cit. p. 81.
176
revolution was rural India. He believed that the real India resides in the
villages. Gandhiji was very much aware that many of the Congress leaders
were from the cities, and hence they had no idea of indigenous art.
Nandalal's admiration for Gandhi is clearly evident in the famous
lino-cut380
he did in the wake of Gandhi's historic Dandi March in March
1930. His war against the Salt-law that charged the entire nation was
symbolized in a black-white lino-cut of modest size depicting Mahatma
stepping out with his walking stick, evoking a sense of strong will to
overcome all obstacles. That this image eventually became a visual
prototype of the iconic image of Gandhi is now well known.
Incidentally, Nandalal did not come to know Gandhi personally
until 1935, when Gandhi sought Bose's help to install an art and craft
exhibition at the Lucknow session of Congress in 1935. However, the first
such exhibition to be organized in connection with a convention of the
Indian National Congress took place at Indore in 1934. Gandhi recognized
the importance of such exhibitions and believed that it should continue at
all subsequent Congress session.381
In 1935, on Gandhiji‘s suggestion, Nandalal went to Lucknow with
his students of Kala Bhavan to set up an art exhibition at the Lucknow
380
See Plate No. 50
381 Appasamy Jaya, Abindranath Tagore and the art of his time, Lalit Kala Academy, New Delhi
177
Session of the Indian National congress in 1935. Binodebehari, Prabhat
Mohan and Manoj accompanied Nandalal to Lucknow where Asit Kumar
joined them. Nandlal undertook to arrange a historical panorama of Indian
art. Copies of the Ajanta and Bagh murals, medieval paintings of the Jain,
Rajput and Mughal schools, Kaligha Pats and works of Abanindranath and
his disciples were shown in the exhibition. A catalogue was specially
brought out for the occasion with an introduction written by Binodbehari.
Novel gates were designed. Mhatre, an architect from Bombay supervised
the construction.
At one point, it was noticed that a large space covered with
corrugated tin sheets presented an unseemly sight. In a hurry, Jamini Roy
was asked to paint large portraits to cover them. It is interesting to note
that there was no money left to pay for Jamini Roy‘s service. He agreed to
do the work on the condition that he would be allowed to take away his
work after the Session.
Gandhiji was very pleased by the work of Nandalal. In his opening
speech, at the exhibition Gandhiji paid a handsome tribute to Nandalal‘s
efforts. He said ―Let me tell you that you will have an inkling of the inside
even from where you are still sitting. For in front of you are no triumphal
arches but there are simply but exquisitely decorated walls done by Sjt.
Nandalal Bose, the eminent artist from Shantiniketan and his co-workers
178
who have tried to represent all the villager‘s crafts by simple artistic
symbols. And when you go inside the art gallery on which Babu Nandalal
Bose has lavished his labours for weeks, you will feel, as I did, like
spending hours together there.‖382
The Faizpur session of the Congress followed almost on the heels of
the one held in Lucknow. Nandalal received a call from Gandhiji to
decorate the Congress Pavilion at Faizpur in Maharashtra. Nandalal
informed Gandhiji that he know nothing about architecture as he was a
painter. Gandhiji replied, ―Having received a little, our hearts want a full
measure. I don‘t need a master pianist; a fiddler is enough for me!‖383
So
Nandlal decorated the pavilion with ordinary materials which were locally
available. In the main pandal where the exhibition was arranged, Nandalal
had the ingenious idea of sprouting wheat seedlings around the central
pole, and created greenery in the middle of a graveled floor space.
Gandhiji was very pleased and said in his opening speech of the exhibition
(December 25, 1936): ―Credit for the arrangements here belongs to the
architect Sjt. Mhatre and the artist Sjt. Nandalal Bose. When Nandababu
responded to my invitation a couple of months ago, I explained to him
what I wanted and left it to him to give concrete shape to the conception
382
Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, publication division, Govt. of India, New Delhi, 1999, vol. 68, p. 334
383 Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, vol. 62, 1979, p. 127
179
for he is a creative artist and I am none. God has given me the sense of art
but not the organs to give it concrete shape. He has blessed Sjt. Nandalal
Bose with both. I am thankful that he agreed to take upon himself the
whole burden of organizing the artistic side of the exhibition and he came
and settled down here weeks ago to see to everything himself. The result
is that the whole of Tilaknagar is an exhibition in itself and so it begins not
where I am going to open it but at the main gateway which is a fine piece
of village art… Please remember that Nanda babu has depended entirely
on local material and local labour to bring all the structures here into
being.‖384
Right from the opening day of the session Gandhi repeated his
praise for Nandalal almost every day. As K. G. Subramanyan writes,
―Before the Faizpur session, Nandalal's reputation as an artist had been
confined primarily to the elite artistic community in Bengal (and
elsewhere), but Gandhi's unstinting praise of his work brought him
national fame: in essence, he became the artist laureate of nationalist
India.‖385
After the Faizpur Session of the Congress, Nandlal enjoyed
Gandhiji‘s affection and became his confidant in artistic matters. In 1937,
384
Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi vol. 70, 1999, p. 212
385 Subramanyam,K.G. op cit. P 99
180
Gandhiji intervened with the industrialist G. D. Birla to provide a
subvention for the Kala Bhawan which he affectionately called Nanda
Babu‘s art school.386
The next Congress session was held in Haripura, near Bardoli, in
1938. Once again Nandalal Bose was asked to decorate the Congress
pavilion. He pleaded is inability due to his illness, but this was not the
reason. There was another reason for his refusal. On hearing that Nandalal
was once again awarded this assignment of national importance, some
local artists gave expression to their chauvinistic feelings. Why a Bengali
should be requisitioned for work in Gujarat where comparable talents
were available there.387
But Nandalal took the project because he was
unhappy about his refusal.
Consequently Nandalal, proceeded to Haripura and studied the site
and surveyed the availability of local materials and craftsmanship. At
Haripura, Nandalal turned the sprawling area into an exquisite example of
environmental art. Gates, pillars, exhibition, cluster of stalls, thatched
shelters, landscape garden, meeting areas and residential tents were all
decorated with local material of bamboo, thatch and khadi of different
hues. Earthen pots and vessels were adorned with designs; tassels of
386
Letter to Tagore, 6th
November 1937, Collected Work of Mahatma Gandhi,Lxvi, p. 289.
387 Kowshik Dinkar, op cit.
181
paddy grass hung in rows, baskets and cane work – made by the hands of
local craftspeople – were all used to lend the session an elegant rural
atmosphere. As a significant component of this huge public art Nandalal
planned separate paintings which were later to become famous as
Haripura posters depicting Indian life in all its variety.
Nandalal painted nearly eighty posters himself, mostly about two
feet by two feet large in size, and his student and teacher associates then
made close copies of them, multiplying their number to close to 400.
Created on handmade papers stretched on strawboard, these paintings or
posters were executed with brilliant colours prepared and mixed from the
local earth pigments. Bamboo, thatch, and homespun cotton were
employed to construct the display panels all around. Gandhi wanted the
posters to catch the attention of passersby, so they were displayed at the
meeting compound's main gate and on the exterior of the pavilions. One
can imagine that the whole vista turned out to be a public art of a huge
hitherto unseen scale. Nandalal Bose himself writes with enthusiasm,
'Following the pata style we did a large number of paintings and hung
them everywhere on the main entrance, inside the volunteers camps, even
in the rooms meant for Bapuji and Subhasbabu, the President.388
388
Nandalal Bose, Vision and Creation, Visva Bharti, 1999, p 235
182
Haripura posters celebrate the Indian rural life and culture, sharing a
vibrant earthy color palette and bold, energetic lines with a vividly
modernist graphic quality. A sweeping look at the available images
reveals that these posters draw attention to the different activities,
professions and trades that constellate the moments of village daily life in
a picturesque continuum.
Most of the imageries culled from his observed reality around were
developed from the rapid sketches Nandalal did, during his survey of rural
areas and people living near the location. The swift, spontaneous strokes
contouring the forms and figures encourage an equally effortless viewing
reminiscent of the character and temperament of Kalighat pata and various
other folk paintings that eschew any labored or affected idiom. The charm
and the playful gaiety exuded by the linguistic features blend perfectly
well with the contents depicting subjects like Hunters, Musicians, Bull
Handlers, Carpenter, Smiths, Spinner, Husking women and modest scenes
of rural life including animal rearing, child-nursing and cooking.389
The
simplicity of these works also lies in the unvarying use of the point-cusped
niche that frames the principal subject. The vigorous dynamic forms of
certain figures of course cut across the frame thus saving the images from
monotony.
389
See Plate No. 51 a& 51 b.
183
These types of paintings of bamboo and reed structures symbolic of
Gandhian philosophy are termed ―Gandhian aesthetics.‖390
In this way,
Nandalal Bose created awareness of the National Movement among men,
which was his contribution to the nation and he worked without any fee.
He participated in the embellishment of the entire nation‘s aspirations.
Though folk in spirit, the work had technical brilliance and
sophistication of classical art. According to Binodebihari
Mukhopadhyaya: In these Haripura panels painted for the session, there is
an ineluctable harmony of tradition and study based on observation. Each
poster is different from the next in form as well as in colour, and yet there
runs all through a strong undercurrent of emotional unity, lending a
familial stamp. The artist has eye on the contemporary situation, has
worked out his own goal. The stream of form and colour which flows over
the subject, subordinating it, brings these posters into kinship with mural
art.‖391
According to R. Siva Kumar, the Haripura panels should be
―considered not only as the culmination of his interest in folk paintings but
also as the next stage in his experiments in murals.‖392
Further, according
390
Nandalal Bose, Centenary Exhibition, National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi, 1966, p. 32
391 Mukhopadhyaya, B. B., Chitrakatha, p. 265.
392 R. Siva Kumar, “The Santiniketan Murals: A Brief History” in R. Siva Kumar, Jayanta Chakrabarty, and
Arun K. Nag, eds. The Santiniketan Murals (Calcutta: Seagull Books, 1995), 5-78, 24.
184
to Mitter, ―the strong sense of formal design in these panels suggests his
apprenticeship to Ajanta rather than the amorphous wash technique of
oriental art.‖393
Along with a group of Abanindranath Tagore‘s students,
Bose had visited the 5th-century Buddhist caves at Ajanta in 1910 to copy
the frescoes. His subsequent works bear testimony to the deep impression
these 5th-century mural paintings had made on the artist. According to
scholars, Bose‘s experience at Ajanta finally allowed the artist to break
from the ―Oriental style‖ wash paintings of his mentor Abanindranath
Tagore and the Bengal School. The overarching scholarly impulse, then,
has been to map the Haripura panels within Bose‘s oeuvre to recuperate a
genealogy of the artist‘s stylistic evolution.
In his essay on 'Art and Artists in Twentieth Century Calcutta',
Tarun Mitra describes Nandalal thus,
"Nandalal was well-versed in the art history and traditions of many
civilisations and the grammar and techniques of their art. Yet he absorbed
their elements so successfully that they appear to be an extension of his
expressive self. His nationalism made the synthesis totally Indian,
perfecting the art of concealing a varied art. As teacher, however, he gave
his students practically total freedom. He had the catholicity of taste to
recognise the genius of his pupil Ramkinkar Vaij, so alien to his own, and
also to admire the paintings of Rabindranath Tagore, belonging to a totally
different world".394
393
Mitter, The Triumph of Modernism, 83.
394Mitra, Tarun, 'Art and Artists in Twentieth Century Calcutta'.
185
3:3:2 Search for Individual Ididenty Avant –Garde
In the year 1917, Rabindranath Tagore established Vishva Bharti. The aim
of this university was all round development, in his own words, ‗to study
the mind of man in its realisation of different aspects of truth from diverse
points of view.‘ This was not to be a degree orientated establishment, but
rather one, where East and West met in mutual respect and where
education would be conducted in the serene rural setting of Shantiniketan,
where the community of teachers and students would coexist, not in the
rigid and formal way of the English education system, but in one of
complete freedom, interdependence and self- reliance.
In 1919, as the leaders of world assembled at Versailles in France to re
construct a world destroyed by the worst war in history, In the same year
Tagore returned his Knighthood in protest, against the massacre of
hundreds of innocent Indians at Jallianwala Bagh in Amritsar by General
Dyer, and in the same year he opened the Kala Bhavan, the new art wing
at his university. He invited Nandalal Bose to be the part of this university.
Like Rabindranath Tagore, Bose was also of opinion that education be
broad base; that tradition, though of immense importance, must not be
permitted to hamper the artists personal development, that they are
encouraged to acquire from the west and any other sources whatever
knowledge and skill they considered enriching. This was the sort of
approach the Bauhaus had adopted at its inception in Weimar.
186
An exhibition of Bauhaus artists was held in Calcutta in 1922 to
marks the beginning of avant-garde art in India, both Guha-Thakurta and
Mitter assert. As Mitter writes: ―The radical formalist language of
modernism offered Indian artists, such as Rabindranath Tagore and Jamini
Roy, a new weapon of anti-colonial resistance. In their intellectual battle
with colonialism, they readily found allies among the Western avant-garde
critics of urban industrial capitalism, leading them to engage for the first
time with global aesthetic issues.‖395
Moving away from the realism of the
colonial art schools and the revivalist visual language of Abanindranath
Tagore‘s Bengal School, artists such as Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941),
Jamini Roy (1887-1972), and Gaganendranath Tagore (1867-1938)
embraced a modernist simplification of form in the 1930s.
Simultaneously, Amrita Shergil (1913-1941), made rural India a surrogate
for her own gendered location within the larger nationalist struggle. Along
with the primitivists in the West, Indian artists turned to, day to day life.
This idea of the avant-garde is well aligned with Theodor Adorno‘s
vision of the avant-garde as articulated in Aesthetic Theory.396
Resistance
to and negation of societal conventions characterize Adorno‘s avant-garde.
In Mitter‘s text, the societal conventions appear in the guise of the
395
Mitter, Parth, 2007, op cit p. 10
396 Theodor W. Adorno, Asthetic Theory, translated by, Robert Hullot- Kentor, 1997.
187
dominant rhetoric of nationalism. Autonomous art, in Adorno‘s sense,
does not, however, have the ability to sublate the social dimensions that it
negates. It has no specific use value. Its only purpose is to resist and to
exist in itself. Having advertently or inadvertently adopted Adorno‘s
avant-garde, Mitter‘s text is troubled by artists such as Nandalal Bose
(1882-1966) who strategically aligned themselves with the Gandhian
movement to make art practice into a distinct communitarian activity.
To contextualize the Indian artist‘s engagement with European
modernism, Mitter puts forward the idea of a ―virtual cosmopolis,‖ a term
that allows Mitter to counter charges of derivativeness that had been
leveled at modernist Indian art in this and subsequent periods. The ―virtual
cosmopolis‖ is a cosmopolis that is not a defined geopolitical territory but
resides in the imagination. Borrowing Benedict Anderson‘s idea of the
nation as an imagined community, Mitter suggests that modernity too
created a transnational imagined community brought into existence
through print capitalism and the hegemony of the English language. To
explain this community‘s critical engagement with Western modernism,
Mitter proposes the term ―virtual cosmopolis.‖ As Mitter writes:
The hybrid city of the imagination engendered elective affinities
between the elites of the center and the periphery on the level of intellect
and creativity. […] The encounters of the colonial intelligentsia with
modernity were inflected through virtual cosmopolitanism. One of the
products of such encounters was Global privimitivism and the common
front made against urban industrial Capitalism and the ideology of
188
progress. […] Primitivism was not anti-modern; it was a critical form of
modernity that affected the peripheries no less than the west. Primitivists
did not deny the importance of technology in contemporary life they
simply refused to accept the teleological certainty of modernity.397
Having adopted Adorno‘s avant-garde, Mitter‘s own text mimics a
unidirectional and teleological unfolding of modernism in India, a
narrative that yet again replicates the metanarrative of Western
modernism. For Mitter, the ―first phase of modernism‖ is characterized by
the Indian artist‘s engagement with primitivism as a resistance to colonial
modernity concludes in 1947, with the formation of the Independent
Indian nation-state.398
Mitter, signals the Bombay-based Progressive
Artists Group (established in 1947), as the ―main architects of Indian
modernism, which came to fruition later in Nehruvian India.‖399
The
Progressive Artists Group‘s engagement with internationalist modernism
and abstraction then is central to the next phase of modern Indian art.
This places the modernists of the 1930s and the early 1940s in place
of the historical avant-garde, leading to the true avant-garde of the
Progressive Artists Group, an avant-garde that was purportedly anti-
institutional and revolutionary. Other scholars such as Yashodhara Dalmia
397
Mitter Parth, 2007, op.cit. pp. 11-12.
398 Ibid. p. 10.
399 Ibid. p. 227.
189
reiterate the same argument.400
In Dalmia‘s description, the Bombay-based
Progressive Artists Group too emerge as both the principal architects of
Indian modernism and the first true avant-garde. With the coming of the
Progressive Artists Group, the Indian modernism finally catches up and
becomes one with the logical unfolding of modernism in the West. It is
with the Progressive Artists Group that there is a complete break with
tradition and earlier historicist modes of depiction practiced by the artists
of the Bengal School. The visual language of abstraction posed by the
Progressive Artists Group is thus entirely new.
3:4 Individual Styles
3:4:1 Gaganendranath Tagore (1867-1938): The first major response to
modernism was a fascination with Cubism, which had become the most
widely emulated artistic style of the world. The pioneering figure in this
context was Gaganendranath Tagore, who came in prominence in 1917
with a series of cartoon lithograph. Since 1870 in Bengal, caricature had
been a prime device in art and literature for exposing pretension and
mocking contemporary manners. The satirical tradition continued into the
400
Dalmia, Yashodhara,The Making of Modern Indian Art: The Progressives, Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2001.
190
20th century but few matched the unsentimental eye of Gaganendranath
Tagore.401
The first major breakthrough in modernism came with
Gagandranath Tagore (1867-1938), who was the eldest brother of
Abanindranath Tagore and nephew of Rabindranath Tagore. Although he
was closely associated with the aesthetic values of the Bengal School, he
functioned largely outside its stylistic influence.
His exposure to art practices all around the world helped him to
create a distinctly original style of painting. At one hand he was inspired
by the Japanese wash technique and on the other by the cubistic, futuristic
and expressionist trends of European art practices.
In spite of the eclecticism of his outlook, his vision and technique
were very individual. Gaganendranath‘s great sense of humour and satire
found expression in some remarkable caricatures, which primarily aimed
at commenting on the erosion of social and moral values under the impact
of the colonial rule.
His satires pinpointed the hypocrisies and contradictions within
society. He was responsible for establishing ‗Jorasanko (the Tagore
401
Modernism in India - Islamic manuscripts, www.islamicmanuscripts.info/reference/.../Mitter-2001-Art-188-199.
191
residence) Theatre‘ in 1867 and was actively involved with designing
stage settings and costumes for various plays. Some of his art works
display a remarkable influence of theatre.
Although Gaganendranath did not received any formal education
but was trained under the British School, water colourist Harinarayan
Bandopodhyay.
In 1907 he founded Indian Society of Oriental Art with his brother
Abanindranath Tagore. Between, 1906-1910, he assimilated the Japanese
brush technique and far Eastern pictorial conventions into his own work.
From 1910 until 1914 he experimented with black ink and
developed his own approach. His Chaitanya series and Pilgrim series are
the example of this experiment.
Between 1915 and 1919, with the help of his brother he set up the
Bichitra Club in the Tagore family. The Club served as an important social
intellectual and artistic hub of cultural life in Calcutta, where many artists,
including Nandalal Bose, A.K. Haldar and Suren Kar worked on their
paintings.
According to Parth Mitter, Gaganendranath Tagore (1867–1938)
was the only Indian painter before the 1940s that made use of the language
and syntax of Cubismin his painting.402
Older than Abanindranath by a
402
Mitter Parth, op cit. P. 18.
192
few years, Gaganendranath was an individualist, who impressed people
with his intellect and personal charm.
The English painter, William Rothenstein met him in 1910 and was
very influenced with him. The former Governor of Bengal, the Marquess
of Zetland, was a particular admirer of his, commenting on his dynamism
tempered by an inner serenity and refinement.403
Always keen to experiment, Gaganendranath began in the 1880s
with ‗phrenological‘ portraits inspired by his uncle‘s work, followed by
delicate pen-and-brush paintings, learned from the visiting Japanese
Nihon-ga painter, Taikan.404
He was inspired by the visiting Japanese artist and other far eastern
styles. In 1907 along with his brother Abanindranath he founded Indian
Society of Oriental Art and joined the Oriental Art Movement.
According to Pran Nath Mago, both Abanindranath and
Gaganendranath belonged to the period of social, economic and political
change in India. It was a period when in art as in politics and socio-
economic sphere, there were efforts to discover national identity.
In the early year of the 20th century, the active struggle for
independence adopted Swadeshi as its motto. During this period,
403
Ibid. p 18
404 Ibid. p 19
193
Shantiniketan became the centre of so called revivalist style (or the Bengal
School) under the leadership of Abanindranath Tagore and Nandalal Bose.
But it was Gaganendranath who, for the first time, made serious attempts
to come to terms with modern European art while simultaneously striving
for a personal style.
He broke away from school bound traditions and conventions,
worked out individual style, and gave new direction to art movement in
India. Thus he abandoned the ideological revivalism embraced by the
Bengal School of Art and took up caricature to satirize the westernised
middle class of urban Bengal. He secured popularity in 1917, when many
of his shrewd cartoons were published in Modern Review.
In his caricatures, Gaganendranath wanted to highlight the nature of
Indian society at the time when the struggle for Indian Independence from
British rule was just beginning. He wanted to expose the hypocrisy of the
Hindu priesthood as well as rich westernised Indians who had lost sight of
the value of their own culture.405
Gaganendranath Tagore, caricatures appeared in books during the
early year of the 19th century.Adbhut Loke (1915), Virup Vajra (1917),
and Reform Screams (1921).According to Mulk Raj Anand, ―These
portfolios are very rare. I believe, that not only are they very important as
405
See Plate No.52 a, 52 b, 52 c & 52 d
194
the social history of the epoch in which Gaganendranath lived, but they
constitute some of the finest caricatures done in India since the death of
the Rajput century of the 18th
century.‖406
In the preface of Virup Vajra, Gaganendranath Tagore wrote,
―When deformities grow unchecked, but are cherished by blind habit, it
becomes the duty of the artist to show that they are ugly and vulgar and
therefore abnormal.‖407
This reveals the artist‘s awareness of the deformities which he
could see in society. And from the reminiscences published after the death
of Gaganendranath Tagore, by Dr. Brajendranath Seal, the historian of
Bengali literature, it becomes clear that he also knew the causes of the
deformities. Himself descended from a landlord family, and yet brought
up in the era of early industrial enterprise in India, Gaganendranath was
conscious of the impact of Britain on India.408
His most critical was the Reform Screams, (published in 1921)
which comment on the Report of the Indian Constitutional Reforms: ‗The
Montague-Chelmsford Reform.‘ The Report formed the basis of the
Government of India Act 1919, which came in to operation early in 1921.
406
Anand Mulk Raj, Gaganendranath Tagore’s Realm of the Absurd,
http://www.chitralekha.org/articles/gaganendranath-tagore/gaganendranath-tagore.
407 Ibid.
408 Anand Mulk Raj, Gaganendranath Tagore’s Realm of the Absurd,
http://www.chitralekha.org/articles/gaganendranath-tagore/gaganendranath-tagore.
195
The drawings in Reform Screams revealed Gaganendranath as a bold
nationalist, which must be acknowledged as a significant pictorial
document of that period of the independence struggle. Obviously,
Gaganendranath had observed crucial contemporary political events for
nearly three years (1919-1921) and gave them expressive form. The
reforms of 1919 did not satisfy the national aspirations of our countrymen
and its effect upon the national struggle for independence had been like
fresh fuel. Mahatma Gandhi was at first inclined to try to make the
reforms work, but in a special session held in Calcutta in September 1920,
he changed his decision, and the famous resolution of Non-cooperation
was adopted by the Congress party. The object of the National Congress
was now defined as the attainment of Swaraj (self-rule) by all legitimate
and peaceful means. Swarajya was taken to imply 'self-rule' within the
Empire if possible, without if necessary.409
Around 1915, Gaganendranath withdraw himself from his brother‘s
nationalist preoccupations, he moved into a poetic fairytale world drawing
upon the Bengali stage and literature. While literature nourished his
imagination, unlike the orientalists, he was not interested in painterly
historicism. It was at this juncture that he discovered Cubism‘s
409
Parimo Ratan, Gaganendranath Tagore’s Satirical Drawings and Caricatures, artetc. News&Views,
June 2012.
196
possibilities, as he later confessed to the journalist Kanhaiyalal Vakil, ‗the
new technique is really wonderful as a stimulant‘410
Gaganendranath was a non- conformist. In spite of his family close
association with revivalism, he kept outside the pale of the parochial
orthodoxy of Modern Indian Art. He remained a free painter all through,
free from fetish of all kinds- oriental or occidental.411
According to Parth Mitter, in early 1922, Gaganendranath seized
the ‗modernist moment‘ to realize his artistic vision through
cubism,412
before that he was best known for his brilliantly savage
lithographs caricaturing the social mores of colonial Bengal.
Rabindranath Tagore, his uncle commented on his art, thus, in
1938: "What profoundly attracted me was the uniqueness of his creation, a
lively curiosity in his constant experiments, and some mysterious depth in
their imaginative value. Closely surrounded by the atmosphere of a new
art movement...he sought out his own un trodden path of adventure,
attempted marvellous experiments in colouring and made fantastic trials in
the magic of light and shade."413
410
In Bombay Chronicle(30th
June 1926) Quoted in Mitter Parth, 2007, op,cit. p.23.
411 Roy Kshitis,Gaganendranath Tagore, Contemporary Indian Series, Lalit Kala, Academi, New Delhi,
1964, p.ix
412 Ibid. and See Plate No. 53 a & 53 b.
413 Anand Mulk Raj, Gaganendranath Tagore’s Realm of the Absurd,
http://www.chitralekha.org/articles/gaganendranath-tagore/gaganendranath-tagore.
197
Rabindranath Tagore used to describe Gaganendranath as, ‗an ideal
of completeness in life.‘414
His artistic make-up was one wholesome
entity, and whatever walk of life he tread, he gave it an artistic
orientalisation, flavouring each of his artistic pursuits with daring
originality of conception and execution of a bewildering variety of themes
in different styles and techniques.
The paintings of Gaganandernath were well received in daily news
papers. The Englishman, which had been following his artistic career
closely, described his Cubism as a new phase of oriental art,
complimenting the artist on his beautiful colours.415
While the Statesman
admitted the difficulty of appreciating Cubism‘s revolutionary language, it
praised the painting, ‗Symphony‘ for successfully blending ‗rigid telling
cubist lines with mysterious lighting effects reminiscent of Rembrandt.‘416
Forward, found him to be one of the finest painters of light,
confessing that the appeal of his works lay in their beautiful colours not to
mention their intelligibility. Above all the Englishman, crowned him the
‗master of modern art in Bengal‘.417
414
Roy Kshitis,Gaganandernath Tagore, Contemporary Indian Art Series, Lalit Kaka Academi, New Delhi, 1964, p.i.
415 Quoted in Parth Mitter, 2007, op. cit. p. 21.
416 Mitter Parth, 2007, op. cit. p.21.
417 Ibid p.22.
198
The largest number of paintings of Gaganendranath now forms part
of Rabindra-Bharati Society's collection at Jorasanko. Though
Gaganendranath Tagore, who symbolised the shift in taste from Victorian
naturalism and history painting to non-representational art, Parth Mitter,
explores the impact of the Bauhaus exhibition on artists in Calcutta.
Initially, Gaganendranath echoed the orientalist and nationalist
preoccupations of Abanindranath Tagore, but moved on to find a new
visual diction through Cubism, while remaining rooted in his cultural
milieu.
He became the first modernist to explore Analytical Cubism before
the 1940s and Parth Mitter, rightly calls him ―Poetic- Cubist‖418
. Colonial
historians like W. G. Archer found it hard to frame Gaganendranath within
the western canon, and termed his cubist experiments ―bad imitations of
Picasso‖,419
even critics like Stella Kramrisch and Benoy Sarkar
responded to his poetic worlds filled with prismatic light as expressions
of ‗pure‘ art. Archer‘s, position is still echoed by many western scholars
who remain indifferent to the discourses taking place outside New York,
Paris, Berlin or London.
418
Ibid p. 22.
419Archer W. C, India and Modern Art, London, 1959.
199
According to Jaya Appaswami, ―Gaganendranath Tagore started
paintings at an advance age, although he was very much involved in the
new art movement in the South Verandha of Jorasanko. He painted for his
own pleasure and attempted a wide range of subjects of particular interest
or satirical caricatures of the society of his time. Gaganendranath‘s
fascination for theatre, photography and play of light and shade is
reflected in his images.
Although Gaganendranath was very experimental in his visual
language his cubism was not exactly what was practiced in Paris in the
early 20th century. As Jaya Appaswami says that the forms are created
from small angular shapes, used to achieve a kind of futurist
disequilibrium and motion.‖420
3:4:2 Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941): Apart from being a poet, he
was a philosopher, an educationalist, an economist, a theatre director, the
founder of a University among many other things. In India, Rabindranath
Tagore is probably known most widely today as the first non white poet to
be awarded the Noble Prize for Literature.
According to K. G. Subramanyam, in India Tagore is a national
figure side by side with Gandhiji. If Gandhi is embodiment of the
country‘s national resurgence with a plan for political action that would
420
Appaswami Jaya, Circle of Art; The Three Tagores, commerorating the 150th
birth anniversary of R. N. Tagore, National Gallery of Modern Art. 2011.
200
not sacrifice broad human considerations to narrow national interest,
Tagore- poet, novelist, song writer, musician, theorist, educationist, and
finally painter, all rolled into one –personified its cultural ethos, with roots
in an old age heritage but reaching forward to a limitless future.421
According to Parth Mitter, ―He was probably the best-known World
figure in the inter-bellum years; he counted Albert Einstein, Wilfred
Owen, André Gide and Charlie Chaplin among his numerous admirers. He
was among the luminaries that graced the Sapphic painter and hedonist
Natalie Barney‘s legendary salon. His poems inspired Leoˇs Janáˇcek,
Alexander von Zemlinsky and a host of other European composers.‖422
An avowed cosmopolitan, he undertook twelve world tours,
challenging in the process, colonial representations of India as an inferior
subject nation. The enthusiastic reception in the West, not only of his
writings but also of his painting underscores, yet again the emerging
transnational discourse of global modernity. Tagore, who took up painting
late in life, had a powerful impact on Indian Modernism, but he was also
an influential educationist and founder of a holistic experimental
University in Bengal. Rabindranath Tagore, used to call his paintings: sesh
421
Subramanayam, K.G., Tagore, The Poet-Painter and the West, Rabindranath Tagore, Collection of Essays, edt. By Ratan Parimoo, Lalit Kala Academy, New Delhi, 1989, p. 17
422 Mitter Parth, 2007,p. 65
201
boisher priya. Which means,―Last Age Love or An affair in the evening of
life?‖423
There is an anecdote recounted by Pramathanath Bishi,424
a student
at Santinikean, later a writer. He once in Asram Vidyalaya performed a
―jatra‖ with his fellow students. Tagore saw the act and revealed his
intentions of writing a jatra later to Bishi. Bishi responded with these
words- ―You haven‘t left anything for us lesser talents to pursue; please at
least leave Jatra for us‖425
. Tagore seems to have benevolently complied
with his wishes. So, most of these things have already happened and
Tagore‘s occurrence as an artist, at the age of almost seventy came to the
notice of the world. It was in 1924, which fixes the exact age of the poet at
63.
It is well known fact that Tagore started painting in old age. His
earliest works were ‗Doodles or Erasures.‘426
These were found in his
manuscript of poems in the form of groups of unwanted words or whole
line covered with scribbles of pen often resembling some kind of
grotesque image. At that time it was not sure if Tagore was treating his
423
Sarkar Sandip, The Last Affair, Collection of Essay, op cit. P.117
424 Pramatha Nath Bishi (1901-1985) was an Indian author and parliamentarian from West Bengal. He
was a member of the West Bengal Legislative Council.
425 Jatra is a popular traditional performance from Bengal.
426 See Plate No. 54.
202
painting as only child‘s play. But there are evidences to the contrary.
Tagore, in a poem written to Sudhindranath Dutta mentions- ―Words do
not pamper me, her rule is strict; my lines laugh at their will, they do not
restrict me…‖427
In a series of letters written in the 1930‘s we find Tagore conveying
similar feelings. He writes to Indira Devi from Santiniketan- ―I was very
busy. Now holidays have begun. I am thinking of just to sit in a corner and
paint. I don‘t feel like using my pen…‖428
Writes to Pratima Devi-
―Practically these days I am not writing at all. When I get free moments, I
paint…‖429
In Rani Chanda‘s book we find- ―I wish I could do away with all
other things and just paint. I truly feel in my life today an urge, to
paint….‖430
There are many more such references where Tagore expresses his
reservations with words and his feeling of freedom when painting and
choosing painting over writing as an act. This brings into the equation a
427
The poem was published in the collection, Sesh Saptak(1934), pg. 35, Somendranath
Bandopadhay’s book Rabindra-Chitrakala: Rabindra Sahityer Patabhumika quoted in Konar, Rajdeep,
Tagore’s Paintings: A Creation of Genius, Rupkatha Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in
Humanities,(ISSN0975-2935), vol. 2, No 4, 2010, p. 618
42823/09/1938, “Chitihipatra” 5, pg. 37 in Somendranath Bandopadhay’s Book quoted in Ibid. p. 618.
4291930, “Chithipatra”3,p 37 in Somendranath Bandopadhay’s book. Quoted in Ibid.p. 618.
430 3rd September 1934, “Alapchari Rabindranath”,p. 37 in Somendranath Bandopadhay’s book.quoted
in Ibid. p. 618.
203
matter of choice of one language over the other. This makes it clear, that
when Tagore began painting, he felt unable to express his mind freely in
words and was looking forward to painting seriously as an alternative.
This indicates a void which was getting created in his thoughts, a sense of
incompleteness and dissatisfaction with the potentialities of the written
word. It would be interesting to investigate the origin of this void.
In April 1941 just before his death he told Rani Chanda, a close
associate,
―A great part of literature is insubstantial; with some change in the
language it loses its aesthetic power. While, there is nothing of this kind in
nature. Take the may flower, it breaks into blossom today as it did
yesterday, or as it will in the time to come. But language has this problem.
Painting has, in a sense, greater stability. It is here that seeing through the
eyes and seeing through language are different. Artists leave their work
behind and people see them through ages. In my case everything will go
into dust with me. So I sometimes wonder why I wrote so much in my
life; just a few pieces will have done as well.‖
Another time he tells her, ―We who have traded in lyrics should
know that these will not find acceptance at another time. This is
inevitable. So I often think that only painting has a deathless quality.‖431
It
is because of this very idea that Tagore started painting. In February 1939
he says, ―I have some doubts about literary creativity; its value is fixed on
the basis of notions current at a time, through which its original aim is
431
Rani Chandra, ‘Alpchari Rabindranath’ Visva- Bharti, 1971, p. 100. Quoted in Subramanyan, K.G., op cit. P. 18
204
hard to discover....In this turmoil I have found in my days of retirement,
two stable havens of activity, song- writing and painting.‖432
Tagore did all his paintings in the last seventeen years of his life.
Although, he had taken some lesson in drawing in his childhood. He was
influenced by his elder brother Jyotirindranath, a cultivated
draughtsman.433
He was interested in art and used to watch the new art
movement his nephews, Abanindranath and Gaganendranath launched.
In 1913, he visited the Chicago Art Institute, Armory Show with
1600 exhibits, where Rabindranath studied the entire range of modern
artists from the Impressionists to Marcel Duchamp. Tagore was deeply
impressed with Stella Krammrisch‘s lecture in London in 1920 that,
Tagore invited her to Santiniketan in 1922, where she delivered a series of
lectures on World Art from Gothic to Dadaism. Rabindranath attended
these lectures and translated them himself.
In 1921, he also visited Weimer and Bauhaus, in Germany and met
Kollowitz, Modigliani, Johannes Itten. Tagore‘s visits to the British
Museum also exposed him to primitive art, a form that he would encounter
in his travels to Indonesia, China and America. It was during his trip to
Japan in 1916 that we witness Tagore‘s desire to evolve an art that could
432
Letter to Amiya Chakravarti dated 14th
February, 1934.Quoted in Subramanyan, K.G., opcit. P. 18
433 Subramanyan, K.G., opcit. P. 18
205
syncretise these various strains and would not merely fall back upon
tradition, but would boldly enlarge it.
During his visit to Japan in 1916 he wrote a series of letters to
Abanindranath and Gaganendranath which carried both words of criticism
and advice. After pointing out the salient features of contemporary
Japanese painting,434
its impressive scale, simplicity in image and colour
and its effort to state whatever it wanted with directness and precision he
says in a letter to Abanindranath, ―After coming here I realise that your art
has not found itself completely, sixteen annas to the rupee. Our rainbow–
coloured painting should have, I feel, a little more power, courage and
breadth.‖435
Tagore began painting at a time when he was seeing around him in
Santiniketan painters like Nandalal Bose, Ramkinker Baij and
Benondbihari Mukherjee. His own brothers Abanindranath and
Gaganendranath were eminent painters. He could not have been unaware
of paintings by Jamini Roy.
However, to the surprise of the critics his paintings showed no
influence whatsoever neither technical, nor stylistic nor thematic, of any
of his contemporaries. This was because Tagore rejected the narrow focus
434
Subramanyam, K.G., opcit. P. 19
435Subramanyan K. G. op.cit,. p. 19
206
of cultural authenticity as supported by the Bengal school. He believed in
the concept of cultural borrowing and favoured global culture.
Around 1920, there was a sudden change in Tagore idea of
nationalism. In the first decade of the twentieth century we find Tagore
very closely associated with the political movements in Bengal against the
British colonial regime. In 1905, the Bengal partition movement happens
and perhaps we see Tagore at his political best- writing songs, arranging
‗sobha-jatras‘, voicing his protests against this tyrannical act of the
colonial British government. We find him intoxicated in the hope of a
possible rebellion against the colonial British Government.
However in the second decade of the 20th century we find him in a
process of gradual disenchantment from the frenzy of the Nationalist
Movement. He got the Nobel Prize in 1913 and when he finds the very
same public who had criticized him earlier making an overnight shift to
voice his admiration, he finds it distasteful. He saw the nationalist struggle
being turned into a farce by providing the subject for leisurely evening
socializing along with the Darjeeling Tea and Scotch whisky in homes of
Bengali aristocrat ‗babus.‘
He was concerned with the growing rift between the Hindu and
Muslim communities at a time when there unity was most desirable. In the
mean-while he makes repeated trips to Europe, America and Souh East
207
Asia. He is confronted with the aggressive nationalist politics of
nations.436
In 1914, the First World War is declared. All of this culminates to
create a crisis in his stream of thoughts. As it seems evident in his
correspondences with Gandhi he feels disillusioned with the nationalist
movement by encountering the evils of Nationalist politics, the very seeds
of which as he declares in his famous essay on nationalism are infested in
the essentially western concept of development through competition. He
comprehends that by its own nature a competitive paradigm creates
oppositions, which extend to become enemies. Thus the concept of
competitive development by its very nature breeds violence.
Thus Tagore became skeptical of surrender to a mass ideology. As
opposed to this he began thinking if there can be a process of development
for a human being not by competing with his fellow human beings but
through a process a self enlightenment, self development. He was
proposing a development which is not generated or controlled by external
influences but comes from within the being. This was a point of rupture in
Tagore‘s thoughts. A consequence of this rupture was that Tagore‘s
thoughts began to get more concerned with what he thought as the internal
part of the self than with the external part of it.
436
Rabindranath Tagore’s essay Titled “Nationalism” Penguin Book, India, 2009.
208
Tagore called for universal brotherhood. Painting for Tagore was
the universal language through which he can communicate universally.
We find him saying in his letters that his literary activities are so much
steeped in cultural specificities that it can never communicate to an
audience foreign to them and thus painting, he thought can be the only
medium which could provide him with a license to do so. He writes: ―In
pictures, or in plastic art, the material consists of the representation of
things which are in a way familiar to most people and can easily be
apprehended by everyone … This is why it is much more difficult for a
foreigner to understand foreign music than to appreciate foreign art.‖437
Painting for Tagore, becames the language through which he looks
to communicate universally. A very prominent trait of Tagore‘s paintings
is that, they try to do away with all kinds of immediate particularities:
technical or thematic. He refuted traditional techniques 438
and refused to
entertain an immediate sense of socially or culturally informed reality.
Tagore‘s paintings are mostly figural in nature. The figures are meant to
be almost archetypal and universal.439
437
Bandopadhay Somendranath, Written in Villeneuve, 24 June 1926, ‘Sangitchinta”.p. 68
438 Konar Rajdeep, op. cit.p. 623.
439 Ibid. p.623.
209
There is an attempt at reaching out towards an art which is universal
in nature in terms of it being comprehended irrelevant of the boundaries of
language, culture and nations.
A very interesting incident that would second such a proposition is
an interview of Tagore with Russian critics happened in the occasion of
Tagore‘s paintings being exhibited in Tretiyakov gallery440
. When asked
whether Tagore would like to name his paintings, Tagore replied in the
negative.
Now, when we have realized that Tagore tried to impart his act of
painting with a political significance we must also try to comprehend that
the significance of his politics of universalism does not lie in its universal
nature but in its being a response to a particular historical contingency. It
was a time when it was necessary for the inhabitants of this world to
understand things in a bigger context coming out of their narrowed
loyalties, to foresee the destruction of the human race in such impulses. It
was a time to realize oneself as a member of the human race, and
comprehend one‘s responsibility towards its existence.
It is a well known fact that Tagore refuted many old traditions of
his day. He rebelled against the prevailing colonial education system
setting up is own school at Santiniketan Bramha-vidyalaya, and when
440
Ibid. p. 623.
210
even could not prevent that from falling into a trap of clichés he founded
another one at Sriniketan.441
He abandoned the contemporary urban colonial theater tradition to
set up a completely new kind of theatre in Santiniketan.442
He introduced
women into dancing in his theatre when dancing for women was
considered an obscene act, a subject of strict prohibition for the Bengali
women belonging to respected families.
When he saw the national freedom movement being appropriated
by the opportunists who were strangling it, he criticized it and distanced
himself from what seemed to him a meaningless activity. Tagore thus had
innate in him a revolutionary nature, a natural urge to refute all kinds
clichés and what he understood as not right and in this light painting was
an ultimate act of rebellion, against the self.
The urge to break down, to deconstruct what was unacceptable in
his artistic tradition. This monumental task that Tagore imparts upon
himself and throws himself with gusto towards its realization at the age of
seventy speaks volumes about the revolutionary spirit in his mind.
It was during his trip to Japan in 1916, that we witness Tagore‘s
desire to evolve an art that could syncretise these various strains and
441
Sen Amrit, “Beyond Borders”:Rabindranath Tagore’s Paintings and Visva- Bharati, Rupkhata Journal, vol.2 No.1, p. 34
442 Ibid. p. 34
211
would not merely fall back upon tradition, but would boldly enlarge it.
Tagore‘s movement away from the nationalism in aesthetics can be
located in his essay Art and Tradition (1926): When in the name of Indian
art we cultivate with deliberate aggressiveness a certain bigotry born of
the habit of a past generation, we smother our soul under idiosyncrasies
that fail to respond to the ever changing play of life.443
Rather art was seen
as a sphere where disparate influences could come together to create a
world without borders.
Thus in Art and Tradition, Tagore added: There was a time when
human races lived in comparative segregation and therefore the art
adventures had their experience within a narrow range of limit … But
today that range has vastly widened, claiming from us a much greater
power of receptivity than what were compelled to cultivate in former
ages.444
Tagore‘s own paintings reflect the cosmopolitan approach to art as
he freely moved between the various influences to develop a style of his
own. He was aware of the different route that he was charting, in his letter
to Rothenstein in 1937: I have been playing havoc in the complacent and
stagnant world of Indian art and my people are puzzled for they do not
443
Tagore Rabindranath, Art and Tradition, Collection of essay, op cit. P. 11.
444 Ibid. p. 10.
212
know what judgement to pronounce upon my pictures. But I must say I am
hugely enjoying my role as a painter.445
According to Tagore, ―While, painting the process adopted by me is
quite the reverse. First there is a hint of line and then the line becomes the
form‖.446
It was not until 1924, at the age of 63, that Rabindranath Tagore
began painting. His artistic practice was an outgrowth of his habits as a
writer and poet; revision marks and scratched-out words on his
manuscripts blossomed into free-form sketches and scenes. Tagore‘s
cross-cultural encounters during his many trips abroad influenced his
visual art—tribal artifacts of the Pacific, Javanese music and dance,447
ancient bronzes from China, arts and crafts of Japan and European
modernism are all evident. By incorporating these various motifs and
styles, he created images—rhythmically articulate pictorial forms—he felt
were universal. Indeed, his enigmatic paintings and drawings remain
arresting and compelling today. Of the composition of more than 2,000
works, many pieces feature faces with forlorn expressions rendered in
445
“Rabindranath Tagore to William Rothenstein”, Letter no 195, in Imperfect Encounters: Letters of William Rothenstein and Rabindranath Tagore 1911-1941, ed. Mary M. Lago (Harvard: Harvard University press, 1972), p. 75.
446 “Rabindranth Tagore to Rani Mahalanobis”, November 1928, trans. Khitish Roy, Rabindranath
Tagore, On Art and Aesthetics, A Selection of Lectures, Essay and Letters, Oriental Longmams, Calcutta, 1961.
447 See Plate No. 55
213
dark, foreboding colors. Others express a reverence for nature and for the
rhythm of the natural world. Tagore‘s friend Victoria Ocampo, an
Argentinian socialite and writer, saw his first doodles and drawings and
encouraged him to pursue art. With Ocampo‘s help, Tagore mounted the
first exhibition of his artwork at the Galerie Pigalle in Paris in May 1930.
The show traveled to Europe, Russia, and the United States, earning
him critical acclaim in the West, where Expressionists and Surrealists
were celebrating the subconscious and exploring raw sensations as a
means of breaking from academicism and stylistic conventions. Despite
favorable responses to his artwork abroad, he was hesitant to exhibit his
works in India and did not do so until 1932 when he held a major show at
the Government School of Art in Kolkata. He continued to paint until his
death at the age of 80 in 1941.
Europe and USA recognised the strength and style of Tagore‘s
painting and welcomed them with immense praise. Tagore,
understandably, was exhilarated as this warm reception provided him with
the confidence he was looking for. He wrote to his son Rathindranath on
31.10.1930 saying, ―From my experience of my painting exhibitions in
Europe, I realise, I can rely on my ability on painting.‖448
He also wrote to
Pratimadevi his daughter–in–law in 1930 saying, ―My paintings command
448
Sen Gupta Indrani, Reflection On Paintings Of Rabindranath Tagore, www.easternpanorama.in/.../1136-reflection-on-paintings-of-rabindranat
214
decent prices and it will increase in the coming years.‖449
He felt
immensely pleased when the Berlin National Gallery, procured five of his
paintings.
The drawings of Rabindranath Tagore proved that the poet, though
a master in the use of words, felt that certain things can be better
expressed, or perhaps only expressed in the language of line, tone and
colour.
3:4:3 Jamani Roy (1887-1972): He was, born in 1887 in a village in the
Bankura district of West Bengal, which has a rich tradition of terracotta
and folk art.450
The social and cultural milieu of which he was the part and
the early years of his life contributed in a small measure to his later
development. Watching the village craftsmen he got interested in
paintings. According to Bisnu Dey, ―this isolated, idyllic backdrop
contributed in Roy‘s search of the life in art and the dream of attaining self
completeness in the social life. This is the memory that did not let him
forget the flakily constructed bourgeois space of Calcutta, and its
fascination with morbid western naturalism in art, although it reached an
indisputable height of success in his hand.‖451
449
Ibid.
450 .A.K. Dutta, Jamini Roy, Lalit Kala Academy, New Delhi, 1973, p. 3.
451 Dey Bishnu, “Jamani Roy”, in Dhruba Kumar Mukhopadhyay, ed. Bishnu Dey Prabandha Sangraha,
vol. I, Calcutta, 1997, p. 117.
215
Jamini Roy, has been called the ‗father of the folk renaissance in
India,‘ who created an alternative vision of modern Indian identity.452
As a
child, Roy‘s first encounter with the Santals at Bankura left a permanent
impression in his art. He received his formal training at the Government
Art College in the then Calcutta, where he got rigorous training in the
European mode of art. The school at that time was in moribund state.
Jamini Roy became dissatisfied with the limitation of expression that this
mode presupposes. His search for alternative artistic forms began. Roy‘s
reputation as one of the best portrait painters and his brief but fascinating
post-impressionist period did not thwart this search.
According to Ella Datta, from 1919 to 1920, he was quite
well established as a portrait artist. It was in 1919, he says in an interview
to Bishnu Dey that he began to get restless and dissatisfied with what he
was doing with his portrait work in the European Naturalist Style.453
He was called to the school run by the Oriental Society of Art. Here
also, he was quite discontent: ―The reason why I want to discard European
painting is not because I wish to be ―Swadeshi‖ or Indian but because
even the best European artists including Raphael drew forms like Mary
452
Mukhopadhaya, A, In Jamani Roy, Seminar Paper in the Context of Indian Folk Sensibility and His Impact on Indian Art, New Delhi, 1992.
453 An interview conducted with Ella Datta in August 2013, during the exhibition curated by her
entitled “Jamini Roy: Journey to the Roots” commemorating his 125th birth anniversary at NGMA,
Delhi’
216
carrying infant Jesus standing among clouds in the sky, but with the use of
light and shade made to appear like a full human being-- how is this
possible?‖454
According to Ratnabali, here Jamani Roy, was discarding the
basis on which classical European pictorial form, had developed its
potentials of creating an illusion of nature.455
Therefore he discarded the European naturalist art tradition. In spite
of his close relation with Abanindranath, he criticised the art of the Bengal
School. Roy was critical of the soft lines and paleness of this school,
which was to be considered as ―Indian art.‖456
Therefore the Bengal school
style failed to evoke any genuine interest in him so the only way left open
was to evolve something in his own way. He found support of his personal
views in the paintings of Rabindranath Tagore: While observing the man
painted by Rabindranath, I do not feel that it will drop for a moment, or
swing with the wind. I clearly see that the man has weight and a strong
backbone. That Rabindranath‘s painting is powerful because of this
power of the bone, and for his ability to create rhythm. I think
Rabindranath wants to protest against the lack that had been increasing in
the paintings of our country for the past two-hundred years, since the
454
Interview with Bishnu Dey, Quoted in Chatterjee, Ratnabali, ‘The Original Jamini Roy’ A Study in Consumerism of Art, p. 7
455 Ibid. p.7-8
456 Chatterjee, Ratnabali,‘The Original Jamini Roy’ A study in the Consumerism of Art, Social Scientist,
1987, p. 6
217
Rajput dynasty to the present…his protest is against everything including
the entire tradition of the sophisticated Indian art, and the orientalist art.457
In 1923, while reading Rabindranath‘s essay ―Tapoban‖, that
advocated the restitution of India‘s rural heritage and critiqued the naive
imitation of Western civilization, Roy had a realization: ―Today I have
read what was there in my mind. Just before eight months I realised
this.‖458
Thus his personal search of artistic form gets related to the
dialogic discourses of colonialism and those that countered it. At this point
of time his familiarity with Sunayani Devi‘s paintings and with Kalighat
pata reshaped his artistic perception. The influence of Kalighat pata was
soon to be discarded by him, since he found that the Kalighat artists were
alienated from their traditional rural ideal, as they had moved to Calcutta
to serve an urban population. Roy turned back to the villages of Bengal in
search of the ―traditional‖ pata paintings. The terracotta-reliefs of his
native village, introduced in his works, the simplified, thick outlines,
providing his art with such a verve that was unseen at that time. Roy tried
to incorporate the immensely expressive power of the village artisans by
emphasizing the ―lines at the expense of colours, using black outlines
457
Dey, “Srijukto Jamini Rayer Rabindrakatha”, in Mukhopadhyay, Vol. 2 (Kolkata: Dey’s, 1998),p. 107,
Quoted in Malyadas Deb, Jamini Roy’s Art: Modernity, Politics and Reception, Chitrolekha
International Magazine on Art and Design, Vol. 1, No. 2, August, 2011, p. 113
458 Dey, “Srijukto Jamini Rayer Rabindrakatha”, in Mukhopadhyay, Vol. 2 (Kolkata: Dey’s, 1998),p. 107,
Quoted in Malyadas Deb, Jamini Roy’s Art: Modernity, Politics and Reception, Chitrolekha International Magazine on Art and Design, Vol. 1, No. 2, August, 2011, p. 113
218
painted with a brush on white paper. He forsook oils for tempera and
concentrated on primary colours.‖459
However, Roy rejected Kalighat artists for having lost the rural
idea, when they moved to Calcutta to serve an urban population. In the
mid-1920s, he embarked on his epic journey to the Bengal countryside to
collect folk paintings (pats) and to learn from the folk painters. He was
convinced that the ‗revival of Bengali art will not come from Ajanta,
Rajput and Mughal art . . . [for] one may learn a language that is not one‘s
own but one cannot enter its inner thoughts‘460
In 1929, Roy showed his
first experiments with folk art at an exhibition organized by Alfred Henry
Watson, the English editor of the Statesman newspaper.461
His next
exhibition, held at the Indian Society of Oriental Art on 9th July 1930,
marked his transition from a half-hearted orientalist to a robust primitivist.
Roy‘s bold simplifications and thick outlines applied with sweeping
brushstrokes exuded a crude vigour hitherto unknown in Indian art, his
dull yellow and slate green figures and brick-red backgrounds emulating
the terracotta reliefs of his home village in Bankura. Roy‘s objective was
459
Partha Mitter, “Jamini Roy and Art for the Community”, in The Triumph of Modernism: India’s
Artists and the Avant-Garde, 1922-1947 (London: Reaktion Books, 2007), p. 106.
460 Ibid. p. 104.
461 Mitter Parth, op. cit. p. 104.
219
not to imitate the village artisans but to learn from the expressive power of
their line.
This yearning for formalistic simplicity also took him to the wooden
puppets of Bankura and later to child-art. He was a collector of paintings
made by children and took great interest in them: ―not because of my
affection for them, but because they are vitally important for me.‖462
Jamini Roy tried to transcreate the folk idiom to communicate in a
symbolic, yet recognizable language that possessed universal validity. The
technical virtuosity of his academic training combined with his newly
acquired simplistic formalism enhanced the volume, the rhythm, the
decorative clarity and monumentality in his work.463
Even his mode of artistic production also transformed significantly.
Abandoning the medium of oil, he started to use the seven basic colours
made from organic matters such as rockdust, tamarind seeds, mercury
powder, lamp black etc., and painted with them on his canvas of home-
made fabric. The enormous unreality of the metropolitan Calcutta, laden
with hypocrisy and a non-spiritualistic world-view (finding its apt
expression through the Western naturalistic convention of art) could be
easily juxtaposed by him against the down-to-earth honesty of the folk
462
Quoted in Mitter Parth, op. cit. p. 112.
463 Mitter Parth, op. cit. p. 113.
220
artist. This honesty, according to Jamini Roy, was the most essential thing
for a painter‘s artistic integrity. Parth Mitter, holds that Roy‘s idea of
transforming the homely sphere of North Calcutta into a permanent
exhibition was no less than a ―political manifesto.‖464
The exhibition space was converted into a traditional Bengali
environment. Shanta Devi, who saw the exhibition held: The artist gives
evidence of consummate stage management, embellishing three rooms
with his paintings emulating village pats…Actual village pats are on
display in an adjacent room…little lamps are lit and incense burnt. Floors
are covered in traditional Bengali alpona patterns. In this room decorated
in a Bengali style indigenous seats take the place of chairs, which are of
European origin.465
In an extreme phase of nationalism in India, that was essentialist by
its nature, Roy‘s persistent emphasis on the local was, according to Parth
Mitter, a well-thought ideological move to counter the onslaught of
colonialist capitalism.
Thus caught between the cross purposes of different styles he
intuitively turned to the vital and still living folk tradition, which he knew
intimately from childhood. In it he found a forward solution. His return to
464
Mitter,Parth. Op. cit. p. 105
465 Mitter,Parth. Op. cit. p. 105-106.
221
the village and anonymous folk art indeed provided an ideal answer to his
inner quest. In the word of Stella Kramrisch, ‗it proved to be a conscious
and productive home going.‘ This turning point in the life of Jamini Roy
was of great importance particularly because of artistic development and
ultimate contribution to the art movement as a whole.466
Jamini Roy started his carrier when, according to Ratnabali
Chatterjee, the middle class intelligentsia was oscillating between two
extremes: ―a colonial hangover and a feeling of nationalism bordering on
chauvinism.‖467
The works of Roy provided three possible way-outs to
this intellectual status. The incorporation of folk tradition revived the lost
cultural bond that somehow worked as an antidote to the prevalent
colonial hangover. The bold lines of Roy‘s paintings were compared with
the contemporary European artists like Leger, resulting in the expansion of
outlook of Indian art in the realm of the International during the late
1930s.Thirdly, for the young artists Roy‘s art offered a ―rescue route from
the stylish conventions of the Bengal School, which acted as a constraint
on the depiction of contemporary events-- the war and the famine.‖
Further, ―Jamini Roy offered after a long time a backbone of drawing and
an anatomical framework to Indian art.‖468
466
Datta A.K. op. cit. p. 7.
467 Chatterjee, Ratnabali.Op. cit.p. 5.
468 Chatterjee, Ratnabali, op. cit. p. 6
222
This yearning and denial of the European styles was perhaps the
turning point in Jamini Roy‘s career as well as a key moment in Indian
Modern Art. Seeking a visual vocabulary of his own, Jamini Roy moved
away from traditional academic art and turned towards his roots. Initially
he drew a lot of inspiration from Kalighat Pat paintings as well as
terracotta work on temple walls of Bengal especially Bishnupur temple.
He also showed his fascination for the paintings of peasant painters of
Bengal who used to sell their work at the rural bazaars.
From this, evolved the Jamini Roy the world knows so well. The
lines became bolder and simpler, the colours rich and the images lyrical.
Over time, Roy moved away from canvas and started using different types
of fabric, cloth, wood, mats, etc. As well as colours and pigments made
from vegetables. The art of Jamini Roy was a milestone in contemporary
Indian Art. Not only did it break away from the notion that art was the
sole preserve of the upper classes and had to necessarily follow European
styles but it also brought to fore the folk art language.469
Introduction of
bold yet simple and minimal use of lines also brought in the new wave of
reducing images to the bare essentials and yet tell the story emphatically.
By the 1930s, he had become an iconic figure, the only non-
orientalist to be recognised by the Indian Society of Oriental Art. The
469
See Plate No. 56
223
arch-orientalist Mukul Dey, on his appointment as the first Indian
Principal of the Calcutta Government Art School in 1928, drove the
academic artists out of the institution. But Dey admired Roy and provided
the struggling artist with painting materials and a spacious room in the
school. He also arranged Roy‘s first major exhibition at the art school in
1929. At the end of the show, as Roy was squatting on the floor with paper
and paint, Dey came in and showered him with the banknotes received for
his works.470
Even though Nandalal had his differences with Roy, he
respected him, commissioning him to decorate the venue of the Lucknow
Congress Session in 1936. His blown up versions of pats were displayed at
the Lucknow Congress with Nandalal‘s panels.
He painted ordinary men and women from the village, reinventing
popular images from the patua’s repertoire. Jamini Roy restricted his
palette to seven colours- Indian red, yellow ochre, cadmium green,
vermillion, grey, blue and white. These were mostly earthy or mineral
colours.471
Women especially were painted in very graceful postures.472
Among Roy‘s admirers some were eminent Marxists and
intellectuals of Bengal like Bishnu Dey, Sudhindranath Dutta respectively,
who were also the leading avant-garde poets writing in Bengali. Roy‘s
470
Mitter Parth, op. cit. p. 110.
471 See Plate No. 57.
472 See Plate No. 58.
224
championing of the popular art (which had a social basic, as it was created
in a mode of communitarian participation, thereby subverting the capitalist
notion of the lone genius), was hailed by this group of intellectuals. A
debate was generated by this group regarding the role of folk art and that
of the artist in the modern class-society, in which Jamini Roy was posed
as a model in the centre. In his essay ―Lokashilpa O Babusamaj‖ Bishnu
Dey observes: We, the unfortunate inheritors of chaos and exploitation of
a number of centuries can still save ourselves by participating in the
reawakening of our indigenous mass. The folk culture will get a new life
in the mass culture.473
In another essay Dey observes that Jamini Roy has not only
emancipated our art, but he also has modified the urban way of seeing by
making us perceive through the eyes of the marginal people.474
Discarding
the immense subversive potential in the works of the folk artisans, Dey
admiringly appropriates the way in which Jamini Roy artistically
manoeuvres rural art into the urban middle-class Marxist thought: He is an
extremely capable selector: a conscientious artist. His taste has not for a
moment abandoned his brush. On the other hand, the folk artists are
473
Dey Bishnu, “Lokshilp O Babusamaj” in Mukhopadhyay, vol. I, p. 227.
474 Dey Bishnu, “Jamini Roy” p. 122.
225
craftsmen by habit. Devoid of conscience, it is natural for them not to
possess the degree of good taste that Roy has.475
It is important to note that Dey prefers the conditioned form of art,
rather than the raw. This disregard for the art of the mass indicates the
intellectual elitism, in which the Marxist thinking of this phase of Bengali
politics was restricted. Jamini Roy‘s art not only provided them with a
model to follow, but it also participated tacitly in the politics of
―modernization‖ and ―reality‖ to be expressed in art. The aristocratic /
exclusivist bourgeois art that the Marxists perceived as ―unreal‖ was thus
substituted by the art of Jamini Roy with all its peripheral associations, yet
tampered by a sophisticated artistry. Robin Mondal holds that the support
of these intellectuals was influential in giving Roy the acceptability to the
wider section of art lovers. Foreigners like John Irwin, Mary Milford,
Maie Casey came to visit Roy primarily as the friends of these
intellectuals and from 1940s, Roy‘s international reputation began to
grow. In 1945, Roy‘s first exhibition in foreign was held at the Arcade
Gallery in London, which was inaugurated by the novelist E. M. Forster.
An attempt was made by these foreigners to appropriate Jamini Roy‘s
obsession with pure form into the prevalent discourse of modernism. Mary
475
Dey Bishnu, “Jamini Roy” p. 119.
226
Milford‘s essay ―A Modern Primitive‖ in the influential literary magazine
Horizon introduced him to the modernist intellectual milieu in London.476
3:4:4 Amrita Sher Gil (1913-1941): Daughter of Umrao Singh Shergil, a
sikh aristocrat and scholar, and Marie Antoinett a Hungarian, Amrit
Shergil was born in Budapest in 1913. She spent her early childhood in
Hungary and then came to India. Her mother took her to Italy and Paris,
the prominent centre of artistic activity and the birthplace of many a
historic art movement in the 19th and early 20th centuries.
Amrita had the good fortune of studying at the best art school at
Paris, the Ecole des Beaux Arts, under the competent guidance of great
masters. Besides, living in Paris, she had the added advantage of visiting
art galleries, museums, salons, etc. She studied the works of contemporary
and ancient master painters in the original.
Amrita's work done during her stay in Europe till 1934 was largely
academic, consisting of still-life, nude studies, portraits and like. Her
artistic abilities got new turn and bloomed only after she returned to India.
She came here not as a foreigner attracted by the 'picturesque' India, and
the exotic sights and smells; she came here as an Indian in feeling and
spirit and with a mind to make this land her home. Despite her training in
476
Jamini Roy’s Art: Modernity, Politics and Reception, op. cit. p.
227
Western Art, she had complete awareness and deep respect for India's
artistic traditions.477
When she set foot on Indian soil for the first time in November
1934, she was haunted by the faces of the unhappy and dejected, poor and
starving Indians whom she saw first around Simla, then in the South and
finally in Punjab, where she spent the last days of her life. After settling
down in Simla in early 1935, she took an important decision of
interpreting "the life of Indians, particularly the poor, pictorially." She
wrote, ―I am an individualist, evolving a new technique, which though not
necessarily Indian in the traditional sense of the word, will yet be
fundamentally Indian in spirit. With the eternal significance of form and
colour I interpret India and, principally, the life of the Indian poor on the
plane that transcends the plane of mear sentimental interest."478
These
words suggest that she had a clear idea of what she was to accomplish in
the near future.
Before coming to India, she was already a public figure in Europe.
She was influenced by the art of the Post Impressionists, Cezanne and
Gauguin.479
After returning to India in 1934, her first work was for Simla
Fine Art Society.Followed by exhibitions in various cities of India. Amrita
477
www.sikh-heritage.co.uk/arts/amritashergil/amritashergill.html
478 Amrita Sher-Gil, ‘Evolution of my Art’, 1972, p. 139.
479 Dalmia Yashodara, Amrita Sher-Gil, A Life, Penguin Books, India, 2006, p. 192.
228
Shergil was interested in the art of her time but found it largely
uninspiring. She travelled to the ancient art sites in India- Ajanta, Ellora
and to the far south and studied the murals and sculpture.
After her tour she began working in Simla and produced some
remarkable works during this period. Amrita Shergil was very confident of
her work, which is apparent in the letter she wrote to her mother from
Paris in 1932 ―To my greatest astonishment and to everybody‘s surprise, I
did not win the prize, which this year was awarded ‗to the most
modern‘...... But I am not at all depressed because I know, that I have
produced excellent piece.‖480
While still a student in Paris, she wrote in a
letter how she began to be haunted by an intense longing to return to India,
feeling in some strange way that there lay my destiny as a painter.481
She
returned to India in 1934.
Like Tagore, Amrita Shergil felt that India was ―Where the tiller is
tilling the hard ground and where the path maker is breaking stones. He is
with them in sun and in shower, and his garment is covered with dust, she
was deeply moved by the misery around her and discovered for herself
that India was in village.482
480
Sundram Vivan, Amrita Sher- Gil, A Self Potrait in letters and writings. Tulika Books, 2010, p. 79.
481 Amrita Sher- Gil, “Evolution of My Art;” Usha, Amrita Sher- Gil. special issue, Lahor, 1942, p. 99.
482 Dhingra, Baldoon, Amrita Sher- Gil, Lalit Kala , New Delhi, p. iii.
229
Amrita Shergil was greatly impressed and inspired by the traditional
schools of Indian paintings, such as Ajanta, Rajput and Mughal
miniatures. She however developed her own style, which though not
necessarily Indian in the traditional sense of words, was fundamentally
Indian in spirit. She once said, I would like to see the art of India . . .
produce something vital connected with the soil, yet essentially Indian.483
It is this rejection of historicism for an art connected with the soil that
forms the corner stone of her ‗artistic authenticity‘. She discovered village
India after shuttling between India and Hungary in the early years of her
life.484
As soon as she set foot on the Indian soil, her painting underwent a
great change in theme, spirit and technical expression, becoming more
fundamentally Indian. She then realized that her real artistic mission in life
was to interpret the lives of poor Indians pictorially; to paint ‗those silent
images of infinite submission and patience, to depict their angular brown
bodies, strangely beautiful in their ugliness; to reproduce on canvas the
impression their eyes created on me‘.485
Art must be connected with the
soil, she once told the artist Barada Ukil, if it was to be vital.486
483
Amrita Sher- Gil, Trends of Art in India, in Vivan Sundaram Amrita Sher-Gil, p. 142.
484 Archer, India and Modern Art, op cit pp 80- 99.
485 Amrita Sher- Gil, Evolution of My Art; Usha, Amrita Sher- Gil special issue, p. 96.
486 Ukil, quoted in Iqubal Singh, Amrita Sher- Gil, p. 45.
230
According to Vivan Sundram, ―In her first year in India....during the
months of high- living, she produced sentimental and romanticised version
of Indian poverty in paintings like Mother India, The Beggars, and
Woman with Sunflower.....For her the poverty of India was beautiful and
the people who barely survived inhuman and primitive conditions, merely
exciting images.....One day, she nonchalantly told a friend that if there
were no poor and destitute people in India, she would have nothing to
paint.487
In 1936, the journalist Ela Sen explained that Sher-Gil‘s life‘s
ambition was to present the misery of Indian life to a wider audience and
to elevate it to a higher plane through the medium of colour, form and
design.488
The Bengali monthly Prabasi paid her a rare tribute in 1939:
though her style was foreign, her authentic image of a poor, melancholy,
rural India struck a chord in Indians.489
Maie Casey was all praise for
Amrita Shergil, according to her, ‗An Indian with a measure of European
blood, she returned to India to shed her acquired skill...... She saw her
country with vision and has left a legacy of pictures, simple and
grand......as a tribute to Indian Countryside and its people.490
487
Sundram, Vivan, Marg, pp.15-16.
488 Ella Sen, Prominent Women in India, Quoted in Iqubal Singh, Amrita Sher Gil, pp. 55-56.
489 Prabasi, Quoted in Parth Mitter, 2007, p. 55.
490 Casey, M. Quoted in Parth Mitter, op. cit. 2007, p. 45.
231
Amrita Shergil learnt about Indian art not directly but through
European distortations. In September 1934 she wrote ―Modern art has led
me to the comprehension and appreciation of Indian painting and
sculpture. It seems paradoxical but I know for certain that had we not
come away to Europe, I should have perhaps never realised that a fresco
from Ajanta or a small piece of sculpture in the Musee Guimet is worth
more than the whole Renaissance.491
Amrita Shergil was the first and the most famous artist of the
century. Prior to her only two female opted this profession, one was
Mangala Bai, sister of Raja Ravi Varma and another was Sunena Devi.
But it was Amrita Shergil who provided a role model for women artists‘ of
future generation. She was the first professional woman artist in India
whose life and career were very different from many other women artists‘
of the twentieth century.492
Amrita Shergil exhibited her first work done in India at Simla Fine
Art Society‘s exhibition in 1935, where she was awarded a prize for one
of her painting, but the society turned down some of her works, she
declined the prize and gave in writing to the society that the prize should
491
Amrita Sher- Gil letter dated September 1934, to her parents. Quoted in Vivan Sundram’s Amrita Sher –Gil.
492 Mitter, Parth, 2007, op. cit. p. 51.
232
go to someone who was more in tune with the hidebound conventionality
fostered by the society.
I would be glad to waive it(the prize), in favour of some other more
deserving artist, who, I have no doubt would feel greatly honoured to
receive such a distinction and whose work would correspond more than
mine, dose to the traditional conventionality so carefully preserved for the
last sixty three years by the judges of the Simla Fine Arts
Exhibition…And since my work, I am referring to the five pictures that
were rejected and which incidentally were incomparably superior in every
way to the five that were accepted- does not come up to the standard of the
Simla Fine Arts Society,I shall in future be obliged to resign myself to
exhibiting them merely at the Grand Salon Paris, of which I happen to be
an Associate, and the Salon des Tuileries known all over the world as the
representative exhibition of Modern Art and to which I have been invited
to participate in the past a distinction, I add, that few can boast of, and all
the other exhibitions representative of contemporary art in Europe, where I
have exhibited and shall exhibit in future, and where I can, at least, be sure
of receiving some measure of impartiality, whatever my work may
merit.‖493
493
Amrita Sher- Gil’s letter dated 21st
September 1935 to Simla Art Society. Quoted in Vivan Sundram’s Amrita Sher –Gil.
233
Baldoon Dhingra is of the opinion that Amrita Shergil declined the
prize because India during thirties was dominated by the Bengal School of
painting, a school she thought, highly lyrical and effeminate. Outside
influences were few and European painting was almost unknown.
Amrita‘s work which was a rediscovery of classical values was
vigorous and challenging, therefore ignored, whereas the works of other‘s
were lauded. As she was deeply conscious of ‗ her mission‘, she felt she
had to decline a prize offered to her by Simla Art Society so as not to
identify herself with the prevailing trends feeding exclusively on
mythology and romance.
In November 1936, Amrita arrived in Bombay which was the first
stop on important tour to the south. Here she met Karl Khandalavala, who
was the first person to attempt to understand her work and who was later
to become a great champion of it. Amrita discovered the richness and
variety of the Rajput and Basohli miniature painters. She was dazzled and
delighted! A seed had been sown. At the present moment she could not
use such pure brilliant colours and some other discovery was needed, for
her palette still consisted of the cool stone colours we find in paintings like
Hill Men. ―I have for the first time since my return to India learnt
something from somebody else's work‖.494
Then come Ajanta and Ellora!
494
Amrita Sher –Gil in a letter dated 5th
December 1936 from Hyderabad, mentioned in Vivan Sundram, Re-take of Amrita, Tulika books, New Delhi, 2001.
234
She exclaimed ―Revelations. Ellora magnificent, Ajanta, curiously subtle
and fascinating‖.495
In South India she went to Cochin, Trivandrum, Cape Comorin and
Madurai. She visited temples both for sculpture and to see active
manifestations of religion also discovering frescoes in obscure places
(Mattancheri) and seeing the 'subtle and forceful' Kathakali dance drama.
The sight of the semi-naked black bodies of the south Indians draped
predominantly in white against a background of rich emerald green
vegetation made a strong visual impact on her. She was so eager to paint
this impression in terms of the form she had been so excited about in
Ajanta that while at Cape Comorin she executed
the 'Fruit Vendors.496
However it was not until her return to Simla that she painted what
has often been called her South Indian Trilogy: The Bride's Toilet497
, The
Brahmacharis498
and South Indian Villagers going to Market.499
She later
described The Brahmacharis as the most difficult thing she had ever done;
but she seems to have derived a sense of satisfaction from it, for she asks
495
Amrita Sher –Gil in a letter dated 23rd
December 1936 to Karl Khandalavala from Hyderabad,
mentioned in Vivan Sundram, Re-take of Amrita, Tulika books, New Delhi, 2001.
496 See plate No.59
497 See plate no.60
498 See plate No. 61.
499 See plate No. 62.
235
in a letter- 'don't you think I have learnt something from Indian
painting?'500
That she was not concerned with representing specific types
of Indians is demonstrated in that she was content to use Pahari and even
Sikh models for the Trilogy. In her paintings, entitled Hill Men and Hill
Women, there is nothing, which particularises a definite ethnic type. She
was concerned with developing a certain personal facial type with whose
expression she identified her own feelings. In the large-eyed, dark and
angular faces with their pouting lips (which can be seen in much of her
work until 1937) there is even a vague reminder of the way she herself
used to make up.
By now the transformation in her work was complete and she had
found her 'artistic mission' which, according to her was, to express the life
of Indian people through her canvas.501
While in Saraya Sher-Gil wrote to
a friend thus: ―I can only paint in India. Europe belongs to Picasso,
Matisse, and Braque.... India belongs only to me‖.502
Her stay in India
marks the beginning of a new phase in her artistic development, one that
was distinct from European phase of the inter war years when her work
showed an engagement with the works of Hungarian painters, especially
500
Amrita Sher –Gil in a letter dated 15th
June 1937 to Karl Khandalavala from Simla, mentioned in Vivan Sundram, Re-take of Amrita, Tulika books, New Delhi, 2001.
501 Dalmia Yashodhara, Amrita Sher- Gil A Life, Penguin Books, 2006.
502 Dalmia Yashodhara, Amrita Sher- Gil A Life, Penguin Books, 2006, p. preface xiii.
236
the Nagybanya School of painting.503
At this point there is a startling
change in the artist's development. Perhaps it was
because she felt incapable of sustaining the tension of the Brahmacharis,'
or she may have realised intuitively that the influence of Ajanta was an
artistic impasse; or may, be it was just her own inconsistency. Whether it
was for one or a combination of all of these reasons, she now painted two
small pictures simultaneously with the execution of one of her largest
compositions, South Indian Villagers going to Market. In these she
deliberately eschewed the monumentality of her trilogy in favour of
parrot-like figures, sitting at their ease in a courtyard, painted so as to
convey a sonorous modulation of colour and an unctuous texture.
In April 1938 she wrote to Karl, 'I don't know whether it is a
passing phase or a durable change in my outlook but I see in a more
detached manner, more ironically than I have ever done. Less,'humanely'
if you like to put it that way but also less romantically. That is why at the
moment I am fonder of the Moghuls, the Rajputs and the Jains than of
Ajanta. Also I am terribly fond of painting. I grow more and fonder of it,
of paintings itself, if you know what I mean.‘504
503
In the art world, the MIENK ( a circle of Impressionists and Naturalists), the Nyolcak(eight) and Nagybanya school were established. Named after the town in which it was established, the Nagybanya School rebelled against the dreary art taught by the Academy and believed in plein-air painting, which involved working from natural sight without any modification, as well as using primary colours, painting primarily in the open air, and preserving the phenomenon of sunshine.
504letter to Karl Khandavala dated April 1938 in Amrita Sher- Gil, Sundaram.
237
From January to May 1938, she painted at Saraya: ‗Elephants
Bathing in a Green Pool Red Clay Elephant and The Verandah with Red
Pillars and at Simla, Hill Side, Hill Scene and Village Scene‘. Of these she
said, ―these little compositions are the expression of my happiness and
that is why perhaps I am particularly fond of them and will always have a
tender spot in my heart for them even when my calm vanishes and the
little compositions along with it‖.505
From this period onwards, the figures in Amrita's paintings were
either represented as small caricatures placed in a landscape or they
physically take up the whole canvas and their emotive expressions and
gestures became the raison d'etre of her work.
The Society, the most esteemed in Colonial India, exacted its
revenge by excluding her work from a show several years later. In 1939
she became convinced of the general hostility of the Indian Art World: the
Bombay Art Society rejected some of the works submitted; the Fine Arts
Exhibition held in Delhi failed to make any special commendation of her
work. For her part, lacking all diplomacy, she lost a lucrative sale of her
works in Hyderabad because she ridiculed the art collector‘s taste for
Victorian painting.
505
letter to Karl Khandavala dated April 1938 in Amrita Sher-Gil, Sundaram.
238
By the end of 1939, she felt demoralized by what she interpreted as
indifference to her work. Amrita wrote ruefully, ‗Funny that I, who can
accept a present without the least pang of conscience, should not be able
to say that a bad picture is good even if it is in my interest to do so.‘506
She
wrote that the ‗artist has every right to reject or accept public estimates of
her work. When the public makes a mistake regarding a picture, it is the
business of the artist by some gesture to show that the public is un-
informed and dull.‘507
Nonetheless she craved for recognition. In 1937, the Bombay Art
Society awarded her a gold medal for her painting Three Women. She was
deeply moved because she felt she did not have to compromise her artistic
integrity to receive this recognition. SherGil held her first solo exhibition
at the fashionable, Faletti‘s Hotel in Lahore in November 1937. Charles
Fabri, the Hungarian art critic of the Civil and Military Gazette in Lahore,
expressed his admiration for the kind of modernism he could relate to,
modern but not ugly or incomprehensible.508
By 1939 Amrita Shergil executed some superb paintings. According
to Charles Fabri ―The India which Amrita Shergil painted was her own
familiar country. At the age of nine she comes to live in the village of her
506
Letter dated April, 1941 from Saraya to her sister, in Vivan Sundaram Amrita Sher- Gil, p. 100.
507 Amrita Sher- Gil, The Usha, special issue, August 1942, p 34.
508 Dalmia Yashodhara, Amrita Sher- Gil A Life, Penguin Books, 2006, p.100.
239
uncle. And what she saw their impressed her more than anything else- the
peasants with their sad faces, with their dreamy lost looks, the slow
swaying gait. The peasants were not strange, odd creatures of another
exotic world, but her own sister and brothers..... In her whole artistic
‗oeuvre‘, Amrita Shergil never painted a single Indian in action, running
or gesticulating or dancing or rejoicing. All her figures are like her huge
elephants or buffaloes lazily lounging or placidly moving with gentle
steps. Great dead walls, large, static trees add to the static peace and
breathless silence of her work.509
Despite her remarkable stylistic affinities with Gauguin, she was
moving more and more towards an individual style of her own, that is,
towards greater simplification of form and elimination of unimportant
details. By 1936, she had seen the Ajanta frescoes that were to leave a
deep impression on her style and colour schemes. In Fruit Vendors and
Bride's Toilet, this influence is palpably discernible. Here we have the
same Ajantesque simplification of physique and the same reliance on clear
outime and firmly moulded form. This style marks almost all her paintings
executed between 1935 and 1937. By this time, she had achieved that
509
www.poknapham.in/archives/2009/March/18-03-2009/Page_4
240
perfect blending of western techniques and Indian spirit, which no Indian
painter had been able to achieve till then. She had laid the foundation of
modern Indian art.
Amrita Shergil guided her contemporary painters not only by her
works but also through lectures and articles in which she urged them not
to cling to "traditions that were once vital, sincere and splendid and which
are now merely empty formulae", nor to imitate fifth rate western art
slavishly. She also told them to "break away from both and produce
something vital, connected with the soil, something essentially Indian."510
Her most devastating criticisms were reserved for the Bengal School,
because even in decline its historian attitude defined artistic nationalism,
which she needed to demolish in order to establish her own artistic
‗authenticity‘.
Forced to acknowledge, Nandalal‘s pre-eminence, privately she
dismissed his ‗uninspired cleverness‘, which was ‗capable of producing
good work only under the inspiration of a particular school‘.511
Far from
fulfilling its vast ambitions, she declared, the renaissance in Indian
Painting led by the Bengal School was responsible for the stagnation of
Indian art.
510
www.sikh-heritage.co.uk/arts/amritashergil/amritashergill.html
511 Letter to Khandalval, Feb- March 1938 in Sundaram, Amrita Sher- Gil, p. 124.
241
Its only raison d‘etre was to have made at least ‗a certain layer of
people‘ in India aware of the great art of the past.512
Her radio broadcast
on 19th August 1941, months before her death, publicly denouncing the
Bengal School, has earned justified notoriety. But she was even less
sparing of the academic artists of Bombay led by Gladstone Solomon.513
The Government of India has declared her works as National Art
Treasures, and most of them are housed in the National Gallery of Modern
Art in New Delhi.
Thus we find that Amrita Shergil showed a strong empathy and
deep engagement for her Indian subjects and depicted the poverty the
poverty which she witnessed. Bride Toilet, Bramhcharies and south Indian
villagers going to market are few of her works which convey her
compassion for the underprivileged. Influenced by her surroundings and
experiences, her paintings are carved out with eloquent symbols of the
human conditions. Her artistic mission was to express the lives of Indian
people through her paintings. This marked a significant point in her
512
Sher –Gil, The Usha, p. 24.
513 Letter to Khandalval, 15
TH January 1937, in Sundaram, Amrita Sher- Gil, p. 102..
243
Post Colonial Painting
4:1 Pre Independence Art Trends: The influence of modern art was felt
long before independence in cities like Bombay, Calucutta, Madras,
Lahore, Lucknow, and later in Jaipur, where schools of art were
established by the British. Other agencies which promoted contemporary
art were the art societies in these cities: The Bombay Art Society
(established in 1888), All India Fine arts and Crafts Society (AIFACS) at
Delhi (established in 1928), The Academy of Fine Arts, Calcutta
(Established in 1933), Punjab Fine arts Society, Lahore, and similar
institution in Madras and Lucknow514
.
4:2 Gladstone Solomon and the developments in Bombay: Bombay
was the first city where contemporary art developed and from here it
spread to other centres in India. Pestonji Bomanji, M.V. Dhurandhar, M
.F. Pithawala, J. R. Lalkaka, A. X. Trinidade, V. A .Mali, V. S. Gurjar, S.
L. Haldankar, Gopal Dueskar (painters), and G.K. Mhatre, V.P.
Karmarkar, B .V. Talim, D. K. Goregaonkar were well known artists.
514
artbullindia.com/new1/auctionCatalogueFeb2014.pdf
244
Gladstone Solomon, Director of the Sir J. J. School of Art (1919-
36), also contributed significantly towards the development of
contemporary art in western India and he initated moves to ‗restore‘
Indian art.515
He greatly admired traditional Indian art. The revival of
Indian art, however, was first launched by E. B. Havell when he joined the
Government School of Art, Calcutta, as Principal in 1896. Dr Ananda
Coomaraswamy, Sister Nivedita and Aurobindo too joined him in his
efforts. They sought to expose the ignorance of English critics, such as
John Ruskin Monier Williams, George Birdwood, Vincent Smith and
Roger fry, who severely condemned traditional Indian art as ‗meaningless
fragments of colour and flowing of line‘.516
Solomon was determined to inject a new energy into the moribund
art school and provide a persuasive ‗indigenous‘ alternative to
Abanindranath‘s orientalism.517
Under the guidance of Solomon, the Sir J. J School of art executed
in 1923, a prestigious assignment known as ‗The India Room‘ which was
England‘s first viewing of contemporary Indian art.518
The objective was
to show that the true work of the modern Indian artist is to revive the
515
Dalmia Yashodhara, The Making of Modern Indian Art the progressives, Oxford, 2001, p. 26.
516 Mago Pran Nath, Contemporary Art in India, A Perspective, National Book Trust, India, 2001, p.45.
517 Mitter Parth, 2007, op. cit. p. 182
518 Solomon Gladstone W.E, The Bombay Revival of Indian Art.Govt of Bombay, pp. 1-8
245
ancient and national methods of artistic expression and revitalize and
restore them.519
The Government of India planned an ambitious display of the
natural and artificial products of the Empire in 1924, including
contemporary Indian art, as a triumph of enlightened patronage. What
better way to publicize the success of the new mural class than to win a
prominent place in this lavish Imperial showcase? Prima facie, this was an
uphill task for Solomon because in official circles the Bengal School was
synonymous with contemporary art in India.520
SirWilliam Rothenstein,
head of the Royal College of Art, wrote to his friend Rabindranath Tagore
on 6 April 1923: [Laurence] Binyon, [William] Foster & myself are acting
as official advisers in the matter of Indian representation in the Fine Art
section at next year‘s Exhibition. We feel that if your nephews could send
over their collection of paintings we could show a portion of them & give
our people here a chance of seeing the extent and quality of the
portfolios.521
Abanindranath‘s disciples, a number of whom headed
government art schools, were entrusted with the selection of works for
Wembley. A Fine Arts Committee was formed which included two
519
Mago Pran Nath, op. cit. p. 45.
520 Mitter Parth, 2007, op.cit. p. 191.
521 Rothenste to Tagore, 6
th April 1923 quoted in Mitter Parth,2007, op. cit. p. 191.
246
orientalists, O. C. Gangoly, the ideologue of the Bengal School, and
Samarendranath Gupta, Deputy Principal of the Mayo School of Art in
Lahore. However, in order to appear even-handed, Lionel Heath, Principal
of the Mayo School, and Solomon were also nominated to the committee.
Once there, with the dedicated support of Lloyd and his own forceful
canvassing, Solomon was able to secure a strong representation for
Bombay.522
His students were invited to send an entire Indian Room,
decorated by the different departments, in a triumphant demonstration of
Gesamtkunstwerk. Dhurandhar organized the work, which took nine
months to complete. On the eve of his retirement, Lloyd paid a last visit to
the school to admire the Indian Room before it was shipped to London.523
Entirely built of Malabar teak, the Indian Room boasted a richly
painted ceiling, depicting the Hindu sun god Surya and the eight planets,
and was embellished with decorative borders of Ajantan inspiration.524
The mural painting at the Imperial Secretariat, Delhi, were also
executed under- Solomon‘s supervision.525
These paintings, Located in a
wide dome, over a broad cornice and narrow frieze, measure about 1,500
square feet. The mural depicted arts such as music, drams, dance, painting
522
Ibid. p. 191.
523 Solomon Gladstone W.E., The Bombay Revival of Indian Art, published with the permission of
Government of Bombay, Chapter III, The Indian Room.
524 Ibid.
525 Mitter Parth, 2007, op. cit. pp.202-210
247
sculpture and architecture, as well as eight aspires (flying figures)
representing the famous periods of Indian art526
. These paintings were
executed by Bhonsale, Fernandes, Nagarkar, Ahivasi, Gadgil, Joshi,
Mohite, Ms Davar and Ms Bamboat, some of whom later become teachers
in the Sir J. J. School of Art.527
The project proved the strength of the
Bombay painters in the handling of the thematic Indian style, and brought
great prestige to the School.
In 1936 Charles Gerrard became the director of the Sir J. J. School
of Art.528
He gave a new direction to painting and sculpture by exposing
students and teachers to modern techniques in pictorial design, application
of paint and achieving textural effects.529
Students were encouraged to
paint in thick impasto of colour and even apply it with a palette knife.530
Revivalism, so tenderly nurtured by Solomon, was gradually replaced by a
bold attempt to fuse the concepts of Indian pictorial design with new
media and styles of execution.
526
Ibid.
527 Ibid.
528 Dalmia Yashodhara, 2001, p. 27.
529 Ibid. p.27.
530 Ibid. p. 27.
248
At this juncture (1937) a group of young painters, who come to be called
‗Young Turks,‘531
successfully synthesized the Indian design value with
mannerisms of post- impressionism and expressionism. The group, which,
included, P.T.Reddy, M.T.Bhople, A. A. Majeed, M. Y. Kulkarni and C.
B. Baptista, effectively promoted interest in innovative technique. These
Young Turks or ‗The Bombay Group of contemporary Indian Artists‘ held
their first exhibition in Bombay in 1941. In his foreword to the catalogue
of the exhibition Gerrard wrote:
The exhibition represents the work of five young artists who have banded
themselves together in a group, to place before the public their individual
expressions in painting, each approaching the subject from his own
particular angle and vision. They are certainly a mixed group consisting of
Brahmins, non- Brahmins, a Mohammedan, and an Indian Christian artists
working harmoniously together as a simple unit; their singleness of
purpose will eventually prove their strength in promoting a contemporary
art movement which they have launched.They are too preoccupied in their
mission to enter into futile argument and idle controversy, they prefer to
get on with the job…I have personally watched the development of the
artists and have admired their untiring effort to acquire the power to
express themselves in paint. Often, under the most difficult financial
circumstances they have continued to forge ahead stimulated by the
artistic urge within themselves.532
Artists scattered throughout the vast sub-continent whether it be
north, south, east, or west, are becoming increasingly conscious of the
necessity for breaking away from the constant repetition of the admittedly
531
Ibid. p. 27.
532 Dalmia Yashodhara, 2001, pp. 27-28.
249
good things which the culture of India has shown in the past, in an
endeavour to create, it is hoped, a true and worthy representative
contemporary art of an India having a great tradition and cultural
background.
The time-worn maxim that art knows no boundaries still holds
goods, and it would indeed be futile to restrict the conception of
contemporary art to conform to a limited and provincial outlook.
Nevertheless, India owing to the vastness of area, the richness in the
variety of her people and her many creeds, must necessarily produces
different means of approach in the attainment of contemporary art.
Gerrard was far sighted as to the course of development Indian art
would, or perhaps should, take, particularly in view of the growth in
internationalism in art. He was clearly conscious of the necessity for
change towards secularism in art, which would be true and worthy of the
‗great Indian‘ tradition and its cultural background. He hoped for a true
synthesis of the modern Western and the traditional Indian aesthetic
norms.
The artists of Bombay were not much affected by the Bengal
revivalist movement. Despite the efforts of Principals of the J. J. School
of Art, Griffiths, Greenwood and Burns to encourage an Indian style of
Painting, illusionist realism prevailed and continued for the first three
250
decades of the century. Although Gladstone Solomon succeeded in
persuading some of his students to adopt the ‗Indian technique‘, the
British academic style continued.533
4:3 Developments in Calcutta: -In Calcutta, the 1940s saw the
culmination of the national freedom struggle, a devastating famine and the
fearful impact of the Second World War. But neither the War nor the
struggle for Independence created any impact on the creativity of the
artists in Calcutta. The effect of the famine was so strong that it stirred the
Calcutta artists more than the War or politics. Among the artists who
painted striking scenes of the famine included Zainul Abedin (1917-76)
and Adinath Mukherji (1921-59).
The most important event of the 1940s was the establishment of the
Calcutta Group in 1943. It was founded by Gopal Ghose, Paritosh Sen,
Prodosh Das Gupta and others of Calcutta, who had imbibed the spirit of
the modern art movement in Europe and shared aesthetic norms that were
contemporary. Although their individual style was different, they shared in
innovative outlook, a need to shake off the shackles of tradition and enter
the mainstream of world art.534
533
Mago Pran Nath, op. cit. p. 48.
534 Mago Pran Nath, op. cit. p. 49.
251
Another important painter, introspective and self-reliant, was
Binode Behari Mukherjee (1904-80). Independent almost to the point of
being lonely, he was committed to reiterating the experience of the
mystery of the ordinary world.
Ramkinkar Vaji, who spent all his life at Shantiniketan, was trained
in the Western academic style; he created entirely by his own genius. His
subjects were the common people, he worked mostly in a form that was a
peculiar synthesis of the native folk and subsist elements, possessing a
social significance and symbolic depth. His work reveals an ―organic
integrity and exuberant energy.‖
4:4 Developments In Madras: In the late nineteenth century artists from
the South painted scenes of Indian life and mythological themes in the
academic styles, as evident in the works of artist like Aligiriswamy Naidu,
Ramaswamy Naicker and later Raja Ravi Varma. Devi Prasad Roy
Choudhury, Principal of the Government school of arts and Crafts at
Madras (1927-50), developed a powerful style in sculpture in realistic
representation. His successor, K. C. S. Paniker, supported the former‘s
views on form and content, but did not overlook the importance of
technical methods and materials.
Between 1884 and 1892, E. B. Havell, the Superintendent of the
Madras School of Arts and Crafts, had mooted the idea of ‗Indianness‘ as
252
the ideal and norm for contemporary art as opposed to the Westernisation
that was being propagated and promoted by the colonial administration535
.
He, however, found a more sensitive response from the educated and
cultured elite in Calcutta, where he moved later as Principal of the
Government school of Arts and Crafts. It was in Calcutta that his ideas
paved the way for the Bengal School movement and gained ‗the first
expression of an ideology of cultural nationalism in the art of the country.
The ideals of the Bengal School and their potential for an all-round
momentum of the art movement in the country were brought actively to
the art scene of Madras by Devi Prasad Roy Choudhury, who remained in
Madras as principal of the Government school of Arts and Crafts from
1927 to 1950. The ideology of Indianness, however, had arrived in Andhra
earlier than in Madras. Nandalal Bose had taught art at the Art School in
Machilipatnam as early as 1910536
.
4:5 Developments in Lahore: B. C. Sanyal who come to Lahore from
Calcutta in 1929, initially to erect a statue of Lala Lajpat Rai at the site of
the All India Congress Committee session, found Lahore a congenial place
for work and stayed on. He contributed significantly to the art scene of
Lahore (and later of Delhi, where he and his associates had perforce to
535
Mago Pran Nath, op.cit. p.51.
536 Mago Pran Nath, op. cit. p. 52
253
migrate after the Partition in 1947). He taught at the Mayo School of Art
& Craft from 1929-36. Subsequently, he set up a studio-cum- teaching
workshop called the Lahore School of Fine Arts, which popularly come to
be known as Sanyal‘s Studio. It aimed to experiment in informal art
education and soon became a highly popular and admired hub of art
activity, both for artists and the intelligentsia of the city. Sanyal's Studio
served as a nucleus of a new cultural wave for nearly ten years in which
his early associates like Dhan Raj Bhagat, and later ones like Harkrishan
Lall and Pran Nath Mago (who had graduated from the Sir J. J. School of
Art) played an active role, particularly in the two years immediately
before the Partition.
4:6 Developments in Lucknow: Lucknow has traditionally been a centre
of art and culture. Its social, political and economic complexity and
cultural diversity influenced the impulses and creative urges of its artists.
The artists who were products of this environment and played a
significant role in the art scene were J. M. Ahivasi, A. K. Haldar, L. M
Sen, B. Sen, Shriram Vaish, Sudhir Khastgir, Shridhar Mahapatra, H. L.
Merh, Bishwanath Mukerjee and R.S. Bisht. J.M. Ahivasi, who was an
eminent painter in the Rajput style, eventually joined the Sir J. J. School
of Art and became a strong influence on its students during the time of
Charles Gerrard. Ahivasi and Gerrard both desired that the Indian artists
254
should neither forget tradition nor blindly follow Western techniques,
whether academic or modern.
K. Haldar (the well known exponent of the Bengal School) ,and L.
M. Sen and B. Sen (adept in the academic idiom), were all on the staff of
the Government School of Arts and Crafts, Lucknow, for a number of
years, and substantially influenced not only their young students but also
practicing artists. Although they were contemporaries, each worked in a
manner unique to himself. One has only to juxtapose L. M. Sen's
landscapes with those of B. Sen, or the sculptures of Shridhar Mahapatra
with those of Shriram Vaish or Sudhir Khastgir to realise this.
The wash technique and the academic style were equally popular
and practiced simultaneously. The artists of this region worked with a
certain degree of openness.
4:7 Art in Bengal During 1940 and Formation of Calcutta Group:
During the 1940s Indian art experienced an ideological shift in its course
and a part of it veered more towards Marxist socialist ideals. For the first
time in the history of Indian art those artists emerged whose political
consciousness was based on their immediate realities that became the
basis of their arts as well.537
Atul Bose was among this group of artists
537
Halder Sritama, Atul Bose: A Short Evaluation, art etc news and views, June, 2012, issue, 29.
255
whose reactions to the social injustice and repression were immediate and
harsh.
The Bengal Famine (1943-1944) was one of the greatest cruelties
ever happen to the human race, for in this man-made famine thousands of
farmers died of hunger. The British government's scorch earth policy and
natural disaster destroyed most of the crops in Bengal. The rest of it was
stocked and hoarded. Black market and excess greed of some people
created a shortage of food and grain. The people from rural areas migrated
to the cities in search of food only to die on the streets. Artists like
Chittaprosad Bhattacharya, Zainul Abedin, Gobardhan Ash and Gopal
Ghosh poignantly captured the inhumanity of the situation.538
Atul Bose
also was a part of it. He made sketches and some oil paintings. But his
works such as The Birth of Kalki was evidently dominated by his training
as an academic artist.539
The Birth of Kalki, portraying, ‗the birth of child
from the womb of a starving mother on the verge of death,‘ a roadside
scene that the artist had witnessed some where in south Calcutta. Nikhil
Sarkar is of the opinion that, ‗The Bengal Famine of 1943 gave birth to yet
another Kalki in the form of Calcutta Group.‘540
538
See Plates No.63a, 63b, 63c, & 63d.
539 Halder Sritama, op. cit. 2012 issue,29.
540 Sarkar Nikhal, A Matter of Conscience, Artist bear witness to the Great Bengal Famine, Pub by
Punascha, Calcutta, Rev. ed. 2003, p.35.
256
During 1940s, young artists likes Chittaprosad Bhattacharya (1915–
78), Zainul Abedin (1917-76), Govardhan Ash (1907-96), Somnath Hore
(1921-2006) and Gopal Ghose (1930-80) felt the exigency to respond to
the appalling ground-reality of Bengal in the wake of the devastating
Bengal Famine (1943-44) and the traumatic experiences of communal
riots (1946).
The formation of the Calcutta Group in 1943, amidst the
commotion of the Second World War and the infamous Bengal famine is
a testimony of the artists waking up to a call different from the typical
Nationalist agendas and Bengal School ‗romanticism‘.541
The decade of
the 40s saw the emergence of a different mode of artistic expression for a
primarily socially-responsive content, which made it a deviant from the
dominant narrative of the ‗national‘. When in the political sphere the
alternative prospect of a Marxist-Communist initiative was on the rise and
the concomitant cultural manifestations of the anti-fascist protest
movements were catching on, this genre in the art of the 1940s owes itself
considerably, directly or indirectly, to the evolving transformation in
artistic consciousness.542
541
Majumdar Soumik Nandy, 40s and now: The Legacy of Protest in the Art of Bengal ,Art etc, News and Views, April 2012, issue-27.
542 Ibid.
257
This transformation is considered as a voice of dissent in the art of
these artists. They all disagreed to ‗imagine‘ a nation and felt the necessity
to address the immediate and the ‗real‘ as more pressing and pertinent.543
The above artists held art as a tool to answer to the ‗needs of the time‘.
Clearly, for them the ‗needs‘ were the urgency to communicate the
concern for the suffering multitude. The element of ‗protest‘ – political or
otherwise – can be located in this indomitable urge and the search for the
relevant visual idiom and format to fulfil that urge as a social mission for
the artists.544
For artists like Chittaprosad, Zainul and Somnath, stark ‗black and
white‘ drawings of the chosen/observed reality are moving records of a
dismal situation socially engendered by means of exploitations and
coercions. Their political affiliation with the Communist Party and
subsequent exposure and experience of the harsh reality helped to infuse
their art with an unflattering mode of depiction, often with a directness of
a protest-slogan.545
The pictures of Zainul Abedin, Chittaprosad and
Somnath Hore had a wide circulation in the city and their sketches were
regularly published in the periodicals like ‗Janayuddha‘ and ‗People‘s
543
Ibid.
544 Ibid.
545 Majumdar Soumik Nandy, 40s and now: The Legacy of Protest in the Art of Bengal ,Art News and
Views, April 2012, issue-27
258
War‘ published by the Communist Party.546
Under these circumstances,
and with an entirely new approach to the function of art, the very artistic
practice became synonymous with documentation or eye-witness account
of the life of the wretched masses.
In 1943, Chittaprosad published his work ‗Hungry
Bengal‘ (November 1943), a textual and visual record of his travels
through the famine and cyclone ravaged district of Midnapore of south
Bengal. Both the text and the drawings reveal the grimness of the situation
and the images particularly focus on the deplorable condition, by drawing
attention to specific details. Animals and birds feasting upon the human
corpse, broken pots scattered in a devastated hut, pathetic vacant
expressions of the hapless people, are some of the poignant details
Chittaprosad pays attention to in these images. In doing so, he privileges
the socially concerned and politically charged ‗documenting‘ function of
art over both academic traditions of art school and the Bengal School.547
He vividly captured the human cost of the famine and targeted
colonial rule and global capitalism which he identified as the main culprits
of the deadly food crises. The Hungry Bengal was the product of extensive
546
Sarkar Nikhal, A Matter of Conscience, Artist bear witness to the Great Bengal Famine, Pub by
Punascha, Calcutta, Rev ed. 2003, p. 28.
547 Majumdar Soumik Nandy, 40s and now: The Legacy of Protest in the Art of Bengal ,Art News and
Views, April 2012, issue-27
259
tour, which provoked the wrath of the government and subsequently the
British authority confiscated and destroyed five thousand copies of this
book.548
The abbreviated realism, zooming on to harsh details, was also
shared by Zainul Abedin, and to an extent, Somnath Hore. In 1943,
Somnath Hore did visual documentation and reporting of the Bengal
famine for the Communist Party magazine Jannayuddha (People's War).
His coming of age as an artist coincided with the 1946 peasant unrest in
Bengal known as the Tebhaga movement. Hore became a follower
of Chittaprosad Bhattacharya, the political propagandist and
printmaker.549
.
Hence, the protest was not only of a socio-political kind but,
importantly, it left serious consequences in the art idiom. It was, in the
words of Sanjoy Kumar Mallik, ‗an attempt to purge art of its mythic,
classicized, literary and lyrical material made possible … by concentrating
on the image of a suffering and debased humanity.‘550
The man-made
Great Bengal Famine of 1943 moved Zainul deeply. He created his famine
paintings, which, when exhibited in 1944, brought him even more critical
acclaim. He was an influential member of the Calcutta Group of
548
Sarkar Nikhal, A Matter of Conscience, op.cit. p. 28.
549 Ghose Arun,Somenath Hore
, life and art, gallerie 88 2007
550 Mallik Sanjay Kumar, Chittoprasad-A Retrospective, vol.1, Delhi Art Gallery, New Delhi, 2011,p 39
260
progressive artists. Zainul Abedin in his harsh images of the urban
destitute visualized in the most rudimentary starkness of black ink
employed by dry-brush technique, successfully did away with tonal
softness usually associated with romantic view of life.551
Whereas Chittaprosad often inscribes the names of the suffering
people on drawings, Zainul emphasizes the anonymity of the sufferers and
the ignominy of the starvation and deprivation.552
Besides having their
drawings printed in the party periodicals, the Communist Party even
organized an exhibition of Zainul‘s drawings in 1943. Beyond doubt, they
left no stone unturned in ensuring the accessibility of these pictures to the
mass. Thus, any kind of exclusivity was opposed and art was made
‗public‘ in the most elementary sense of the term.
Bengal Painters Testimony (1944) an album of pictures published
on the occasion of its eighth Annual Conference by the All India Students‘
Federation553
– is another such attempt to make socially relevant art
available to the public and in this album we find two touching famine
drawings by Gopal Ghose. Ghose‘s imagery may not be politically
charged yet the resentment and a sense of accountability is evident. He
551
Majumdar Soumik Nandy, 40s and now: The Legacy of Protest in the Art of Bengal ,Art News and Views, April 2012, issue-27
552 Ibid.
553 Sarkar Nikhil, op.cit. pp. 33-34.
261
turned to the imageries of a riot-torn city as a theme with equal vigour and
exigency.554
The violent flames and burning vehicles which changed the
cityscape during those dreadful days found a compelling expression in
Ghose‘s paintings. Similarly, Quamrul Hassan engaged himself with the
appalling visuals of famine with the goriest details. Haunting memories of
history got inscribed in Quamrul‘s art conveying in the language of
illusionist realism the severity of the intolerable disaster.555
―Quite unbeknownst to me, the wounds of the 1940s famine, the
uncertainty of war, the horrors of communal riots of 1946— all that (we)
were sinking themselves into the techniques of my drawings — the
helpless around us, the neglected and the hungry,‖ says artist and sculptor
(late) Somnath Hore in his book, ―My Concept of Art‖.
In 1946, Somnath Hore took up the project of a visual
documentation of Tebhaga movement in North Bengal, when he was still
a second year student in the Government School of Art, Calcutta. Tebhaga
Diary and the subsequent Tea Garden Diary (1947), eschew the rhetorical
slant evident in Zainul‘s drawings and tend to become more factual. The
554
Majumdar Soumik Nandy, 40s and now: The Legacy of Protest in the Art of Bengal ,Art News and Views, April 2012, issue-27.
555 Sarkar Nikhil, op.cit. pp. 41-43..
262
very act of recording through sketches (and later in wood-engravings) one
of the strongest ‗left-wing mobilizations of the politicized peasantry in
Indian history‘ was another testimony to the political consciousness of
these artists and their conviction in the potentiality of art to voice the
revolutionary masses.
In Somnath‘s Diaries what is most significant, beside the visual
facts, is his conviction in the struggle of these suppressed men and women
and their political aspirations. Amidst the abysmal situations caused by the
man-made famine , Somnath found the sharecropper‘s revolt reassuring
and heroic. Consequently his images are affirmative and determined,
moving away from the earlier images of suffering to a new image of
conviction – political field notes assuming the status of a political
vision.556
While the reputed art historian, R. Siva Kumar, in the essay entitled
Somnath Hore: A Reclusive Socialist and a Modernist Artist wrote, ―We
do not chosose suffering, and we do not choose heroism. But suffering
often compels us to be heroic. Somnath Hore (1921-2006) was an artist
who led a quiet and heroic life. Quiet because he always kept himself
away from the glare of the art world; and heroic because he chose to stand
556
Majumdar Soumik Nandy, 40s and now: The Legacy of Protest in the Art of Bengal ,Art News and Views, April 2012, issue-27
263
by the suffering and held steadfast to his political and thematic
commitments even though he knew this meant trading a lonely path.
He kept himself away from the din of art not because art was a
lesser passion for him but because life mattered more and art that did not
stand witness to human suffering, did not mean much to him. And human
suffering was for him, as a Communist, not an existential predicament
into which we are all born (or a visitation or even a tool to know God as it
was for Van Gogh), but something always socially engendered.‖ In the
same essay R. Siva Kumar writes, ―The famine and the sharecropper‘s
revolt acquired an archetypal significance in Somnath Hore‘s vision of
reality. During these years there were a host of other tragic visitations: the
communal riots, the Partition, the exodus of the religious minorities and
the loss of home for millions, including Somnath. But none of them found
a place in his work comparable to that of the famine and the peasant
revolt, which were for him symbols of human condition and aspirations of
those with whom he identified.‖557
The visual forms of protest found a more convenient and explicit
voice in the captivating posters designed by Chittaprasad. These
propaganda posters he did for the party are clear-cut in content and taking
recourse to the satirical mode, merged with an anatomical precision are
557
R. Shiv Kumar, Somnath Hore: AReclusive Socialist and Modernist Bengal Art, New Perspective, Praikshan, Essays in the Art’s, Calcutta 2010, pp 55- 78
264
strong visual statements of conviction and dissent. The rebellious
character of art is nowhere as pronounced as in these works, often
reminding us of Gaganendranath Tagore‘s cartoon in terms of its
uncluttered directness and rancor.558
In this context, the function played by
the technology of printmaking is enormously significant. Zainul Abedin,
Chittaprosad, and Somnath Hore were amongst the first few to realize the
potential of printmaking as a medium for the masses, and led by
Chittaprasad, printmaking certainly assumed a new role as an instrument
of protest.559
The famine of Bengal touched the then masters of modern Indian
expressionism like Nandalal Bose and Jamini Roy and the Socialist
painters alike. Nandalal Bose, known for his lyrical renderings of Indian
mythology, painted ―Lord Shiva as a beggar‖ to portray the horrors of the
famine. 560
The art was distinctive in style – marked by a characteristic clarity
of lines, expression and details that ferreted the out the emotional angst of
the victims and survivors of the famine. The strokes were firm — and the
558
Majumdar Soumik Nandy, 40s and now: The Legacy of Protest in the Art of Bengal ,Art News and Views, April 2012, issue-27
559 Majumdar Soumik Nandy, 40s and now: The Legacy of Protest in the Art of Bengal ,Art News and
Views, April 2012, issue-27
560 Chatterjee Madushree, Famine in Bengal - Somnath Hore shows the art of suffering India-Art,
New Delhi, Dec 26 2013
265
studies of human figures were mostly anatomical to the minute structure
of bones, skins and skeletal framework of the subjects. Village was the
pre-occupation of artists like Somenath Hore, Zainul Abedin and
Chittoprasad, who travelled around the Bengal countryside sketching the
famine for Communist publications.561
In the process of articulating the experiences, responses and
engagement with the immediate social reality often with an unequivocal
political commitment, these artists of the‘ 40s in Bengal, for the first time
in the history of modern Indian art, provided a promising iconography of
protest.
4:8 Calcutta Group (1943-1953): Calcutta during the late 40s had
witnessed artists like Somnath Hore and Chittaprasad amongst others, who
responded to the Bengal Famine, while those who gathered courage to
move away from the Bengal School formed the Calcutta Group, were
Nirode Mazumdar, Paritosh Sen, Sunil Madhav Sen, Gopal Ghose,
Prodosh Das Gupta, Shubha Tagore, Rathin Mitra and Gobardhan Ash,
who grew into serious artists as they worked through the 50s.
The Calcutta Group of artists came into existence in 1943 as a
response to the famine in Bengal that year which killed thousands of
561
Chatterjee Madushree, Famine in Bengal - Somnath Hore shows the art of suffering India-Art, New Delhi, Dec 26 2013
266
people in the countryside and provoked scenes that shook the conscience
of the state. Other contributory factors were the effects of World War II,
felt in the form of high prices, heightened political activity (Gandhi's Quit
India call) and frantic troop movements. The situation seemed to artists in
Bengal to demand a response from them which the Bengal School
sensibility, whatever its other achievements, may not help adequately in
generating.562
The founders of the group were Prodosh Dasgupta, who was
primarily a sculptor and the painters Gopal Ghosh, Rathin Maitra, Nirode
Mazumdar, Subho Tagore and Prankrishna Pal; they were later joined by
Abani Sen, Sunilmadhab Sen, Gobardhan Ash, Krishna Pal, Bansi
Chandragupta and Hemanta Mishra. The artists professed humanistic
ideals and, in their work, attempted to show their sense of concern in a
language that combined the Bengali pictorial idiom with the contemporary
modernist manner. Gopal Ghosh, for instance, patterned his lines on the
style adapted by Nandalal Bose of the Bengal School from Japanese and
Chinese calligraphy. This was in keeping with the group‘s manifesto
which demanded that art should be "international and interdependent."563
562
Dalmia Yashodhara, The Making of Modern Indian Art- The Progressives, Oxford, 2001, p. 223.
563 Ibid. p. 223.
267
The group's work, exhibited both in Calcutta and Bombay, received
wide praise, including from the writers Mulk Raj Anand and E. M.
Forster, and the critic Rudy Von Leyden. The latter wrote: "They have
sought to imbibe a far more vital feeling from contemporary Far Eastern
and European Art than their elders did. But this is not to suggest that they
are in any sense imitative, for their love of the people and the old folk
culture of Bengal roots them in the long Bengal tradition."564
These artists
fell into the current of social upheaval affecting India. They banded
together to form the Calcutta Group, and urged that art be used to effect
meaningful changes in society. The Calcutta Group was born in a complex
social environment and it‘s member were forced to think in eschatological
terms.565
They summed up their views in their manifesto:
―The years, 1910-43, were among the most eventful in our
country‘s recent history. This period saw an increasing secularisation of
politics and an expansion in the democratic consciousness in our country.
This change is of fundamental importance to the understanding of modern
art since it provides its new ideals. In the west, kings have long been
dethroned and the reins of the state have passed into the hands of the
564
www.saffrona.Com.
565 Tagore, Sundaram, A Struggle for Modernism, An Essay pub in Asian Art News, January/February
1996, p. 30.
268
common man. Today, the artists no longer decorate the baroque palaces of
kings or the interior of the chapels, but work independently in their studios
or decorate the communal buildings. The great French movements in art-
Impressionism, Cubism, Surrealism etc., - all evolved through this
changed idea in art. Such a movement is under way in our country, too.
The Gods and Goddesses are being pulled down from their lofty pedestals
and MAN has been enthroned in their place.‖
―Man is supreme, there is none above him‖ – this was the guiding
slogan when the Calcutta Group was formed in 1943. Those were dark
days for Bengal. Famine and pestilence were then stalking the land. The
barbarity and heartlessness all around moved us, a few young artists,
deeply. We began to think, to search our hearts and ask ourselves:
―…which way?‖ We started meeting every evening and those evening
hours were full of our talks, ambitions, plans and schemes. Often, lectures
and discussions on art were also arranged. Of the many distinguished
visitors we had in those days were E. M. Forster, the English novelist,
Fedreic McWilliams, now Slade Professor of Sculpture in London
University, and artists and sculptors from among the members of the
Allied Forces. Both Forster and Mc Williams were much impressed by our
work, and after returning to Britain, Foster gave a talk on Indian Art on
the BBC devoting a considerable portion of it tothe Calcutta Group.
269
Till then, however, our group had not made its debut before the
public. At this juncture we were fortunate in coming into contact with
Mrs. Casey (wife of Governor of Bengal), a true lover of art. She was
mainly instrumental in bringing about the first informal exhibition of our
paintings and sculptures at 5A, S. R. Das Road. Shortly afterwards, in
1944, the entire public exhibition of our group was held under the auspices
of Services Art Club. The exhibition succeeded in creating a commotion
in the circles of art critics. The praise and the criticism that were showered
on us clearly indicated that a new art movement was born. Some of the
critics had it against us that we were bent on destroying the true tradition
of our art. Wrote one of them: ―And though it is categorically denied that
these artists are not affected by the dusty wind from distant Europe, their
national traditions appear to be submerged, full five fathoms deep, under
the dirt carried by that dubious dirty wind.‖
Five years later, the same critic wrote: ―To the average person not
caring for high brow philosophical theories of art the typical products of
the Calcutta Group are ugly and frightful and very far from the attractive
presentation of‘ ‗beauty‘ as ordinarily understood. Yet, these artists may
claim that their original creations of designs in hot and emphatic colour
schemes are excitingly beautiful, as they seek to interpret a new order of
270
beauty… that kind of beauty which is just the expression of the artist‘s
aesthetic excitement.‖
But there were other critics who welcomed us warmly as ―trail-
blazers…the pioneers of a new epoch in Indian art‖ Such were the critical
reaction to our exhibition, but not a piece of painting or sculpture was
sold. We comforted ourselves by interpreting it as a happy omen. The
expenses of the exhibition drove the members deeper into their pockets.
But still we continued, with renewed enthusiasm and hope. The members
of the group went on with their experimentation in forms, colours and
techniques. This was the beginning of a new phase in the history of our
Group.
The year 1948 saw the best reaping of our ‗sweat and Toil‘ and both
connoisseurs and people in general took pride in possessing a painting or a
sculpture from our group members. Foreigners of all shades of belief
made it a point to visit our members and see their works. Of them mention
may be made of Prof. and Mrs. Davidson from U.S.A. Dr. Fischer, a
scholar from Germany, Jean Renoir and Claude Renoir from France. This
turning point in the history of the group was significant in creating an all
India influence towards a progressive and healthy outlook in art. As a
result, progressive artists in other provinces combined themselves and
formed into groups with same ideologies as that of ours.
271
Realizing the possibility of a great future of art in India in this
direction, the Calcutta Group lost no time in organizing a combined group
show with the Bombay Progressive Group in Calcutta in 1950. This show
was interpreted by a section of the press as a challenge to the conservative
art and its connoisseurs and the group was hailed as the precursor of a new
movement.
The guiding motto of our Group is best expressed in the slogan:
―Art should be international and inter-dependent‖. In other words, our art
cannot progress or develop if we always look back to our past glories and
cling to our traditions at all cost. The vast new world of art, rich and
infinitely varied, created by masters the world over in all ages, beckons us.
From Egyptian and Assryian arts to the works of Italian, Dutch, and
French masters – we have to study all of them deeply, develop our
appreciation of them and take from them all that we could profitably
synthesize with our requirements and traditions. This is all the more
necessary because our art has stood still since the seventeenth century. But
during the past three hundred years the world outside of India has made
vast strides in art, has evolved epoch-making discoveries in forms and
techniques. It is absolutely necessary for us to close this hiatus by taking
advantage of these developments in the Western world.
272
And this is inevitable, whether we like it or not. In our world of
supersonic planes and televions, it is neither possible nor desirable to
preserve the lily-white purity of our tradition, because art, like science, is
also becoming an international activity. It is better that we consciously,
discriminatingly, choose and integrate foreign influences with our national
style and tradition; for, otherwise, influences unconsciously imbibed
might distort rather than enrich our art. This is the ideal motivating the
Calcutta Group and we hope to succeed, because we try to understand the
spirit of our times and acknowledge the dictates of necessity.‖566
Thus the above mentioned artists fell into the vortex of social
upheaval affecting India. They banded together to form the Calcutta
Group, and urged that art be used to effect meaningful changes in
society567
. The Calcutta Group of artist used Subho Tagore studio as their
headquarter. The studio served as a salon for the liberal intelligentsia.
Renowned figures such as the writer E. M. Forster, art historian Stella
Kramrisch, and W. G. Archer, and European intellectuals including Martin
Kirkman and John Irwin use to visit the studio and contributed to the
considerable range of opinion about art, politics, and literature. They
566
The Calcutta Group catalogue text of 1953 as reproduced in the book "After the Fall" by Santo Dutta and published by the Delhi Art Gallery, Hauz Khas, in the year 2005. pp 233 to 235
567 See Plate No.64a & 64b
273
argued about how to create forms that, although based on tradition,
simultaneously expressed the complex experience of modern life.568
The members of Calcutta Group came from an elite background.569
On the eve of India‘s Independence, two artistic shifts were manifested by
Calcutta Group. Firstly, they vocally rebelled against the nationalist
Bengal School and secondly, the axis of artistic influence shifted from
London to Paris.570
The group did not have a common artistic ideology, except that they
were all modernists in an artistic atmosphere dominated by the Bengal
School. Subho Tagore had been amongst the founding members of the
Calcutta Group although he exhibited with them only once, in 1945. Born
in the illustrious Tagore family, he had a bohemian spirit in
contradistinction to his family background; apparently he even wished to
relinquish his aristocratic background, evident from the title of his
collection of short stories ―Nil Rakta Lal Hoye Geche‖ (the blue blood has
turned red).571
568
Tagore, Sundaram, A Struggle for Modernism, An Essay pub in Asian Art News, January/February 1996, p. 30
569 Tagore, Sundaram, A Struggle for Modernism, An Essay pub in Asian Art News, January/February
1996, p. 30
570 Ibid. p. 30
571 Sarkar Nikhil, op.cit, pp.37-38.
274
Subho Tagore was exposed to European Modernism. He created
works that fused the folk sensibilities of Aztec and Tibetan art with
Persian Modernism. Therefore, a writer from the Forward Bloc, a socialist
Indian magazine, commented in 1940, ―In order to rouse the
consciousness of the masses, our country needs the services of this class of
artists who are rich in progressive ideas and well equipped with modern
techniques,‖ 572
Rathin Moitra, co- founder of the Calcutta Group, painted works
dealing with social issues because 1943 was the period of unprecedented
communal violence and famine. His style was influenced by curvilinear
art-deco forms and the primitivist vitality of Bengal folk art with its
swerving lines and heightened colours.573
Rathin Maitra, in association
with the Anti- Fascist Writers and Artists Association, had moulded his
outlook and choice of pictorial style and themes.574
It was the same
association, and his active role in organizing the 1945 Bombay exhibition
of the Group under the auspices of the I.P.T.A., that led to the
subsequently much-refuted identification of the Calcutta Group with the
572
Tagore, Sundaram, opcit. P. 30
573 Ibid. p. 30.
574 Malik Sonjoy, “The Calcutta Group”(1943-1953), Article published in Art & Deal, No. 16, vol, 3 No.2,
October-December 2004.
275
political ideals of the Communist Party.575
Rathin Maitra reveals his
admiration and understanding of the paintings of Jamini Roy.
According to Mrinal Ghosh, Gobardhan Ash was one of the
pioneering artists who had considerable contributions in devising the
modernistic forms of the Indian painting during the decade of 1940-s. He
had deep commitment both, towards the socio-temporal reality, and
towards his own life and creativity. He struggled a lot during his formative
years against his personal poverty and also against lack of creative
infrastructure within the artistic environment of that time. He was
rebellious both as an artist and art activist. All these characteristics
devised his personality and the forms of his art.576
When Ash arrived at his own creativity during the middle of 1930‘s,
the art situation of Bengal was within a dilemma. There was a struggle
between the two modes of modernity. One was British academic naturalist
trend originated after 1850‘s through the works of the Art School trained
artists. The other was the neo-Indian school originated by Abanindranath
Tagore during 1897 and expanded by his disciples like Nandalal Basu and
others towards various modes of expressions, which was considered to be
575
Ibid.
576 Ghosh Mrinal, Gobardhan Ash: The Committed Artist of 1940-s,Art News and Views, April 2012,
issue-30.
276
a prototype of national identity577
. By the 1930‘s both of these modes
showed signs of stagnations and degeneration. The poet Rabindranath
Tagore first detected these limitations and tried to find ways and means of
regeneration. In 1919 he established Kala-Bhavana at Santiniketan where
he tried to broaden the aesthetic outlook of the artists. Two artists,
however, within the environment of neo-Indian school were working to
expand the field of form. They were Gaganendranath Tagore and
Sunayani Devi. Rabindranath himself moved towards visual creativity
since 1923-24 and appeared as a very original and intuitive painter since
1928. Out of his dissatisfaction with the extant trends, Jamini Roy also
paved a new way, taking the cue from the popular art of Bengal since
early 1930‘s.
This was the art environmental situation in Bengal when Gobardhan
Ash appeared in the field. Like other artists of his generation, he had his
dissatisfaction which induced him to find a new way. Even before he came
to join the Calcutta Group, Ash had taken to European techniques, and
made quite an impression with his use of a modern art idiom to represent
the society and people of his time.578
He had considerable skill in
academic naturalism. But he could feel that form to be anachronistic to
577
Ibid.
578 Sarker Nikhil, op.cit. p.38.
277
express the social reality of his time. He could not accept the revivalist
trends of the neo-Indian school. He noticed the achievements of Jamini
Roy to generate forms from the folk. Personally he also had a rural
background and adequate knowledge of popular expressions. He tried to
induce it within his own constructions. He also felt that one aspect was
lacking in the existing modes of modernity. Western modernistic forms
generated out of impressionism, post-impressionism, expressionism and
cubism had not been adequately explored, which, he could feel, was
necessary to express the social turmoil and humanistic decay that
darkened the life of Bengal during 1940-s. In building up his own form he
made this synthesis through assimilation of naturalism, folk and Western
modernistic distortions.
The social situation in India, particularly in Bengal during the
decade of 1940s, was very tumultuous. The freedom struggle rose to its
peak along with the colonial exploitation. The famine of 1943 was the
highest expression of the callousness and inhumanity of the alien rulers.
Ash made his art a vehicle to express his rebellion against such inhuman
decays. Like Zainul Abedin, Chittaprasad and Somnath Hore, he was also
an important artist of 1940s who made artistic documentation of the
famine of Bengal, painted extensively on this theme and generated a form
out of this decay that made considerable imprint on his further
278
development. He looked towards beauty from these roots of dilapidation.
His forms were thus an amalgamation of the beauty and the void.
Govardhan Ash has been rediscovered in the context of his famine
watercolours of 1943. According to Sanjoy Mallik, thematically, he
remained rooted to his village surroundings, but in pictorial style and
treatment he exhibited a leaning towards the post-Impressionistic palette
combined with a brushwork rendered with expressionistic vigour. From a
point rendering of the ―Money lender‖ to the vigorous strokes in the
portrait of an old mendicant (―Musafir‖, 1947), he intended the forms to
correspond to psychological types. His leaning towards a post-
Impressionistic language not merely determined the brilliance of colours,
but also the allied possibility of going beyond simple visual sensations to
the realm of visions, suggesting the importance of an inner psychological
world in his creative endeavour, the haloed ―Naga Sanyasi‖ and the
―Pilgrim‖ of 1947 being two examples.
Prodosh Das Gupta was born in 1912 in Dhaka, now in
Bangladesh, and graduated from Calcutta University in 1932. Under the
manifesto of 'Art should be international and interdependent' he co-
founded the famed Calcutta Group in 1943. Prodosh Das Gupta was also
the leading sculptor of the Calcutta Group which held its first exhibition in
1943-1944. Considered as one of the prominent pioneers who emerged at
279
the juncture of India's Independence, Pradosh Das Gupta reacted strongly
against the decay that had set in modern life despite mankind's great
achievements in the field of technology. His works represent love, the
humane values and affection for fellow men. He built his sculptural forms
through the modeling technique, i.e., using clay. According to Prodosh
Das Gupta, ―I registered my protest against the famine of 1943, its social
repercussions and the imperialist war, in sculptural works like The
Bondage, Jai Hind, Mother India, and images of the famine stricken in
sculptural form. I have always believed in the supremacy of man.‖579
His studies in Paris gave his figures a romantic touch. However, his
return to India in 1940, added new shape and significance to these myriad
influences. His depiction of the horrors of the World War II and the
Bengal famine of 1943 made an impact in the second phase of his career.
Over a period of time, however, there crept in doubts about the emotional
excesses and probable sentimentalism in these works. In his own words,
"this led me to change my methods of treatment of material to a more
restrained order of basic forms, often instilled with and integrated to
themes from everyday life."580
The years 1946 to 1950 were the most
crucial years of his career during which he had to struggle to break free
579
Sarkar Nikhil, op. cit. p. 37.
580 http://www.indianartnews.com/
280
from the methods and techniques of pure academia that were ingrained
within him. The young Das Gupta, having recognised the basic truth about
organic form both from his Indian roots as well as from the great masters
who inspired him, tried to instil the same philosophy and formal quality
into his own work. It was during this period that some of his best-known
works, such as ‗Head & Torso,‘ ‗Toilet,‘ ‗First Born,‘ and ‗Pounding
Corn‘ took birth. His dabbling in abstraction began in his early years with
works like ‗Twisted Form‘ (bronze), ‗Cactus Family,‘ ‗Volume in Three
Masses,‘ and ‗Symphony in Curves‘ (Cement).
The Calcutta Group‘s work awakened the public interest in modern
art. They had made considerable strides in the Indian art world. In 1944
they organised an exhibition in Bombay, which was emerging as a centre
of modern art under the guidance of Europeans such as Vonleyden,
Schlesinger and Langhammer.
The Calcutta Group was encouraged by a few pioneer critics like
Prof Shahid Suhrawardy, Sudhindra Dutta and Bishnu Dey. The poets and
writers, who were closely associated with the Group and gave their
unstinted support, usually had leftist leanings in their political attitude.581
The Bombay exhibition of Calcutta Group created a stir among art critics
and connoisseurs.
581
Pran Nath, Contemporary Art in India, A Prespective, National Book Trust India, 2001, p. 64
281
Mulk Raj Anand, who came in contact with the Group in 1944, at
their first public exhibition, wrote about it thus: The exhibition of the
Calcutta Group showed that the younger Bengalis were all highly talented,
and that they were aware of crisis of Indian painting. But as they were all
individuals, who had got together in a group, their work fortunately,
proceeded in unique directions, without any subservience to the written
words of a manifesto. And if they achieved only a few pictures and
sculptures of great worth, they had shown tremendous courage in
confronting the conservatives with a new direction for creative art.582
Reacting to Calcutta Group's exhibitions, held in Bombay in 1944
and 1945, which aroused a great interest in Bombay artists, Rudolph Van
Leyden, the art critic of the Times of India, wrote: Bengal has exercised a
very strong influence on modern Indian art ever since Abanindranath
Tagore and his followers inspired the 'Indian Renaissance' movement
some forty years ago……we welcome this exhibition of the 'Calcutta
Group' which brings to Bombay the first specimen of modern Bengal art
since Jamini Roy's exhibition three years ago.583
Initially the Callcuta Grup was influenced by Western masters like
Picasso, Matise, Van Gogh, Vlaminck, Braque, Moore, and Brancusi. But
582
Anand, Mulk Raj,Prolegomena to Contemporary Indian Painting, Marg, 1944
583 Quoted in Mago, Pran Nath, Contemporary Art in India, A Prespective, National Book Trust India,
2001, p. 65
282
with the passage of time, these influences in most cases were integrated
into the artist's individual expression.
The artists of Calcutta Group tried to get over the nostalgic feeling
of the Bengal school and inspire a new ideology creating a new synthesis
between the East and the West, for which their forerunners—
Gagenendranath, Rabindranath and Jamini Roy had already paved the
way. But, as it was believed by the Group, it was only a spirit of adventure
-and more as a matter of individual exploration in the field without
formulating any collective effort to a new systematic re-organisation that
these stalwarts worked.584
They, however, opened the possibilities that, in
fact, helped in augmenting the resurgence of a new movement initiated by
the Calcutta Group. As Pradosh Das Gupta puts it: "The time to preoccupy
oneself with Gods and Goddesses was over. The artist could no longer be
blind to his age and surroundings, his people and society." But the Group
members, though deeply conscious of the human values and their
surroundings, were not given to create any propagandist art. For, as
Prodosh Das Gupta once said, "We never took a pledge to follow the path
of social realism. All we want is to understand life and interpret it in terms
of creative art. Indeed, we believe in humanism without any political
binding or direction. They looked at man in the totality of his existence,
not just his sorrows and sufferings, his fears and anxieties but his joys and
584
Mago, Pran Nath, Contemporary Art in India, A Prespective, National Book Trust India, 2001, p. 66
283
celebrations as well. In the use of art language, the group members sought
to synthesize content with experiments in form and were inspired to create
a fusion between developments in international art language and their own
traditions.‖585
This was no doubt a progressive and healthy outlook in art.
4:9 Progressive Art Group Bombay: Any great change in a nation's
civilisation begins in the field of culture. 1946 to 1950 was period of
significant change in the history of contemporary Indian art, even as much
as it was in the history of the country, politically. It was a period of
transition from one way of life to another, from the Colonial ethos to the
ethos of a free, independent people. In fact, it was a period of significant
development.
It can be claimed that the formation of the Calcutta Group and the
exhibition of Jamini Roy‘s work in Mumbai during the late 1940s were
among the sources of inspiration to artists in western India.
It was during this period the Progressive Artists group came into
existence. The artist‘s aid centre was started and Dr Mulk Raj Ananad
launched Marg the magazine of the Arts586
.
585
Gupta Pradosh Das, Smirithi Katha, Shilpakatha; Calcutta Group, Pratikshan Publications, 1986,
quoted in an essay by Ella Dutta, A manifesto of the human spirit On the trail of humanism, Search for
a self image, In ‘Indian Contemporary Art Post Independence’, Vadehra Art Gallery, New Delhi, 1997, p.
39.
586Founded in 1946 on the eve of independence, Marg surveyed classical and contemporary Indian art,
architecture, clothing, crafts, dance, and photography, but also reported on contemporary foreign art
and architecture, especially that of the United States and Europe.
284
The emergence of the Progressive Artists Group was a major factor
in bringing change in Modern Indian Art. It emerged as a blessing from
the blue.587
It was a successor to the Young Turk Movement at the Sir J. J.
School of Art. The leader of the Young Turks was P.T. Reddy. He derived
its inspiration from Kamal Ataturk‘s radicalization programme in Turky.
The other members of the group were Clement Baptista, Majeed, Bhople,
and M.K. Kulkarni. The young Turks wanted to embark on pastures new
after shaking off the influence of painters of earlier generations like M.V.
Dhurandhar, S. L. Haldankar and others.588
The Young Turks tried to emancipate themselves from the
formalism of the Royal Academy and the revivalism of the Ajanta frescos
and Moghul miniatures. But the movement started by these young Turks
faded out very quickly, as its protagonists left painting and took to other
vocations.589
The progressive Artists group fared much better because there
existed a lot of Camaraderie among its members. Self taught painters like
Ara and Hussain were alongside the rebel and enfant terrible, Francis
Newton, S. H. Raza, H. A. Gade and S. K. Baker, and K. K. Hebber.590
587
Jagmohan, Lalit Kala Contemporary, No. 28,New Delhi, p. 24
588 Jagmohan, Lalit Kala Contemporary, No. 28, p. 24
589 Lalit Kala Contemporary, No. 28, p. 24
590 See Plate 65 a
285
All these artists had some common views on art. Francis has written that
the PAG artsits dismissed ―Shantiniketan as too sentimental and Jamini
Roy as too unsophisticated.‖591
According to Jag Mohan, the exhibition at the Bombay Art Society
Salon of the work of the Progressive Artist Group is to be noted as a
landmark in the history of Bombay art activities.
Though the first exhibition of progressive Artists Group was held
in 1949, in the then Bombay city, the group came formally into existence
as early as 1947, in a meeting held on December 15th
. The arbitrary
selection at the exhibitions of the Bombay Art Society had prompted some
artists and critics to organize such a meeting. The persons who spoke at
this historical conclave included artists, Souza, Raza and Ara besides the
critic Rashid Hussain.592
The Progressive Artist Group was started when Ara‘s painting
―Independence Day Procession‖593
was rejected by the Art Society and
Francis Newton was considered as too proletarian in his paintings.594
In
protest, Bakre and Raza formed the group and began holding exhibitions
591
Ibid. p.24
592 Ibid.
593 See Plate No. 65 b
594 Jagmohan,The Progressive Artist Group, Lalit Kala Contemporary, No 28, New Delhi, 1979, p. 25
286
in the King‘s circle so that the non arty people could see.595
Souza,
exhorted that artists should get together to thrash out common problems
and initiate the development of a new national art, Ara demanded that
artists should have freedom, ‗svatantrata‘ for their expression and should
overthrow the living corpse of the worshippers of false art.596
According to Husain,
―We had our own parallel national movement. We were part of the
Progressive Artists Group; there were five or six painters in Mumbai and a
few in Calcutta. We came out to fight against two prevalent schools of
thought in those days, the Royal Academy, which was British-oriented,
and the revivalist school in Mumbai, which was not a progressive
movement. These two we decided to fight and we demolished them. The
movement to get rid of these influences and to evolve a language that is
rooted in our own culture was a great movement and one that historians
have not taken note of. It was important because any great change in a
nation's civilisation begins in the field of culture. Culture is always ahead
of other political and social movements.‖597
When the Progressive Artists Group was formed, there were only
six members in Mumbai. They used to go out and paste posters on the
walls, because their paintings were rejected by the Society in Mumbai,
whose patron was the governor. According to M. F. Hussain, it was like a
parallel freedom movement. Bhendre did a painting in 1942 on Quit India,
at the time of the Mumbai Congress session.
595
Ibid.p. 25
596 Ratan Parimoo and Nalini Bhagwat, Progressive Artists Group of Bombay: An Overview-The Spirit of
Late 1940s and Early 1950s, artetc. news & views, January 2012, issue no. 24.
597 M.F. Husain, An Artist and a movement, Frontline, vol. 14, No. 16, Aug. 1997
287
The title ‗Progressive‘ was inspired from the Progressive writers‘
movement which was started in Indian literature by the Marxist novelists,
poets and fellow travellers at a conference held in 1936598
. The PAG had
an anti-Imperialist outlook and the objective of ‗bridging the widening
gulf between the artists and the life of the people‘ was declared in the
short manifesto.599
Now the Progressive Artist Group has become a trenchant art
movement. It is not a school in the sense in which other schools of
paintings are known. Each member has his own technique and the only
‗ism‘ that the members have in common is their individualism. And what
is most characteristic about this group is the similarity it bears to the
medieval guild as such for it is more a trade union of artists with a
common approach to art, than anything else.600
The first group exhibition of the PAG was held at Bombay Art
Society‘s Salon at Rampart Row in 1949. The six founder members- Ara,
Souza, Raza, Husain, Gade, Bakre participated in this exhibition which
was opened by the celebrated author-critic Mulk Raj Anand, known for
his novels with leftist leanings. He commended the six ‗Progressives‘ as
598
Dalmia Yashodhara, op.cit.p. and Parimoo Ratan and Bhagwat Nalini, Progressive Artist Group of Bombay: An Overview, The Spirit of Late 1940s and Early 1950s, An Essay in Art etc News and Views, 2012
599 Ibid.
600 LKC, No 28, pp.24-25.
288
the ‗heralds of a new dawn in the world of Indian art‘601
. In their catalogue
they had used Samuel Butler‘s quotation as their motto, viz, ―young art
must be working out its own salvation from efforts in all fear and
trembling.‖602
Rudi Van Leyden‘s consistent exhibition reviews in Bombay during
the 1940s gave the air of expectation of something important to happen
from the young artists. His review of the PAG exhibition is both positive
as well as a record of a great historic moment. His review highlights that
the six artists formed a ‗distinct group‘ in spite of their very different
artistic approaches and tempers.603
The role of Leyden, with respect to the Progressive Artist Group
was much more diverse as he was instrumental in cultivating an attitude,
an awareness of the need of the time for renewed ideas and working
methods, of stressing on the urgency to move beyond the limited
nationalistic constraints to broadened spheres, a role of art, an artist, a
critic and recipients of criticism in the (then) contemporary society,
thereby guiding the nation towards modernism, which aimed at de-
601
Parimoo Ratan and Nalini Bhagwat, Progressive Artists Group of Bombay: An Overview, artetc. news & views, January 2012, issue no. 24.
602 Dalmia Yashodhara, The Making of Modern Indian Art, The Progressives, Oxford University Press,
2001, p. 46.
603 Leyden Rudi Von, ‘Artists’ Exhibition in Bombay, TheDistinct Group’, The Times of India, 9
th
July,1949.
289
shackling the present from the grip of sedated traditionalism towards
dynamic internationalism.
Leyden‘s mistrust in nationalistic sentiments and his notions of a
constructive nation were expressed in his write-up, ―What Free India
Means to Me,‖ Independence Supplement, The Times of India, August
1949, and ―Artists In The New Republic‖, Republic Day Supplement,
Times of India, 26 January, 1950, in which he defines the role of a
contemporary artist, not as an isolated practitioner but an individual aware
of his / her times,"the artist distils the spirit of his day..."604
Stressing on the needs of modernism, he encouraged the departure
from the redundant colonial modes like naturalism. This tug in the web at
a point, produced ripples elsewhere, nearly prophesying the emergence of
a highly charged group; Souza while formulating the manifesto of the
PAG galvanised similar opinions. The group with their anti-imperialist
outlook aimed at bridging the artists and common people, similar to the
manifesto of Die-Bruke, German Expressionist Group. Further according
to Leyden this ―distinct group‖, with the struggle to move beyond the
Victorian modes and with some of their deserved works rejected from the
annual salons (e.g. Independence Day Parade by Ara), had enough reason
to rebel. In the first official meeting of the PAG, held on 15th Dec 1947,
604
Leyden Rudolf Von, What Free India Means to Me, Independence Supplement, The Times of India, August 1949.
290
the critic, Rashid Husain, spoke strongly against the old orthodox critics.
Further, in a highly caustic manner Souza ridiculed the redundancy of
such bodies and declared that the artists had now chosen to work with
absolute freedom.605
Leyden describes that each of the artist had developed an individual
style. Ara‘s works had a sense of spontaneity and intuition and brilliant
pictorial imaginations, which Leyden compared to Peter Brueghel.
Gade‘s landscape and compositions had a strong Cezannia tilt. Raza‘s
fluid water-colour landscapes had a near Cubist composition. Bakre,
unlike commercial artists working on ‗life-like‘ sculptures, was working
to find expression through formal values. Husain emphasised on colour
while his forms remained deliberately vague and undefined. In case of
Souza, Leyden states that the importance was given more to the subject-
matter, and his experimental approach relied heavily on his volatile
temperament. The brute force of a nude image, his themes addressing the
predicament of man – of religion and sex seemed blasphemous to the
viewers, who were accustomed to works done in Victorian modes. As a
result their first group show in 1949 was met with heavy criticism, with
only few critics corroborating their voice. Leyden in his review mentioned
about the ―progressive offerings of these artists‖, who had moved beyond 605 Vrushali Dhage, P. A. G. and the Role of the Critics, artetc. news & views, Feburary 2012, issue no.
25
291
beautiful-looking paintings to the expressions of the strivings of their
generation606
.
Apparently, at the crucial occasion of the PAG exhibition, the
member artists frankly admitted that the ideology expressed in the
manifesto which was set at the time of formation of the Group, ‗was not
practicable‘. They confessed that ‗we have changed all the chauvinist
ideas and the leftist fanaticism which we had incorporated in our
manifesto at the inception of the group‘ and that ‗the gulf between the
people and the artists cannot be bridged‘. ‗Today we paint with absolute
freedom of contents and techniques that they were now governed by only
―sound principles of art‖ like aesthetic order, plastic coordination and
colour composition. We have no pretensions of making vapid revivals of
any schools of painting and sculpture to arrive at a vigorous synthesis.‘607
―The present exhibition turned out to be a modest shock to the other
artists and art lovers. Each one of the artists has developed in new
directions. The gentle Ara, for instance, who used to confine his subjects
to flowers and landscapes, has now come out with pictures that reveal his
social consciousness, what with pictures of prostitutes and gamblers and
beggars and lunatics. Bakre who used to be a hard realist in his sculptures
606
Vrushali Dhage, P. A. G. and the Role of the Critics, artetc. news & views, Feburary 2012, issue no. 25
607 F. N. Souze in the exhibition catalogue of Progressive Artist Group,7
th July, 1949.
292
has now gone into the regions of near Abstractionism, and Impressionist
Raza has gone into charming geometrical and cubist compositions‖608
.
―Francis Newton Souza has contributed a powerful self portrait in
which he has distorted his own anatomy and few other primitivist
paintings derived from ancient sculputure. Husain‘s paintings of children
and women done in an impressionist style with a rich colour sense are
bound to please anyone and Gade‘s Van Goghish landscapes with their
luminous yellows and brilliant greens distinguish him as a landscapist
with a difference, for he is good at both perspective and composition.
Bakre‘s sculptures are welcome in this land where sculpture was
once its best form of art expression. There are a few sculptures today, his
―Women Undressing‖ and ―Centaur‖ once seen can never be forgotten and
his plaster piece ―Mother‘s pride‖ should not be in a drawing room. It
should be a double life size tribute to mother hood adoring some maternity
hospital or the other.
―The Progressive Artist Group artists have done a commendable job
and it is left to the public of Bombay to recognise and appreciate their
work‖.609
608
LKC, No. 28.P. 25
609 LKC, No 28.p. 25
293
According A.R. Kannangi, (the art critic) Modern Art and its true
practioners in India are the members of the Progressive Artist Group.610
According to Samuel Butler (1835-1902) ....all the noblest arts hold
in perfection but for a very little moment. They soon reach a height from
where they begin to decline, and when they have began to decline it is a
pity that they cannot be knocked on the head; for an art is like a living
organism better dead than dying. There is no way of making an aged art
young again; it must be born anew and grown up from infancy as a new
thing, working out its own salvation from all effort in all fear and
trembling.‖611
In his opening speech, Dr Mulk Raj Anand sounded an optimistic
note on the progress made by the members of the Group. Elaborating on
the motto of the Group, which was based on a statement by Samuel Butler
(1835-1912), he said that a dead art was better than a dying art; that dead
art was like a halter round the artist's neck and felt that the new art would
deal with social content.612
According to Rudolf Von Leyden, ―They are not satisfied with the
readymade conventions: neither of the academic western nor of the
610
Ibid.
611 Erewhon: The views of the Erewhonians concerning death,www.marxists.org/reference/archive/butler-samuel/1872/.../ch13.htm
612 Mago Pran Nath, opcit. P. 67-68
294
academic traditional schools.... It can also not be said that they simply
exchanged the conventions of the old schools for the obscure code of
modern painting. Those who have followed the work of these artists over
the past years will know of the struggle, the experiments, and the trials
that lie behind the considerable achievement which the exhibition
represents.‖613
In the works of Raza, Gade, Bakre and Husain, a gradual conquest
of subject matter by purely formalistic and colouristic preoccupation was
noticed. Though Souza too strove for formal values, his subject matter
occupied a much larger place in his imagination. Ara was the most direct
painter of the Group. As described by a critic, 'his equipment consists of
human sympathy and an extraordinary interest in every form of life.'614
Souza in an introductory note to the exhibition stated thus:
I do not quite understand now, why we still call our Group
'Progressive'. Not that the most retrogressive institutions call
themselves so, but we have changed all the chauvinist ideas and
the leftist fanaticism which we had incorporated in our manifesto
at the inception of the Group: 'To bring about a closer
understanding and contact between different sections of the
artists' community and the people....' We found this in the course
of working impossibility, because there is not only a permanent
rift between sections of artists, between Meissonier and Whistler,
613
Leyden Rudolf Von,The Distinct Group In Bombay, The Times of India, 9th
July,1949.
614 Oscar Wilde. The Soul of Man under Socialism, www.marxists.org/reference/archive/wilde-
oscar/soul-man/
295
Munnings and Picasso, Achrekar and Jamini Roy; but the gulf
between the so-called 'people' and the artist cannot be bridged.
Art will, as long as it remains, be esoteric. It can be
utilitarian-functional manufactures of house-hold commodities;
didactic-illustrational for school books or party journals; socialist
putative art of the Soviet Union; and religious—of the sort we see
today, painted clay Ganapatis and blond operatic Christs—but
then it is mercenary, pedagogic, political and devotional, but
never pure intrinsic 'Art'.
Today we paint with absolute freedom for contents and
techniques, almost anarchic; save that we are governed by one or
two sound elemental and eternal laws, of aesthetic order, plastic
co-ordination and colour composition. We have no pretensions of
making vapid revivals of any school or movement in art. We
have studied the various schools of painting and sculpture to
arrive at a vigorous synthesis.615
To return to Samuel Butler, the Erewhonian artists he says, were not
only taught to paint but also to sell their works. Since we have never had
such training, we have got the secret ambition of discovering Butler's
`Erewhon' which is anagrammatically, 'No Where'.
Whether or not a vigorous synthesis of various schools was
achieved by the Progressive Group, it is difficult to say. The Group as
such practically disintegrated soon after its joint exhibition with the
Calcutta Group held at Calcutta in 1951. By the end of 1951, F. N .Souza
and S. K. Bakre moved to London and S. H. Raza to Paris. According to
H. A. Gade, who had personally taken the Group's exhibition to Calcutta,
it was well received by the art lovers as well as artists like Ramkinkar
Vaij, Prodosh Das Gupta and others who appreciated the experimental
615
F. N. Sauz, op. cit.
296
endeavour of the Bombay artists. The affairs of the Group were
subsequently conducted by Gade and its annual exhibitions held at the
Artists Aid Fund Centre, also known as the Bombay Art Society Salon at
6, Rampart Road, Bombay, till 1954.
The members of the Progressive Artists Group, who had hardly at-
tained any proficiency in the then prevalent British academic style,
seemed essentially to be against the continuance of this particular alien
idiom, though they also rebelled against spiritless Indianization'. For they
merely chose to work in the new alien idioms of European modern art,
rejecting the British academic and the Western Classical styles. But then
they were still under the spell of Western influence in their works as there
seemed no inclination on their part to seek inspiration from any traditional
Indian source. According to Baburao Sadwelkar, they had no positive
manifesto and every member of the Group was inspired by one or the
other modern European painters—Van Gogh, Gauguin, Cezanne, Matisse,
Picasso, Braque and Rouault. The Group, after a few exhibitions,
gradually disintegrated.
4:10 Bombay Group: After the disintegration of the Progressive Artists
Group, a new group emerged under the name of Bombay Group.616
The
Bombay Group was formed by another group of artists including some of
616
Dalmia Yashodra, op. cit. pp. 181-182.
297
the former members of the Progressive Artists Group, K. H. Ara and H. A.
Gade under the leadership of K. K. Hebbar. Others who joined the Group
included S. D. Chavda, D. G. Kulkarni, V. S. Gaitonde, Mohan Samant, S.
B. Palsikar, Baburao Sadwelkar and Harkrishan Lall.
The Group was active in the years 1957-62 and presented six big
exhibitions which were well received. Seeking inspiration from Ajanta
and the Indian miniature paintings, the artists initially tried to synthesise
Indian and Western elements with a contemporary sensibility, but
gradually moved towards abstraction and simplification of form in a
pictorial manner, each in his own characteristic manner617
. For example,
Hebbar chose to paint events and objects from everyday life, organising
them into unusual compositions, and developed the textural aspect of
colour; Palsikar developed a new `Indianised' pictorial style with a strange
mystic approach; Samant aimed at an 'esoteric content with the non-
structural approach of composition', Gade 'developed architectonic
arrangements with vibrating textures'; Sadwelkar rooted his themes in
modern poetry and the scientific achievement of conquering space;
Harkrishan Lall painted landscapes in a bold but well organised
expressionistic style; and Gaitonde 'worked as a recluse and was strongly
617
Mago Pran Nath, op. cit. pp. 70- 71.
298
influenced by the paintings of Paul Klee', adding to his work increasing
elements of abstraction charged with vibrant colour and textual effects.618
The Bombay artists, by and large, though proficient in drawing and
working techniques, endeavoured to emphasize abstract expressionism
and other modern idioms. Some others who made significant contributions
included Akbar Padamsee, G. M. Solegaonkar, G. M. Hazarnis, Jehangir
Sabawala, Tyeb Mehta, Badri Narayan, Homi Patel and Ambadas.
4:11 Delhi Silpi Chakra: Shortly after India‘s Independence, on January
30, 1948, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was assassinated.―And then
came a bolt from the blue,‖ as the artist Bhabesh Chandra Sanyal writes.619
In Sanyal‘s reminiscences, the narrative of Gandhi‘s death is entangled
with yet another narrative – the narrative of the formation of the Silpi
Chakra, a Delhi-based artists‘ collective. Writing about Gandhi‘s death,
Sanyal reminiscences: ―It was not immediately known who had committed
this foul murder. No sane man, Hindu or Muslim, could have gunned
down this gem of a man. Day in and day out Gandhi preached non-
violence and communal harmony. He was mentally hurt and wounded at
618
Ibid. pp. 70- 71.
619 Sanayal,Bhabesh Chandra, The Vertical Woman: Reminiscences of B. C. Sanyal, Volume II (New
Delhi:National Gallery of Modern Art, 1998), 6.
299
the meaningless bloodshed that freedom brought to the subcontinent of
India. So, who on earth had thought of such a stupid, mad act!‖620
Although most of the artists who had moved from Lahore to Delhi
in the wake of the Partition became members of the All India Fine Arts
and Crafts Society (AIFACS) in Delhi, their association with it did not last
long. Briefly the reasons were that the affairs of AIFACS, by and large,
were planned and controlled by non-professional members who had no
artistic commitment.
The few artists in the inner circle of AIFACS followed, rather than
provided, the leadership. As a result there was growing discontent among
working artists. This phenomenon was not peculiar to AIFACS alone; well
established art societies in Bombay and Calcutta also suffered the same
problem. Some of the members attempted to bring about changes in the
working system of AIFACS with the co-operation of other members from
within, but to no avail.
B. C. Sanyal, Kanwal Krishna, K. S. Kulkarni, Dhan Raj Bhagat,
Pran Nath Mago and a few others sought a meeting with those artists of
AIFACS who sat on the fence, to resolve the issue. When this failed, it
was decided to place certain resolutions at the next general body meeting
620
.Sanayal,Bhabesh Chandra, The Vertical Woman: Reminiscences of B. C. Sanyal, Volume II (New Delhi:National Gallery of Modern Art, 1998), 6.
300
of AIFACS, demanding more representation to working artists on various
committees and for more meaningful programmes and facilities for the
upliftment of art. It must be remembered that AIFACS was then the only
organisation which the Delhi based artists could lean on for
encouragement and furtherance of their interests. There were no
commercial art galleries of the like we have now.
But the general body meeting of AIFACS in March 1949
overflowed with people unconnected with art, and none of resolutions by
the protesting artists went through. One of the resolutions contained a
recommendation to the government to consider the newly established All
India Association of Fine Arts of Bombay as the central or national
organisation for the sustenance and promotion of the Indian arts. Kekoo
Gandhi, the then secretary of the Association, had especially attended the
meeting to muster support for the resolution. But to no avail.
Krishna, Kulkarni and Mago, who were then the members of the
Council of the AIFACS (1948-49), submitted their resignations on the
spot, and went on to lay the foundation of the Delhi Silpi Chakra on 25
March 1949, together with Sanyal and Bhagat.
It was clear that unless artists came together on the basis of their
professional interest and needs, free of the benevolently patronising
control of non-professionals, however well intentioned, no organisation
301
could really become meaningful. Self-reliance and self-respect are
synonymous for an artist.
Other reasons apart, the emergence of Silpi Chakra also symbolised
the aspiration of young progressive artists in seeking something different
from what had been a popular trend in the works of painters of the Bengal
School.
According to B. C. Sanyal ―Keeping this objective in mind we
evolved a method of work. The step we took was to make known the
shortcomings of the system by contrast, through effective program and
action.‖621
Thus, if Gandhian politics had engendered as specific kind of
art praxis in early 20th-century India, one that exceeded the conventional
strictures and closures of the modern art world, Gandhi‘s assassination in
1948 served as yet another ethical imperative. It was this imperative that
led to the formation of the Silpi Chakra, founded in March 1949 by
Sanyal.
If F. N. Souza, in the very first exhibition of the Bombay
Progressive Artists Group, declared ―Art‖ as inherently ―esoteric,‖ beyond
the ―utilitarian,‖ and attempts to reach out to ―the so-called ‗people‘‖ as
―leftist fanaticism,‖ the Chakra provided distinctly different notions of
both artistic praxis and the role of modern art in a post- Independence
621
Sanayal, B.C., opcit. P. 6
302
public sphere.622
Tacitly positioning them against the Bombay
Progressive Artists Group, the Chakra rejected the ideal of ―art for art‘s
sake‖ as ―a drug suitable only for the lotus eaters.‖623
It is precisely this concern with the political that distinguished the
Chakra from the Bombay Progressive, a group that is now demarcated as
India‘s first true avant-garde. It was not aesthetic concerns but a strong
belief in using art to transform the social that brought the Chakra together,
According to Amarnath Sehgal, the Chakra thus attempted to articulate a
new model of avant-gardism, an art praxis that was not centered on a
cohesive ideology of stylistic preoccupations, but one that was premised
on political action. An understanding of the Chakra must then be located
within the frameworks of political action rather than purely aesthetic
engagements.
The collective scripted a manifesto even before they managed to
secure an address or funds to support their activities. Taking ―Art
Illuminates Life‖ as its motto, the Chakra declared: The group recognizes
that art as an activity must not be divorced from life; that the art of the
nation must express the soul of its people and ally with the forces of
progress. The group recognized artists had to come together to work
622
4. F. N. Souza ,in Progressive Artists Group.
623 5. Sanyal, The Vertical Woman, 13.
303
towards the progress of art and through art, help build a virile national
culture and brighter life in the country.624
The signatories to this manifesto
included Sanyal, Kanwal Krishna, K. S. Kulkarni, P. N. Mago, Dhanraj
Bhagat and Dinkar Kaushik. Very soon the group had over thirty members
including Devayani Krishna, Harkrishan Lall, Jaya Appasamy, Amarnath
Sehgal, Avinash Chandra, Rajesh Mehra, Bishamber Khanna, Shankar
Pillai, Satish Gujral, and Ratna Fabri, among others.
The membership of the Chakra was restricted to working artists, but
writers, musicians, poets, critics and dramatists, who shared the Chakra's
views were welcome to associate with its activities.
The Chakra believed that art, a creative adventure, should be the
total expression of life, keeping pace with time and environment. Art was,
of course, mainly the artist's business, but its purpose was to
communicate; its life-blood was the responses of its receptive audience,
whether it was their condemnation or praise, but never their apathy. The
artists of the Chakra, essentially the refugees in Delhi torn from their
moorings by communal storms, had their aesthetic seekings sustained by
vitality and self-criticism.
624
Pran Nath Mago, “Introduction,” in Delhi Silpi Chakra: The Early Years, Exhibition catalog 1997 (New Delhi: National Gallery of Modern Art, 1997),8
304
With faith in the transformative powers of art, this group sought a
wider audience, beyond New Delhi‘s elitist art world through free
lectures, exhibitions, and art demonstrations on the streets of the city, for
example at Connaught Circus, Gole Market, and Karol Bagh. While
Connaught Circus, with its wide-open arenas, parks, and promenades, was
the heart of New Delhi, Gole Market and Karol Bagh, with their bustling
bazaars and congested streets, had become home to the many dispossessed
during Partition. The Chakra‘s choice of ―mohallas [neighborhoods]
where art and culture had never penetrated‖ as appropriate spaces for the
display of art was perhaps strategic.625
Attracting a wide audience ranging
from laborers, shopkeepers, and middleclass housewives to bureaucrats,
intellectuals, and students, these public meetings in the early years of the
Chakra were only the beginning of a long commitment to popularize
modern art, making it accessible to a wider audience. Sanyal, the force
behind the collective, had been a staunch supporter of the 1930‘s and
1940‘s leftist cultural movements.
The Bengal Famine of 1943 had already left an indelible mark on
Sanyal. The displacement of millions by the Partition further compelled
him to repeatedly portray the disenfranchised body to create an
625
Bhabesh Chandra Sanyal, cited in Pran Nath Mago, “Sanyal: An Art Pioneer from Lahore” in Petals of Offering: An Exhibition of Paintings, Sculptures, and Graphics, Felicitating Prof. B. C. Sanyal on hisNinetieth Birthday, Exhibition catalog, April 1992 (New Delhi: Lalit Kala Akademi, 1992), 13.
305
iconography for the new nation. The Chakra attempted to transform
modern art into a cultural form through which the community could
visualize its own self. Of course, the Chakra was not the first collective to
engage with a larger public sphere.
Sanyal, who had been closely associated with Jamini Roy, writes
about Roy‘s attempts to popularize modern art by making his paintings
affordable for a middleclass audience, as well as his forays into stage
design for public theatres in 1930s Calcutta.626
Number of the Chakra
artists had also been art students in Calcutta when Nandalal Bose was
asked by Gandhi to design posters for the 1937 Indian National Congress
session in Haripura. Over subsequent years, artists not only designed and
decorated pavilions, but also created posters, pamphlets, and book
illustrations in conjunction with the annual meetings of the Indian
National Congress.
Thus, a close affiliation between modern art and political action was
already established. The Chakra‘s public interventions need to be located
within this very history. This notion of artistic practice as a form of
cultural activism ran like a leitmotif in the careers of many of the Chakra
artists, beginning as early as 1937. The career of Sanyal is a good
626
Bhabesh Chandra Sanyal, cited in Pran Nath Mago, “Sanyal: An Art Pioneer from Lahore” in Petals of Offering: An Exhibition of Paintings, Sculptures, and Graphics, Felicitating Prof. B. C. Sanyal on hisNinetieth Birthday, Exhibition catalog, April 1992 (New Delhi: Lalit Kala Akademi, 1992), 117.
306
example. After a formal training at the Government College of Arts and
Crafts, Calcutta, Sanyal had joined the Mayo School of Art, Lahore and
was given charge of the commercial painting and modelling departments.
However, in 1937, following a conflict with the then Principal,
Samarendranath Gupta, Sanyal resigned from his position to set up the
Lahore School of Fine Art. Christened the ―Lahore underground‖ by
contemporary newspapers, the School provided an alternative support
system to artists who functioned beyond the colonial patronage of the
Mayo School. The School was inaugurated with an exhibition of Punjab
art – the largest the city had seen.
Apart from classes taught by Sanyal and his colleagues, for example
Dhanraj Bhagat, Roop and Mary Krishna, the School began holding
exhibitions of artists from all over India as a move towards generating
conversation among art practitioners across the country. Some of the
artists displayed in the exhibitions included Sudhir Khastagir, Paritosh
Sen, and Kanwal Krishna. Beyond the immediate world of practicing
artists, the many who frequented the School included art critics O. C.
Gangooly and Charles Fabri, Marxist intellectuals Rajani Palme Dutt and
Ajay Ghosh, Progressive writers Faiz Ahmed Faiz and Muhammad Abbas,
as well as performing artists Uday Shankar and Norah Richards.
307
Needless to say, the intellectual ferment at the School was charged
with Marxist ideals to the point that the Lahore branch of the Friends of
Soviet Union (a radical leftist cultural organization) held its weekly
meetings at the School‘s premises. Going beyond its role merely as an art
center, the School had become a nucleus for the progressive, anti
imperialist, and leftist intellectuals of Lahore, as Swatantra Prakash, a
student at the School in the 1930s, remembered. Simultaneously, Sanyal
encouraged workshops with school children and in his autobiography
mentions the great joy he felt when Lahore‘s conservative families sent
their daughters to his school.627
It was here that Sanyal, Bhagat, and their colleagues first
articulated the politics of what would later become the Chakra. By 1947,
most artists associated with the School had moved to New Delhi. The
group‘s first formal exhibition took place at the New Delhi Freemason‘s
Hall in November 1949. The Kailash Carpet Company, a neighboring
carpet shop at Connaught Place, offered their carpets for the venue.
Similarly, local merchants funded the exhibition screens and lighting
equipment required to convert the Hall into a suitable space for a formal
627
9. Bhabesh Chandra Sanyal, The Vertical Woman: Reminiscences of B. C. Sanyal, Volume I (New Delhi: National Gallery of Modern Art, 1998), 58
308
exhibition. This was indeed an extraordinary moment in the city‘s urban
public culture.
In the same year, the Chakra opened the first commercial gallery in
India when Ram Chand Jain, who ran a framing shop at Connaught Place,
New Delhi, offered a part of his premises for a permanent gallery. In spite
of limited commercial success, Jain‘s venture (now the Dhoomimal
Gallery) filled a lacuna in Delhi‘s art world. Writing on the occasion of
the inauguration of the gallery, Sanyal stated, ―The Art Gallery should
serve the dual purpose of educating public opinion on art and provide a
means towards the artists‘ economic self-sufficiency. The Art Gallery
aims to serve the purpose of a link between art and the people.‖628
The Silpi Chakra Gallery functioned here until the Ministry of
Rehabilitation offered the group a space at Shankar Market in 1957.
Although not intentional on the part of the Ministry, it was perhaps
appropriate that a group, which had strategically sought out the bazaar as a
space for modern art, was given its own space in a bazaar best known as a
wholesale textile market. Much like the Lahore School of Art, here the
group started holding regular exhibitions, screenings of films, lectures,
and cultural events, actively involving the city‘s intellectuals, such as the
628
Bhabesh Chandra Sanyal, The Vertical Woman, Volume I (New Delhi: National Gallery of Modern Art, 1998),p. 8
309
art critic and historian Charles Fabri, the architect Habib Rahman, and the
dancer Indrani Rahman, among others. Simultaneously, a library was set
up. To support itself, the Chakra provided art works on rent and also had
easy installment plans for buyers who could not otherwise afford art. Such
interventions in post-Independence Delhi‘s public sphere were attempts to
―generate an art environment‖ conducive to making modern art a part of
everyday life.629
The paintings were sold to university teachers, doctors, lawyers,
writers, actors, musicians. To those who could not afford to make a
straight purchase, works were even offered on hire-purchase. This
enlarged the circle of its patrons. The Chakra's vibrant existence lasted
almost till the mid-1960, after which it gradually became inactive.
The Chakra artists, with their fresh enthusiasm and new styles of
expression—generally inspired from the mannerisms in the modern art
movement in the West—did glamorise the younger artists. But there was
also a deep interest among man Chakra artists to relate their work to the
spirit of traditional Indian art. The partition also gave a new dimension to
their work as they had recently passed through an upheaval of social
changes and were given to include social realities in their work which
629
Sanayal,Bhabesh Chandra, “Art and Life in India since Independence,” in Joseph James ed. Art and Life in India: Last Four Decades (Shimla: Indian Institute of Advanced Studies, 1989), 116-120
310
would have ordinarily been confined to the new formal language of the
Western art movement.
The Delhi Silpi Chakra and its influence in other parts of the
country certainly were attributed to the moorings of some of the artists in
the art scene of Lahore. Only the scene had shifted. The new trends, new
tendencies or new ideas that had inspired the Lahore artists were
continued even in Delhi. From here the result of the Chakra's endeavours
were presented to an all-India audience through displays in Calcutta and in
November, 1958 in Bombay. These evoked a great deal of interest in the
Chakra's activities among artists and critics in both these cities.
The art critic of the Times of India, Bombay wrote in its issue of De-
cember 12, 1958:
The Bombay public in general and the city artists in particular
ought to be grateful to Mr. P. A. Narielwala, K. K. Hebbar,
Dr Mulk Raj Anand, Mr J. D. Gondhlekar, S. Chavda and the
inevitable K. H. Ara, for sponsoring the Delhi Silpi Chakra
exhibition at the Jehangir Gallery. Opened by the art patron
and former art critic, Mr. R. V. Leyden this exhibition of 46
paintings and sculptures by 16 artists of Delhi could be an
eye-opener in our art-conscious public.
The role of Silpi Chakra artists, by infusing social significance in
their creative expression, had been dynamic and made a meaningful
contribution to the growth of contemporary art in India. It today stands as
an event that has assumed a significant historical importance.
311
Conclusion
Works of art were created many thousand years before the invention
of writing. The works of art were our chief source of information
concerning pre-historic and ancient people. The most primitive decoration
is usually produced by simple and appropriate technique. ―The oldest
human art probably consisted of floral gathering, found objects and skin
marking.‖
Art is the best mode of expression of one‘s mental and emotional
state. When we express our feelings, thought or idea, we want that it
should also be communicated also, and art serves this purpose. It is a
mode for communication. Mere expression is not art. To be called art,
one‘s expression must be communicated also. Here communication means
to publicize one‘s ideas, thought and feeling. If we express our thought,
feelings, ideas on canvas or in any other form but do not make it public, it
won‘t be art. If a person writes a poem (in this way he is expressing
himself) but does not make it public, how can others know his feelings.
Though he is expressing his ideas but not communicating them, it will not
be art. Art is both expression and communication. As a human being we
always want to share our personal experience with others and we are also
312
interested in the personal experiences of others. Art serves the same
purpose.
Architecture, sculpture and paintings are the three great forms of art
which appeal to the spirit through the eyes, painting being the oldest. The
art of painting is as old as human beings are. It is one of the oldest art
forms which even the primitive man knew.
India has produced great art since the ancient time, the earliest
known paintings have been found on the walls of caves in northern India.
Painted in red ochre, they represent animal hunts and so resemble similar
scenes found in the Palaeolithic caves of Spain that archaeologists believe
the two to be contemporary. Traditionally art was made for the purpose of
ritual, contemplation or delectation.
Even today, the art of painting is a part of our life. Paintings adorn
the walls of our homes, or are made for rituals, or are a mode of publicity,
etc. ―Paintings are used to enrich the walls of our living quarters and also
to preserve the likeness of members of our families. Similarly, paintings
are used to commemorate events of social importance and to embellish
public buildings.
313
Due to frequent invasions, unrest and turmoil, art flourished in India
in many different levels- from temples and the courts of the Maharajas and
Nawabs, down to village and tribes.
Paintings by their very nature, did not survive the onslaught of time
except in the frescoes of the Ajanta caves, painted by Buddhist monks.
With the arrival of mughals in India during sixteen century, Indian
painting evolved into a breathtaking genre. The Mughals brought with
them Persian court artists. Under the patronage of early Mughal Emperor a
remarkable synthesis took place between their imported taste and Indian
sensibility. This style spread to other princely courts and resulted in
Mughal- Rajput miniature paintings, which are considered to be the most
beautiful images ever created.
By the nineteenth century, the decline of the imperial Mughal
dynasty and other local courts had led to the loss of patronage for the
traditional artist. Due to the gradual disintegration of the Mughal dynasty
and the ambitious art policy of the British Empire the academic art spread
rapidly in colonial India.
After East India Company gained a foothold in Bengal in 1757, the
art situation gradually began to change. The Company painters received
instruction in European drawing. Painters from Patna and Murshidabad,
314
who came to Calcutta in search of work, turned out water colours in the
English manner. The East India Company employed artists for purpose of
documentation. The Company artists did topographical, architectural, and
natural history drawings. Thus the British, who now ruled India, were able
to stem this decline for a while by employing artists to execute portraits,
picturesque views, ethnographic and natural history themes.
With the advent of Europeans and, more specifically, the British,
new developments began in the field of painting. During the latter half of
the eighteenth century, the paintings of Indian artists attracted the attention
of the English traders at many places. The East India Company‘s
merchants began to procure items of Indian arts and crafts.
Simultaneously, interested persons among them drew the attention of the
Indian artists to the technique of water-colour painting. Artists were
required to depict Indian life and scenes but in a medium of the foreigner‘s
liking.
In these circumstances, artists were required to imitate the English
style of painting. The artists worked to satisfy the needs of their new
masters for some economic gain and were known as Company Painters.
When combined, the Western technique and the Indian form brought
about a synthetic style.
315
There was a blend of traditional elements from existing miniature
style with a more Western treatment of perspective, volume and recession.
Most of the paintings were small, following the Indian miniature tradition;
however, the paintings of plants and birds (natural history paintings) were
usually life size. Company art flourished at the main British settlements of
Calcutta, Madras, and Delhi, Lucknow, Patna and the Maratha court of
Thanjavur.
Portraits, landscapes, and scenes of Indian people, dancers and
festivals were painted. Series of figures of different castes or trades were
particular favourites, with an emphasis on differences in costume. Another
popular subject was architecture, usually done in a detailed and frontal
style more like that of an architectural draughtsman. Mostly, paper was
used for the paintings, but sometimes paintings were made on ivory,
especially those from Delhi. The works were mostly kept in portfolios or
albums rather than displayed on walls.
The new ruling class could not assume the role of Thesaurus of
Indian art. Officers, officials and merchants, the British in India were not
the type of people who develop an independent aesthetic judgment. Indian
art was utterly strange to their whole background, was collected, if at all,
without understanding of its forms, its spirit its subjects, collected not so
much for its intrinsic beauty than as souvenirs of a career which they
316
sentimentally loved because of its wealth, or quaint exotic' experiences,
bought at the price of many sacrifices and hardships. But as long as they
were in India, they would rigorously avoid anything that might efface their
identity, keeping their houses as "English" as the social rituals which at
home were a matter of convenience and comfort, here a distinction of
caste. When they really needed art, they ordered it from `home' or
employed artists who had come thence. To them Indian art was a bazar
bargain for the moment of returning home, no more.
The short-lived school of Company painting, which combined
English water colour and Indian miniature styles, however, merely
postponed the approaching end of traditional art, rather than averting it
altogether.
Art resurfaced in the 1850s in an entirely different context, as a new
class of artists stepped into the vacuum left by the demise of the traditional
ones. The restoration of art was due in part to the Western Art Schools in
the three Presidency capitals, Madras, Calcutta and Bombay, founded
privately to train artisans but soon taken over by the government,
following the accusation by William Morris, Owen Jones, George
Birdwood and other champions of art manufactures, that government
neglect had caused the decline of Indian applied arts. The background to
their criticism was the Great Exhibition of 1851, in London, which had
317
revealed the strength of traditional Indian manufacture in as much as it
had exposed the undistinguished quality of English industrial arts such as
carpets, wallpapers and furniture. Due to the establishment of European
art institution the meaning and function of art in Indian society changed.
Traditional artisans were replaced by enterprising individual artist, art
societies taking over the functions of aristocratic patrons, and art schools
as agents of the British empire seeking to inculcate ‗good taste‘ in its
subjects.
In reaction, Indian art life began to stir again. It was not yet even the
beginning of a new national art, but at least an interpretation of Indian life
and vision through Indian eyes. The champion of this first renaissance was
Raja Ravi Varma. Ravi Varma, tried to re-establish Indian art through
Western methods, techniques, principles and traits. He studied the
technique of oil painting from the famous European portrait painter,
Theodore Jenson. Ravi Varma tried to reproduce Indian life and scenes as
well as the traditional mythological subject matter in oil painting in the
Western style. Ravi Varma employed this new medium in painting Indian
mythological themes which at once attained wide recognition and through
oleographs became popular throughout the country. Ravi Varma is
considered as modern among traditionalists and a rationalist among
moderns. He provided a vital link between the traditional Indian art and
318
the contemporary, between the Tanjaur School and Western Academic
realism. He brought Indian painting to the attention of the larger world.
His paintings enjoyed immense popularity and oil paint were the
favorite decoration of the Hindu lower middle class. His paintings got
recognition even in international exhibitions in Vienna and Chicago. In the
days of his greatest success traditional Indian art was practically dead and
officially approved European art had reached its lowest ebb. Ravi Varma,
had a good sense of colour and could be poetic in a quiet way. He has
done good portraits. But his fame rests on his mythological and epic
paintings. He assimilated western technique to articulate Indian subjects
by means of which he painted images of God. The very fact that his
pictures became very popular shows how much they reflected the
sentimental religiosity and ideals of his time. Nevertheless, it will always
stand to his credit that he re-introduced Indian subjects, not as exotic
curiosities seen by foreigners, but as sacred national ideals and visions, at
a time when the Indian upper class aped the West.
Raja Ravi Verma was among the first artists in the 19th Century to
introduce a radical change by focusing on themes of Indian mythology and
literature. He did this by resurrecting classical Indian sources from the
Mahabharat and from Kalidasa‘s Play, and by combining this with
European techniques of realism in colour, composition & perspective.
319
Varma‘s Contribution has been far – reaching. He awakened a national
feeling or consciousness through his chosen medium, projected India into
rarified realms of high class art, and for the first time elevated the Indian
artist to a position of dignity. He made the outside world more acutely
aware of the infinite variety and incredible charm that this ancient land has
to offer, an Indianism which survived extended alien influences, The most
profound service he rendered, was to invest the Hindu pantheon of gods
and goddesses with face, figure and forms and to enable them to find
places in the hearts and homes of the poor and rich.
Verma‘s paintings gained a huge national popularity partly because
he was able to cater the sentiment of the masses by painting theatrical
presentation of Hindu mythological subjects, and partly due to his
ingenious marketing strategies for starting a printing press in Bombay in
1894, which made it possible to make as many copies of his paintings as
was demanded. And soon mass-produced oleographs got even more
multiplied in the form of bazaar prints and calendar art anticipating new
methods of cultural dissemination, and the fact anybody could now have
access to art, is tantamount to the Industrial urban ambition of modernity.
Raja Ravi Varma‘s major contribution lies in his history paintings of
ancient Indian epics and classical literary works. He meticulously learned
the Victorian dialect of salon art, especially the skill of oil painting, and
320
articulated Indian subjects, which are both conspicuously different from
the Western cannon and at the same time convincingly modern.
Toward the end of the 19th century, however, traditional Indian art
had been well re-established; Mughal miniatures just began to be
appreciated, a decade later to be followed by Rajput (i.e. mainly Pahari)
miniatures; the Ajanta murals, up till now known only in a few very poor
drawings, were at last published in a fairly satisfactory manner and
aroused a storm of enthusiasm. This was the achievement of the Bombay
School of Arts under Griffiths. Its next principal, Gladstone Solomon,
tried to introduce also an Indian figure style; unfortunately it never
succeeded in catching the characteristic movements and impressions of
Indian people, not to mention the spirit of India, A parallel effort was
made in the Calcutta School of arts by E. B. Havell, the great propagandist
and first ideologist of Indian art. He tried to encourage a new national art,
without imposing a special style.
E. B. Havell, through his experience draws the conclusion that the
Western art could never prosper in India. He believed that painting in
India must remain Indian in spirit even when it adopted western
techniques of execution, It was due to his sincere efforts that the new art
movement started in India for the revival of the lost values. With his
efforts there emerged distinct-school of Indian painting that came to be
321
known as the modern school of artists. The pioneer of the new school was
Abanindranath Tagore. His work was twofold, to rediscover the best in the
Indian art of the ancient and medieval eras and to regenerate art in its
modern setting. Abanindranath Tagore, the founder of the Bengal school
was the first to evolve a typical Indian Style, characterized by a delicacy
of line and color and lyrical romanticism. The "Indian style" that emerged
soon spread throughout the country and the Bengal school assumed a
national character.
The art of Bengal School is closely linked with the art of
Abanindranath Tagore. The evolving course of his experiments and
achievements is indicative of the changing spirit of his time. He found the
Western techniques that he learned from his European teachers, Charles L
Palmer and Olinto Ghilardi, in the late nineteenth century, rather
restrictive. He began to search for inspiration in the traditional schools of
painting like the Mughal and the Rajput. While experimenting and
assimilating their techniques and forms, he came in contact with Okakura
Kakuzo and the two Japanese painters, Yokoyama Taikan and Hishida
Shunro, who came to India on Okakura's initiative. The idea was to work
together and absorb techniques and approach of each other's art. The result
was the discovery of 'wash' technique. Abanindranath had found a novel
322
method—a fusion of Indian and Japanese mannerisms to which he
responded spontaneously.
Thus Abanindranath's artistic outlook widened and he experimented
with Chinese and Japanese inspirations. But especially Ajanta proved a
revelation. Like the European classicists a century earlier, he tried to distil
from those murals the formula for an authoritative, always valid and thus
unsurpassable national style, even working our detailed model books for
every part of the body, every position, every angle of vision. He supported
his ideas with references from the Sanskrit treatises of the late Gupta
period and of the Middle Ages. And he doted on Mughal miniatures. Thus
he became the father of a national art revival and art ideology and
educated a vast following of enthusiastic and gifted disciples. His most
important successor was Nandalal Bose who, as a member of Lady
Herringham's team of copyists, in 1909-12, had become intimately
acquainted with the technique and expression of the Ajanta murals. Later
on, Nandalal Bose was to become the principal of the art school of
Rabindranath's Santiniketan. What Abanindranath had proclaimed, he
achieved. But he went further, starting on an intensive study also of folk
art. His creations are vigorous and interesting, but when compared with
the ancient originals, they often look simply absurd. For ancient Indian art
was based on nature, though it never tried crudely to imitate it; and its
323
conscious stylization was the final result of a long development from very
naive renderings. Ancient Indian art, therefore, had "been immensely
alive, just because it intensified and transfigured reality. And it lost
contact with that latter only in its last decadence. But in those years the art
of the past was not yet sufficiently known as that people could distinguish
between the genuine and the derivative; and its then current
interpretations, though they did justice to its contents, completely misun-
derstood its formal foundations.
He passed on this new technique to his students at the Government
Art School, like Nandalal Bose, Kshitendranath Mazumdar, Asit Kumar
Haldar, Surendranath Ganguly, Shailendranath Dey, K. Venkatappa, and
Samarendranath Gupta. All of them, not only became famous exponents
of the wash painting technique, but also spread its magic across the whole
country as Principals of the main art schools in India before Independence.
Devi Prasad Roy Choudhury, went to Madras; Asit Kumar Haldar, after a
short stay at Kala Bhavan in Shantiniketan, went to Lucknow;
Samarendranath Gupta to Lahore; Shailendranath Dey to Jaipur; Pramode
Kumar Chatterji to Masulipattam; Kshitindranath Majumdar to Allahabad.
The brothers, Sarada and Ranada Ukil, founded their school—Sarada Ukil
School of Art, in Delhi. Mukul Dey became Principal of Government Art
324
School in Calcutta, and Nandalal Bose, the most illustrious, became
incharge of the Kala Bhavan at Shantiniketan.
Abanindranath and his successors have exercised an immense
influence for the better and for the worse. They soon dominated all the
teaching of art in the country. An immense output, mainly of paintings,
was produced in the new "national" style and almost swept away Western
influences.
Thus the Bengal School became the medium of expression of the
mass mentality and the nationalist successor to the role which Ravi
Varma's pictures had played during the dominance of British rule. For
millions of people it still fulfils this role and will do so as long as that
mentality will persist. For, in a way, both are similar, i.e. they are
romantic-retrospective, and the Bengal School even more than Ravi
Varma. For if Ravi Varma had dressed-the Gods and heroes of the past in
costumes of his own time and placed them in surroundings such as were
familiar to the people, the Bengal masters created an artificial milieu, and
only where they depicted village life they approached reality to some
degree. But they romanticized it likewise, painting a world of sweetness,
song, love and devotion, but suppressing all its less pleasant aspects, all its
bitter struggle for survival, except where this could be exploited for a
sentimental appeal. In all these respects the Bengal School repeats the
325
characteristics of European art in the early 19th century, putting Gupta
classicism in the place of Graeco-Roman, Mughal- Rajput romance in that
of Gothic-Renaissance, Hindu or Muslim devotion in that of Christian and
Indian 'drawing room' peasants in that of Tyroleans, Bretons, Dutch
fishermen and Italian Lazaroni and brigands.
However, this was not the result of imitation; for the Bengal
painters were not acquainted with all those aspects of European art. It was
rather the product of a similar socio-economic situation. Progressive
economic and political liberation could not bring a return to the past, but
just the opposite, a quicker and quicker growth into the modern
technocratic world. For in our hard age the course of a nation is
determined by the needs of survival vis-a-vis a rapidly growing population
to be nourished, an overwhelming economic competition in the
international field, in and a race of armaments of not less gigantic
dimensions. Whoever ignores this is lost. Thus the India of the past is
more and more disappearing, and even whatever survives, undergoes
incisive changes. But man cannot so easily adapt himself to a new world
beyond his imagination and yearns for the 'good old times' of the past
which he is losing, yet also forgetting which hardships since he has been
spared. Art has to fill this gap, to create a dream world in order to satisfy
those yearnings. The Bengal School represents not modern Indian art, but
326
another step in its direction, and even an important one. It has become the
first genuine national style, it has rediscovered composition, linear beauty
and occasionally heights of idealism and spirituality forgotten since the
ebbing away of Krishna mysticism. But it very success was its undoing. It
ended in cheap mass production, a second hand technical routine and
cheap sentimentality, and never came really to grips with modern India.
E. B. Havell and Abanindranth Tagore started the Bengal School in
painting which was called the Renaissance School as well as the
Revivalist School. The movement endeavored to revive the lost values,
and revitalise the indigenous system. This revivalism had ill effects too,
for it took art back to the subject matter of ancient periods in an imitative
manner without much creativity.
But, on the credit side, the movement reminded the Indian artists of
the styles of their ancestors and inspired them to look ahead with
confidence. The old and the new could be developed together.
The artistic creed of this school was gradually challenged and new
developments came about. A genuinely individual search for content and
form led to a successful synthesis of Indian and European techniques. The
first major breakthrough came with the Gagendranath Tagore, Amrita
Shergil, Jamini Roy, and Rabindranath Tagore.
327
Moving away from the realism of the colonial Art Schools and the
revivalist visual language of Abanindranath Tagore‘s Bengal School,
artists such as Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941), Jamini Roy (1887-
1972), and Gaganendranath Tagore (1867-1938) embraced a modernist
simplification of form in the 1930s. Simultaneously, Amrita Shergil
(1913-1941), made rural India a surrogate for her own gendered location
within the larger nationalist struggle. The two members of the .Tagore
family followed their own idea, Gaganendranath, experimenting with
linear patterns and chiaroscuro effects, and the poet Rabindranath, creating
a visionary world of his own.
Amrita Sher-Gil returned to India after being groomed in the
mainstream Western art world in Paris. However, it was not her immediate
contemporary movements in Paris that she choose, but instead brought the
influence of Post-Impressionism and in a certain sense re-enacted
Gauguin-Tahiti with the poor, downtrodden and silent images of infinite
submission of India. She identified with the Post-Impressionists not only
in terms of formal language but also in their passionately non conformist
lifestyle and destiny making her a fitting example of a modern rebel. Sher-
Gil‘s position is also of considerable importance in the feminist context of
modern for leading an individual and purely professional life in the world
of patriarchal chauvinism. In 1934, she returned to India after obtaining
328
training at the famous Ecole-des-Beauz-Arts, Paris. She became a living
emblem blending East and the West.
In her brief career, however, she incorporated post-impressionism
idiom with indigenous traditions like Pahari and Ajanta by which she
arrived at a pictorial solution to the everyday of life of India marking a
considerable difference both from the European influence and the local
Bengal School.
It was the emergence of Santinekatan in 1920s that Indian art
attained some kind of solemn repose and commensurability. Rabindranath
Tagore (1861-1941) being its main architect who devised the educational
formula of art practice that was adherent to the laws of nature. He talked
about the art manifesting human contact with the nature/environment,
which European art of the time was more or less disenchanted with. It was
Nandalal Bose (1882-1966) who, especially in his landscapes, realized the
dreams of Tagore for bringing art closer to nature and nature closer to art.
Tagore‘s initiative was remarkable in the sense that the school realized the
inevitability of the departure from the revivalist historicist temperament of
Abanindranath and the urgency of the relationship with the local and the
immediate – the reflexive nexus in which art and its environment can
grow into a mutually enriching relationship.
329
Rabindranath Tagore was more radical in his experimentation than
Sher-Gil for paving the way towards higher aims of modernism. Tagore‘s
painterly intervention in the mid-twenties anticipated the surreal
expressionist idiom of free associations where scratches, scribbles,
erasures, and doodles transformed into fantastic melancholic primordial
forms. At that time no other artist of India enjoyed the serious attention of
European intellectuals as Tagore‘s art works did, partly due to his
legendary reputation. And partly because of his radical imagination for
expressing his unconscious obsessions with a sense of awe and mystery,
which was strikingly reminiscent of his European contemporaries like
Paul Klee and Max Ernst. Tagore‘s profoundly personal style is attributed
to what came to be defined as ‗erasures‘ erupted from the game of creating
shapes out of crossed-out texts, which interestingly makes a dialectic link
with his discursive scriptural engagement of a prolific poet. In other
words, if one feigns to speculate, Tagore‘s conscious and prolonged
engagement with the production of text suddenly demanded explosion of
images – which attained a concrete and plastic presence in the form of
human and animal forms. He needed a break from the controlled formal
restrain of the writer and seek some kind of refuge in the subjective and
spontaneous release offered by the act of painting. His art, however, finds
a better license in the European art released in the event of Freud‘s
330
discoveries of the subconscious/unconscious, which triggered
experimentation in children‘s art and automatic drawings.
The individualistic stance attributed to Rabindranath Tagore and
Amrita Sher-Gil was further discovered in the primitivism of Jamini Roy
(1887-1972). Roy‘s development came a long way to find a distinctively
individual aesthetic. He had to brush shoulders with various styles ranging
from academic naturalism, Impressionism, and Chinese wash painting
until he rescued himself from the enchanting of European idioms of art
and found his raison d'être in the Bengali folk painters. Taking a break
from the mainstream influences, Roy absorbed and imbibed the unique
characteristics of Kalighat painting. The astonishing simplicity and
deftness of Roy‘s work was initially motivated by the art of Kalighat in its
result of the special handling of the pictorial form, the sense of volume
evoked by the use of shade and light or the skilled linear treatment of
form. Later out of his swadeshi impulse he abandoned foreign art
materials, like oil painting, and turned to indigenous earth colors and
organic pigments. And due to the rising anxiety and the ambition to
identify with the national/modern he renounced Kalighat painting for
being liberal, urban and colonial and turned to village scroll painting
instead. His long journey of art with consistent discontent is suggestive of
the modernist aspirations for individuality and distinctiveness. It shows
331
that his interest in folk art had a bigger reason and deeper implications
than merely stylistic.
Although his pictorial style does remind us of the folk conventions,
his urban self proclaimed itself over and above it, in the way in which he
remodelled and re- structured his sources. The vivacity of his references
often turned into disciplined and highly refined schema that stands at a
remote extreme from its source.
During the last decade of the 19th century Second World War broke
out which had its impact on India too. The political condition of India was
not stable due to many reasons, worse came the man made famine of
Bengal in 1943. Which killed thousands of people and the British
Government was unable to control the situation. The number of dead was
so horrific that the British Government did not even publish the death
figure. In Calcutta, hundreds of skeletal figures begging for food or
scrambling at the garbage dumps with animals for scraps were a common
sight.
Under these circumstances people were bound to react sooner or
later. The artist of Bengal reacted; they were shocked at such scenes of
inhumanity. They began to feel for a new art language to show the
shocking reality around them. Painters like Chittaprosad Bhattacharya,
332
Zainul Abedin, Goverdhan Ash, Somnath Hore and Gopal Gosh felt the
need to respond to the terrible ground reality of Bengal in the devastating
Bengal famine and the traumatic experiences of communal riots. They
depicted the horror of the situation through their paintings. These works
were done with brush and ink on paper. But they left behind unforgettable
visual experiences.
The famine triggered the communist party of India into a great deal
of activity. Building a cultural movement was a part of that. While
Chittaprosad and Somnath Hore were encouraged to print poster, which
were distributed in villages, Zainul Abedin made greater impact with his
famine sketches. He was moved by the ravages of famine. His portfolio of
drawing remains a powerful document of the nightmare.
―Every art work is political in the sense that it offers a perspective
— direct and indirect — on social relations,‖ says Robert Atkins. Hore
identified with the social movements around him — to express them on
canvas. In a way, his work becomes documentary, recording events that
shaped Bengal politics for the future.
―Not every artist creates art to capture the beauty around him, for
the allure of fame and money or to cleanse his soul, but to process his
need for catharsis. Perhaps, this was also one of the reasons that attracted
333
Hore towards print-making as the act of making lithographs is a brutal
medium which metaphorically corresponds to his experience of attrition of
existence.‖
A group of young artists moved away from the lyricism and the
romanticism expressed in the work of earlier Bengali artists. Six artists
formed the ‗Calcutta Group‘, namely, sculptors Pradosh Dasgupta, his
wife Kamala, and painters Gopal Ghosh, Nirode Majumdar, Paritosh Sen
and Subho Tagore. Later, others like Pran Krishna Pal, Govardhan Ash
and Bansi Chandragupta joined the group. The Calcutta Group wanted
their visual expression to convey the crisis of urban society, and the artists
began to paint images that evoked anguish and trauma and reflected the
urban situation. There was nothing purely idyllic-about their rural scenes
either. Also, European modernism began to be reflected in the formal
treatment of the paintings.
By 1947, even as India was gaining independence from colonial
subjugation, restless stirrings among the artists in Bombay (now, Mumbai)
led to the formation of the Progressive Artists‘ Group (PAG). The
members who joined the group were Francis Newton Souza, Maqbool
Fida Husain, Syed Haider Raza, Krishna Hawlaji Ara, Hari Amba Das
Gade and S. Bakre, a sculptor. Besides these early members others too
334
inclined with the group in their choice of aesthetic values and approach to
visual language.
The artists close to the PAG were Akbar Padamsee, Tyeb Mehta,
Bal Chhabda, Vasudeo S Gaitonde, Ram Kumar and Krishna Khanna. The
artists of this group combined Indian subject matter with post-
Impressionist colours, Cubist forms and Expressionistic styles. The group
wished to break with the revivalist nationalism established by the Bengal
School of art and to encourage an Indian avant- garde, engaged at an
international level.
Their intention was to ―paint with absolute freedom for content and
technique. The group disbanded in 1956. Even as the group as a whole
was influenced by European Modernism, each artist worked in his own
distinctive style.
Over time the major trends became: visible projection of the
disturbed social unrest and instability with the predicament of the human
being as the main theme; an interest in Indian thought and metaphysics
There is little conflict between form and content or technique and
expression; almost everybody is certain that technique and form are only
important prerequisites to something more essential—the idea, message or
spirit.
335
The partition of the country led to the uprooting of millions of
people in the Punjab and Bengal forcing upon them untold misery. Some
painters, both in the east and the west reacted variously to this communal
fury and massacre. In their individual ways, B C Sanyal, Pran Nath Mago
and Satish Gujral from Lahore, Harkrishan Lall from Ludhiana, Biswanath
Mukherjee, Sobha Singh, M K Bardhan and Sailoz Mukerjee from Delhi,
Debbrata Mukhopadhayay, Manishi Dey, Somenath Hore and Ashok
Mazumdar from Bengal, and N S Bendre from Bombay, all painted the
gory holocaust of the partition.
The reactions of artists to events that affected a whole nation were
important. The realisation that problems of immense magnitude should be-
come the themes for serious painting, introduced a new, and meaningful
content into the creative expression of the artists of the time, the first step,
indeed, towards a renewal of form.
336
Author Name of Book
Agastya Amberkar,
V.R, Anand, Mulk Raj.
The Aesthetic of young India, Rupan, No 9 Jan
1922. Contemporary Indian Art, Eve‘s Weekly
Annual, 1960.
Agastya Amberkar,
V.R, Anand, Mulk Raj.
The Breakthrough, Notes on the Modern Movement
in Sculpture, Marg, Vol XXI, No. 1 Dec, 1967.
Agastya Amberkar,
V.R, Anand, Mulk Raj.
Four Initiators of Contemporary Experimentalism,
LKC, No. 2.
Ahmad Salim Amrita Sher-Gil: A personal view, Istaarah
Publications; 1987.
Anand, Mulk Raj Amrita Sher-Gil, National Gallery of Modern Art;
1989.
Anand,Mulk Raj The Artist as Hero‘, Lalit Kala Contemporary, New
Delhi, 1968, nos. 7 & 8, pp 1-6.
Anonymous Ravi Varma the Indian Artist, Allahabad, 1902.
Appasamy, Jaya
25 Years of Indian Art: Painting, Sculpture &
Graphics in the Post-Independence Era, Lalit Kala
Akademi, New Delhi, 1972.
Appasamy, Jaya The Critical Vision: Selected Writings, Lalit Kala
Akademi, New Delhi, 1985.
Appasamy, Jaya The Critical Vision: Selected Writings, Lalit Kala
Akademi, New Delhi, 1985.
Appasamy, Jaya. Some Contemporary Painters of Delhi Marg Vol-
VII, No. 4 Sept, 1954.
Appasamy, Jaya. Indian Art in the 1950, Marg Vol. XXI, No. 1 Dec,
1967.
Appasamy, Jaya. Delhi‘s Young Painters, design, May 1966.
Appasamy, Jaya. Folk Inspiration in Modern Painting, LKC, No. 5.
Appasamy, Jaya. Indian art since Independence, Figurative and
Abstract and Beyond, LKC No. 7 & 8.
Appasamy, Jaya. Contemporary Indian Sculpture, KLC No. 10.
Appasamy, Jaya. Contemporary Graphics in Indian LKC No. 11.
Appasamy, Jaya. Trends in recent Sculpture, LKC, No. 16.
Appasamy, Jaya. New Images in Indian Art, Man, LKC No. 17.
337
Appasamy, Jaya. Modern Indian Sculpture, ICCR, New Delhi.
Appasamy, Jaya. Early Oil Paintings in Bengal', Lalit Kala
Contemporary, 32, Apr. 1985, 5-9.
Appasamy, Jaya. Abanindranath Tagore and the Art of his Times
(New Delhi, 1968)
AppasamyJaya. New Images in Indian Art; Fantasy, LKC, No. 15.
Archer Mildred, Company Drawings in the India Office Library,
Her Majesty‘s stationary office, 1972.
Archer and W. C.
Archer,
Indian Paintings for the British, 1770- 1880,
Oxford, 1955.
Archer, Mildred, Company Paintings in South India: The Early
Collection of Niccolao Manucci, 1970.
Archer W. G. India and Modern Art, George Allen & Unwin,
London, 1959.
Archer, Mildred. Natural History Drawings in the India Office
Library, London, 1962.
Archer, Mildred. Patna Painting, London, 1947.
Archer, Mildred. 'Peoples of India', Marg, 40, No. 4, 1989, 8-9.
Archer, Mildred. Company Paintings in the India Office Library
(London, 1972)
Archer, W. G., Bazaar Paintings of Calcutta (London, 1953)
Archer, W. G., and M., Indian Painting for the British 1775-1880 Oxford,
1955
Aryan K. C. 100 Years Survey of Punjab Painting, (1841-1941),
Punjabi University, Patiala, 1975.
Aurobindo, Sri 'The Significance of Indian Art', in Arya: A
Defence of Indian Culture, Calcutta, 1918-21.
Bagal, J. C. History of the Government College of Arts and
Crafts, 1864-1964 (Calcutta, 1966)
Balraj Khanna, Aziz
Kurta, The Art of Modern India , Thames and Hudson.
Bandopadhaya, S. Rabindra Chitrakala; Rabindra Sahityer
Patabhumika, Santiniketan, 1388 (1981).
Banerjea, S. A Nation in Making, London, 1925
Bartholomew, R.L. Trends in Modern Indian art, Design, Feb, 1959.
338
Bartholomew, R.L. Modern Indian Painting a Perspective Part I&II
thought, 12th
& 26t August, 1967.
Basu, A. The Growth of Education and Political
Development-in India, 1898-192o, Delhi, 1974.
Beach, Milo Cleveland, Early Mughal Painting Harvard University Press,
1987.
Beveridge, W. India Called Then, London, 1947.
Birdwood, G The Industrial Arts of India, London, 1880.
Bose,Nandalal Centenary Exhibition (New Delhi: National Gallery
of Modern Art, 1966), p. 32
Bose,Nandalal Centenary Volume, Lalit Kala Akademi (New
Delhi, 1982)
Bose,Nandalal Centenary Exhibition Volume, NGMA (New Delhi,
1982)
Brown Perci, Indian Painting, June 1927.
Brown,Percy Indian Painting, Calcutta Undated.
Brown,Rebecca M. Art for a Modern India, 1947-1980, Duke
University Press, London, 2009.
Bulley Margaret H, Art and Understanding, London, 1937.
Burkit M. C, The Old Stone Age, Rupa & Co., India.
Burns, C. L The Function of Schools of Art in India',Journal of
the Royal Society of Oriental Art, 2952,57
Butcher, Aristotle‘s Theory of Poetry & Fine Art, Ludhiana, 1972.
Carr, E. H. What is History?, London, 1987.
Chaitanya, Krishan Indian Painting the Modern Phase, Rooplekham
Vol XXVI, No. 2.
Chaitanya, Krishan Some Contemporary Artists Marg, Vol IV, No.
3,1950.
Chaitanya, Sambrani,
‗The Progressive Artists‘ Group‘, Indian Art: An
Overview, Gayatri Sinha, ed., Rupa & Co., New
Delhi, 2003.
Chatterjee, Partha, Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World : A
Derivative Discourse? (New Delhi, 1986)
Chatterjee,Ratnabali
―The Original Jamini Roy‖: A study in the
Consumerism of Art, in Social Scientist January
1987.
339
Chatterji P. C, Fundamental Question in Aesthetics, Simla, 1968.
Chattopadhyay,
Ratnabali,
The Alternative Vision, a Study of Indian Artistic
Response to Orientalism ', The Calcutta Historical
Journal, July 1986- June 1987
Chaudhuri, N. C. The Autobiography of an Unknown Indian,
London, 1951.
Cholamandal , (Collection of Essays) Indian Art Since the Early
1940‘s A Search of Identity, 1974.
Chughtai, A. R. Memoir: 'My pictures are in my eyes' (Chughtai
Trust; n.d.)
Collingwood R. G, The Principles of Art, Oxford, 1938.
Coomaraswamy, A. K. The Present State of Indian Art', Modern Review, 2,
2, Aug. Ism, 108.Indian Drawings, London, 1910.
Coomaraswamy, A. K., Art and Swadeshi (Madras, 1912)
Coomaraswamy, A. K., History of Indian and Indonesian Art (London,
1927)
Coomaraswamy, A.K. The Modern School of Indian Painting in art and
swadeshi, A Coolection of Essays Madras, 1911.
Coomaraswamy,
Ananda K.
History of Indian and Indonesian Art, Kessinger
Publishing, 2003.
Cousins, J. H. The Renaissance in India, Madanapalle, 1918.
Croce Benedetto ,
Aesthetic, Aesthetic as Science of Expression &
General Linguistic. Translated by D. Ainslie.
Macmillan, London, 1909,
Dalmia, Yashodhara,
Dutta , Ella
&Chaitanya, Sambrani,
et al.,
Indian Contemporary Art Post-Independence,
Vadehra Art Gallery, New Delhi, 2000.
Dalmia,Yashodhara
The Making of Modern Indian Art: The
Progressives, Oxford University Press, New Delhi,
2001.
Dalmia,Yashodhara Amrita Sher-Gil: A Life, Penguin Books,2006,
ISBN 0-670-05873-4
340
Das Gupta Prodosh De,
Bishnu
Indian art in the 1940‘s Marg, Vol XXI, No. 1st
Dec, 1967.
Das Gupta, U Letters: Abanindranath to Havell', Vishva-Bharati
Quarterly, 46, nos. 1-4; 1980-1, 208-29.
Das Gupta, U. Rise of an Indian Public: Impact of Official Policy
1870-80, Calcutta, 1977.
Dasgupta, Uma
‗Santiniketan: The School of a Poet‘, Knowledge,
Power & Politics: Educational Institutions in India,
Mushirul Hasan, ed., The Lotus Collection, New
Delhi, 1998.
Day, L. Folk Tales of Bengal, Calcutta, 1883.
Dey, M. My Pilgrimage to Ajanta and Bagh, London, 1925.
Dey, Mukul, 'Drawings and Paintings of Kalighat', Advance
(Calcutta 1932)
Dhingra,Baldoon. Amrita Sher-Gil, Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi,
1981. ISBN 0-86186-644-4.
Douglas Barrett and
Basil Gray, Treasures of Asia, Paintings of India,Ohio, 1963.
Dr. Fisher, Klaus The Calcutta Group Marg, Vol VI, No. 4 Dec,
1953.
Dutta,A.K. Jamini Roy, Lalit Kala Academy, New Delhi, 1973.
Forster G, A Journey from Bengal to England, London, Vol 1
and 2, 1803.
Frank A. Wilson, Art as Understanding, London, 1963.
Gangoly, O.C., The Aesthetics of Young India: A Rejoinder',
Rupam, January 1922.
Gladstone-Solomon,
W. E., The Bombay Revival of Indian Art (Bombay, 1920)
Griffiths, J. Reports on the Work of Copying the Paintings in
the Caves of Ajanta, London, 1872-85.
Gulammohammed
Sheikh, ed.,
Contemporary Art in Baroda, Tulika, New Delhi,
1997.
Gupta,Prodosh Das
The Calcutta Group: Its Aims and Achievements‘,
Lalit Kala Contemporary, New Delhi, April 1981,
no.31.
341
Harry N Abrams, The Picture History of Painting: From Cave
Painting to Modern Times. Inc. New York, 1957
Havel, E. B.,
The Ancient and Medieval Architecture of India
(London, 1915) `Art Administration in India',
Journal of the Royal Society of Arts, February,
1910.
Havell, .E. B. Open Letter to Educated Indians', Bengalee,
4.8.1903.
Havell, E.B
Revival of Indian Handicrafts, (A Lecture delivered
before the Indian Industrial Association – July
1901) in Essays on Indian art, Industry and
Education, Madras some Notes on Indian pictorial
Art, Studio, 1902, London.
Havell, E.B.
.Revival of Indian Handicrafts, (A Lecture
delivered before the Indian Industrial Association –
July 1901) in Essays on Indian art, Industry and
Education, Madras some Notes on Indian pictorial
Art, Studio, 1902, London.
Havell, E.B. The New Indian School of Painting Studio, 1908.
Herringham, C. 'The Frescoes of Ajanta', The Burlington Magazine,
17, April-Sept. 1910.
Hussain,M.F. Ravi Verma, Lalit Kala Academy New Delhi.
Kanhaiyalal, Nandan Amrita Shergil: Amrita Shergil ka Jivan aur
Rachana samsar,. 2000.
Kapoor, Geeta.
The Quest for Identity, Art and Indegenism in post-
colonial culture with special reference to
contemporary Indian Painting, collection of Essay
in Vrischik, 1972-73, Baroda.
Kapoor, Geeta.
'Ravi Varma: Representational Dilemnas of a
Nineteenth - century Indian Painter', Journal of Arts
and Ideas, Nos. 17-18, 1990
Kapur, Geeta
When was Modernism: Essays on Contemporary
Cultural Practice in India, Tulika Books, New
Delhi, 2000.
342
Kapur Geeta
A Stake in Modernity: Brief History of
Contemporary Indian Art‘, Tradition and Change:
Contemporary Art of Asia and the Pacific, Caroline
Turner, ed., University of Queensland Press,
Brisbane, 1993, pp 146-163.
Kapur, Geeta
Contemporary Indian Art, Text by Geeta Kapur,
Indian Advisory Committee, Festival of India,
London, 1982.
Kelkar,N. M.
The Story of the Sir J.J. School of Art: 1857-1957,
Government of Maharashtra and Sir J.J. School of
Art, Bombay, n.d.
Khandalavala.,Karl J. Amrita Sher-Gil, New Book Co., 1945
Klaus Dr. Fisher, The Calcutta Group Marg, Vol VI, No. 4 Dec,
1953.
Kramrisch, Stella, The Aesthetics of Young India: A Rejoinder',
Rupam, April 1922
Kumar,R. Siva
Santiniketan: The Making of a Contextual
Modernism, National Gallery of Modern Art, New
Delhi, 1997.
Langer Susan, Philosophy in a New Key, Mentor Books, New
York
Lewis Franklin, ―Golestan-E Sa‘Di‖ Encyclopedia Iranica, 2001,
Lodge R. C, Plato‘s Theory of Art, Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd.,
London, 1953.
Luc Benoist Jean,
Handbook of Western Painting—From Cave
Cassou & Others, Painting to Abstract Art, London,
1961
M. Nugent, A Journal from the year 1811 till 1815, London,
1839.
Mago, Pran Nath
―Introduction,‖ in Delhi Silpi Chakra: The Early
Years, Exhibition catalogue 1997 (New Delhi:
National Gallery of Modern Art, 1997)
Mago,P. N. ‗Delhi Silpi Chakra: The Early Years‘, National
Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi, 1998.
Mallik,Sanjoy The ―Calcutta Group‖ (1943-1953)‘, Art & Deal,
New Delhi, 2004, vol.3, no.2, issue 16.
343
Mandal, Panchanan. Bharat Shilpi Nandalal, in 3 vols, Calcutta, 1982-6.
Mary Chamot&
Others,
The Arts, Paintings, the Graphic Arts, Sculpture
and Architecture, London, Undated.
Mary Chamot,
Malcolm Osborne &
others
The Arts, Painting, the Graphic Arts, Sculpture And
Architecture, London, Undated.
Maurice Denis, Encyclopaedia Americana, Vol. XXI, U. S. A.,
1955.
McLane, J. R Indian Nationalism and the Early Congress,
Princeton, 1977.
Mildred Archer, Indian Paintings for the British Period, London,
1992.
Mill, J. The History of British India, 3 vols, London, 1817.
Mitra, Asok, 'The Forces Behind the Modern Art Movement',
Lalit Kala Contemporary, 1, June 1962.
Mitra, M. Asit Kumar Haldar, Delhi, 1961.
Mitra, S. Rajendralal Mitra, Calcutta, 1376 (1969).
Mitter, Partha Art and Nationalism in Colonial India, 1850-1922,
Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1994.
Mitter, Partha
The Triumph of Modernism: India‘s Artists and the
Avant-Garde, 1922-1947, Oxford University Press,
New Delhi, 2007.
Mitter, Partha,
―Interventions: Decentering Modernism: Art
History and Avant-Garde Art from the Periphery‖,
in The Art Bulletin 90.4 (December, 2008).
Mitter, Partha, Art and Nationalism in India', History Today, July
1982
Mondal,Robin ―Jamini Roy‖, in Shilpabhavana (Kolkata:
Banishilpa, 2007).
Mookerjee, Ajit, Folk Art of Bengal (Calcutta, 1939)
Mukharji, T. N. Art Manufactures of India, Calcutta, 1888.
Mukherjee, B. B. Adhunik Shilpa Shiksa, Calcutta, 1972.
Mukherjee,
Benodbehari,
'The Art of Abanindranath Tagore', VBQ, May—
October 1942
Mukhopadhyay, Amit ''The Art Situation before 1940'', Lalit Kala
Contemporary, New Delhi, 1985, no. 32, pp 24-29.
344
Muther Richard , The History of Painting from the Fourth to the
Early Nineteenth Century. London, 1907, Vol. I
Nandi, Sudhir Kumar, Art and Aesthetics of Abanindranath Tagore
(Calcutta, 1983)
Parimoo Ratan and
Sharma Indra Mohan
Creative Arts in Modern India ,Books & Books,
New Delhi
Parimoo, Ratan Dr.
The Painting of the Three Tagores, Abanindranath,
Gaganendranath, Rabindranath : Comparative and
Chronological Study (Baroda; 1973)
Parimoo, Ratan Dr. Cubism, World art and Indian art Rooplekha, Vol
XL Nos 1 & 2
Parimoo, Ratan Dr. Cubist Influences on Modern Indian Painting, The
Times of Indian, 23rd
July, 1972
Purohit, Vinayak 10 year of Art in Bombay, Design, July, 1958.
Purohit,Vinayak Arts of Transitional India, Popular Prakashan,
Bombay, 1988.
Rao,P. R.
Ramachandra Modern Indian Painting, Rachana, Madras, 1953.
Ravi Bhatt, The Life and Times of Nawabs of Lucknow, Rupa
publication New Delhi, 2006.
Ray Faulkner, E.
Ziegfeld & G. Hill Art Today, New York, 1941.
Read Herbert, Art and Society, Faber & Faber, London, 1956.
Rubin, W. Primitivism in Modern Art, New York, 1985.
Sadwelkar,B.
Bombay Art Society: Story of a Hundred Years‘,
Story of a Hundred Years: Bombay Art Society
1888-1988, Bombay Art Society, Bombay, 1989.
Sanyal,Bhabesh
Chandra
The Vertical Woman: Reminiscences of B. C.
Sanyal, Volume II (New Delhi: National Gallery of
Modern Art, 1998).
Sarkar, B. K Aesthetics of Young India', Rapam, No. 9, 1922, 6-
22
Sarkar, Benoy Kumar, 'The Aesthetics of Young India ', Rupam, January
1922
Sarkar, Sumit, The Swadeshi Movement in Bengal, Calcutta,
1973.
345
Seal, A. The Emergence of Indian Nationalism, Cambridge,
1968.
Shanta Devi, ―Shilpi Srijukta Jamini Ranjan Rayer Pradarshani‖,
in Prabasi 1 (April, 1932).
Shearman John , ―Maniera as an Aesthetic Ideal‖ In Cheney, 2004.
Sheikh, Gulam Tradition and Modernity: Towards a more relevant
art, Vrishchik.
Sheikh, Gulam Ha western art reached a dead end, the times of
India 2nd
Nov 1969.
Singh,N. Iqbal Amrita Sher-Gill: A Biography Vikas Publishing
House Pvt.Ltd., India, 1984. ISBN 0-7069-2474-6
Sinha,Gayatri ed. Indian Art: An Overview, Rupa & Co., New Delhi,
2003.
Sinha,Gayatri ed. Art and Visual Culture in India 1857-2007, Marg
Publications, Mumbai, 2009.
Sister Nivedita, Chitore', The Modern Review, May 1912
Skelton,R. Murshidabad Painting', Marg, 10, December 1956
Solomon, W. E. G. The. Charm of Indian Art, Bombay, 1921.
Subramanyan K.G. ―The Indian Art Tradition and the Modern Indian
Artist‖, in Visva-Bharati
Subramanyan, K. G., Moving Focus : Essays on Indian Art (New Delhi,
1978)
Subramanyan,K.G.
―The Indian Art Tradition and the Modern Indian
Artist‖, in Visva- Bharati Fellowship Lecture
(Kolkata: Visva -Bharati, 1978).
Sundaram,Vivan Amrita Sher-Gil: Essays, Marg Publications; New
Delhi, 1972.
Sundaram,Vivan Re-take of Amrita, Tulika. 2001, ISBN 81-85229-
49-X
Sundram,Vivan Addressing Gandhi: 125 years of Mahatma Gandhi,
New Delhi: Safdar Hashmi Memorial Trust, 1955.
Tagore, Abanindranath
The Three Forms of Art', Modern Review, 1, 3,
1907, 392-6. `Ki o Keno', Prabasi, 32, 7, Kartik,
1315, 329-35.
Tagore, Abanindranath His Early Work, IM (Calcutta, 1964)
346
Tagore,
Abanindranath,
Shadanga or Six Limbs of Painting', Philosophy of
Shadanga ', The Modern Review, May, June 1914
Tagore, Rabindranath, Rabindra Rachanabali, Centenary Edit (15 vols),
Calcutta, 1961.
Tagore, Rabindranath, The Crescent Moon (London, 1913)
Tampy, P. Ravi Varma Koil Tampuran, Trivandrum, 1934.
Thakurta, T.Guha
Westernisation and Tradition in South Indian
Painting in the Nineteenth Century: The Case of
Raja Varma 1848-1906', Studies in History, 2, 2,
1986.
Thakurta, Tapati Guha
The Making of a New ‗Indian‘ Art: Artists,
Aesthetics and Nationalism in Bengal, c. 1850-
1920, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge,
1992.
Tilak, B. G. The Arctic Home in the Vedas, Pune (new edn
1971).
Tolstoy C. F, What is Art? An Essay on Art. Translated by
Aylmer Maude, 1938.
Tuli ,Neville The flamed Mosaic- Indian Contemporary Painting,
India, 1997.
Varma, I. Artist of the People and of Gods', The Illustrated
Weekly of India, 97, 22 May-30 June 1976.
Veniyoor, E. M. J. Raja Ravi Varma (Trivandrum, 1981)
Venkatachalam, G Some reminiscences about the Bengal school,
LKC, No. 1
Venkatachalam, G. Some reminiscences about the Bengal school,
LKC, No. 1
Vivekananda, Swami. The Complete Works of, Calcutta, 1971-6.
Watts, George Sir Official catalogue, Indian art exhibition, Delhi
Darbar, 1903.
347
Name of Journal/ Paper/Archives/Museums/Art Collections
A Handbook of Indian Art (London, 1920).
A Handbook to Agra and the Taj, Sikandra, Fatehpur Sikri and the Neigh
boarhound London, 1904).
Annual Report of the Working of the Government Art Gallery, Calcutta
(1917-1918), Calcutta, 1918.
Art Administration in India', JRSA, No. 2985, vol. 58, 4.2.1910, 273-89.
Art Collections from Academy of Fine Arts, Calcutta
Art Collections from Ashmolean Museum, Oxford
Art Collections from Bangiva Sahitya Parishad, Calcutta
Art Collections from Barocia Museum and Picture Gallery
Art Collections from Birla Academy of Art and Culture, Calcutta
Art Collections from Burdwan University Museum
Art Collections from Hirendra Mullick, 'Marble Palace'
Art Collections from I. K. and N. K. Kejriwal
Art Collections from India Office Library, London
Art Collections from Indian Institute, Oxford
Art Collections from Indian Museum, Calcutta
Art Collections from J. J. School of Art, Bombay
Art Collections from Jagadish Kumar Sinha, 'Belgatchia Villa'
Art Collections from Lakshmi and Saraswati Laha
Art Collections from Laxmi Vilas Palace, Baroda
Art Collections from M. C. Laha
Art Collections from Maharaja Fateh Singh Museum Trust, Baroda
Art Collections from Mihir Mitra
Art Collections from Museums (Calcutta and other parts of India)
Art Collections from Museums (United Kingdom)
Art Collections from N. R. Chakravarty
Art Collections from Nandan Art Gallery, Kala Bhavan, Santiniketan
Art Collections from National Art. Gallery, Madras
Art Collections from National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi
Art Collections from Paramita Vishwanathan
Art Collections from Pranab Nath Tagore
348
Art Collections from Private Holdings in Calcutta
Art Collections from R. P. Gupta
Art Collections from Rabindra Bharati Society, Calcutta
Art Collections from Rabindra Bharati University Museum, Calcutta
Art Collections from Sanjit Bose
Art Collections from Sri Chitra Art Gallery, Trivandrum
Art Collections from Sumitendranath and Shyamasree Tagore
Art Collections from Victoria & Albert Museum, London
Art Collections from Victoria Memorial, Calcutta
Art Trends: A Contemporary Art Bulletin, Progressive Painters Association,
Chennai, 2011.
Baroque Art-Art History—Famous Artists.paintings.com
Bengal Government, Education Department - Annual General Reports on
Public Instruction, 1894/95-1915/16
Bengal Government, Industry, Science and Art Proceedings, 1876-78.
Bombay Art Society Diamond Jubilee Souvenir: 1888-1948, Bombay, 1948.
Catalogue of the Art Collections of the Palaces of the Burdwan Maharajas
(n.d.)
Catalogue of the Art Gallery of the Rabindra Bharati University Museum
(Calcutta, 1980)
Catalogue of the Exhibition of Fine Arts at the Government School of Art
and the Government Art Gallery (Calcutta, January 1879) Catalogue of the
Exhibition of Fine Arts at the Indian Museum (Calcutta, 1874)
Catalogue of the Exhibition of Fine Arts, International Exhibition, Calcutta
(December—January, 1883-84)
Catalogue of the Exhibition of Paintings of the New Calcutta School (on
loan from the Indian Society Of Oriental Art) at the Victoria & Albert
Museum, London (April 1914)
Catalogue of the Madras EXhibition, Indian Society of Oriental Art
(February 1916)
Catalogue of the Marble Palace Art Gallery (Calcutta, 1976) Catalogue of
the Pictures and Sculptures in the Collection of the Maharaja Tagore
(Calcutta, 1905).
349
Centenary of the Government College of Art and Craft Calcutta, Calcutta,
1964.
Chatterjee's Picture Albums (Calcutta) c. 1910, Nos. 1-16
Collected works of Mahatma Gandhi, Publications Division, Government
of India, New Delhi, 1979, Vol. 68
Collected works of Mahatma Gandhi, Publications Division, Government
of India, New Delhi, 1979, Vol. 68.
Drawing and Paintings of Rabindranath Tagore, Centenary Volume, Lalit
Kala Akaderni (New Delhi, 1961)
Encyclopedia of World Art, McGraw-Hill, London, 1965, vol. vi.
Encyclopedia of World Art, Vol. X, McGraw-Hill, London, 1965
Essays in Indian Art, Industry and Education , Madras, 1907
Essays on Indian Art, Industry and Education (Madras, 1910)
Government of India, Education Department - Quinquennial Reviews of the
Progress of Education in India, 1887/88-1907
Government School of Art, Calcutta — Quinquennial Report, 1912/ 13-
16/17
Hunter, Alexander, Correspondence on the subject of the extension of art
education in different parts of India (Madras, 1867)
I Journal of Indian Art and Industry (London) c. 1886-1900
India Office Library and Records, London Mss. Eur. B. 213. Letters on
Indian Art, written to Sir William Rothenstein, I 9 10 - 45.
India Office Library and Records, London, and West Bengal State Archives,
Calcutta Bengal Government, General Department, Education Proceedings,
1870-I 9 I 7.
India Society Report 1914 (Rules and List of Members), London, 1915.
Indian Miniatures of the Moghul School Spring Books, London, 1960.
Indian Sculpture and Painting, London, 1908.
Indian Society of Oriental Art Exhibition of Modern Indian Paintings, The,
Madras, 1916.
Journal of the Indian Academy of Art (Calcutta), 1920-2
Letter to Nandalal, 31 October, 1937; Gandhi, Collected Works LXVI,
350
Letter to Tagore, 6 November, 1937, Gandhi, Collected Works, LXVI.
Modern Indian Artists (Calcutta?, n.d.), vol. I, on K. N. Majundar (ed.
Gangoly, 0. C.), vol. II on Asit Halder (ed. Cousins, J.).
Mss. Eur. D. 6o9. Papers of the Marquis of Zetland (earlier, Earl of
Ronaldshay, Governor of Bengal) My Bengal Diary, Vol. 1.1917-1919 Vol.
2.1919-1922
Mss. Eur. D. 736. Papers of E. B. Have11, C. 1896-1934.
Museum of Fine Arts Bulletin, Vol. XVI.
Papers of Abanindranath Tagore
Papers of Asit Kumar Haldar
Papers of E. B. Havel'
Papers of Gaganendranath Tagore
Papers of Nandalal Bose
Papers of Sir William Rothenstein, c. 1909-31/32 (Xerox copies of papers in
the collection of the Houghton Library, Harvard)
Papers related to the maintenance of the Schools of Art as state institutions
(Lahore, 1894).
Rabindra Bhavan Archives, Santiniketan
Rabindranath Tagore On Art and Asethetics, New Delhi, 1961.
Rupam (Indian Society of Oriental Art, Calcutta) 1920-30
School of Arts, Madras (Prospectus), Madras, 1916.
Special Number of the Art Journal (1862) in London official Record of the
Melbourne International Exhibition (1880-81)
Technical Art Series (Calcutta), 1882-1902/3
The Art journal (London) c. 1849-72
The Basis for Artistic and Industrial Revival in India, Madras, 1912.
Hollebecque, M. L'Art Decoratif, 1914, 65-78.
The Englishman (Calcutta) 189o, 1907-8
The Function of Art in Shaping Nationality, The Modern Review, January
1907, February 1907
The Hindoo Patriot (Calcutta), 1854-55, 1858.
The Ideals of Indian Art, London, 1911.
The Indian Daily News (Calcutta), 1874, 1879, 1900
351
The Industry of All Nations, 1851. Illustrated Catalogue of the Great
Exhibition of 1851 in London, Special Number of Art Journal, 1851
Illustrated Catalogue of the International Exhibition of 1862 in London,
The Modern Review (Allahabad, Calcutta) 1907-20
The Modern School of Indian Painting, Journal of Indian Art, 15, 120, 1911,
69.
The New Encyclopaedia Britannica, Vol. XIII, 1977
The New Indian School of Painting', The Studio, 64, Jun.—Sept. 1908, 107-
17.
The Paintings of Nandalal Bose', The Modern Review, September 1901
The Present State of Indian Art. I. Painting and Sculpture', The Modern
Review, August 907
The Value of Tradition in Art', The Modern Review, October 1909
Victoria Memorial Correspondence, Calcutta, 1901-4.
Visva-Bharati Quarterly (Abanindra Number), 8, Nos. 1-2, May-Oct. 1942.