Modern Indian Painting

Modern Indian Painting Jane & Kito de Boer Collection

Edited by Rob Dean & Giles Tillotson

Modern Indian Painting Jane & Kito de Boer Collection

Modern Indian Painting presents a survey of Indian painting from the late 19th century to the present day, drawn from the private collection of Jane and Kito de Boer—remarkable for its broad historical scope and wide range of artists. The book clearly delineates major developments over a long period of time, while contextualising them with previously unpublished examples by major artists.

The first part of the book features the de Boers talking about their interest in India and Indian art.

The second part presents a history of modern Indian painting, with essays on the Bengal school, the socalled ‘Dutch Bengal’ artists, the Calcutta naturalists, the portrait painters of the Bombay school in the early 20th century, the Progressive Artists Group and the post-Independence artists of Bengal. The de Boer collection also contains strong representations of a few individual artists, such as Chittaprosad Bhattacharya, Ganesh Pyne, A. Ramachandran and Rameshwar Broota, whose works are explored through essays and interviews.

The fact that many of these chapters draw almost exclusively on the de Boer collection is a testament to its incredible size and breadth. This volume hopes to show how the collection takes a dispassionate view of the global status of Indian art, while at the same time revealing a commitment and long-term engagement with the country and its creativity.

With 211 colour images

Modern Indian Painting Jane & Kito de Boer Collection

Modern Indian Painting Jane & Kito de Boer Collection

Edited by Rob Dean & Giles Tillotson

Fig. 1: TYEB MEHTA, Untitled (Bull), Ink on paper, 37 x 26.7 cm (14.5 x 10.5 in.)

Contents

Introduction Giles Tillotson 6 I WHY INDIA?

III ARTISTS IN FOCUS

Chittaprosad’s Visual Modes Sanjoy Kumar Mallik 180

An Interview

Ganesh Pyne

with Jane and Kito de Boer

in conversation with

Rob Dean 10

Sona Datta 204 A. Ramachandran in conversation with

II MODERN INDIAN PAINTING

Rob Dean 232

The Bengal School

Rameshwar Broota

The Rise of Artistic Nationalism in India

in conversation with

Partha Mitter 22

Rob Dean and Kito de Boer 244

Making Magic Through the Real Some Early Episodes of Modern Indian Art

Giles Tillotson 64

IV THE COLLECTORS

Modernism Reinvented in Bombay

Jane and Kito de Boer

The Art of the Progressives

in conversation with

Yashodhara Dalmia 96

Rob Dean 274

The Paradox of Modernism

Modern Indian Art

Art in Bengal after Independence

A Global Perspective

Sona Datta 144

Jane and Kito de Boer 288

Introduction Giles Tillotson

THIS BOOK PRESENTS A SURVEY of Indian painting from the late 19th century to the

present day, covering major movements including successive phases of the Bengal School, the Progressive Artists Group founded in Bombay, and developments in Delhi and elsewhere since Independence. Focusing on the private collection of Jane and Kito de Boer—remarkable for its broad historical scope and wide range of artists—the book clearly delineates major developments over a long period of time, while explaining and illustrating them with previously unpublished examples by many major artists.

It would scarcely be conceivable in the scope of one collection—to say nothing of a single book—to do full justice to every nuance of such a rich and varied field. Readers already familiar with aspects of the subject will recognize many well-known names— including V.S. Gaitonde, Prosanto Roy, Hemendranath Mazumdar, Chittaprosad Bhattacharya, Francis Newton Souza, M.F. Husain, S.H. Raza, Somnath Hore, Ganesh Pyne and Rameshwar Broota, to name only a few—though of course they will not yet be aware of the particular examples of those artists’ works shown here. They may also be struck by the absence of some well-established names, and even schools. Any private collection must inevitably reflect the tastes and preferences of the collectors, and will passionately pursue certain selected avenues, perhaps at the expense of others that are left unexplored, because when first encountered they did not ignite the same thrill or arouse the same curiosity. Indeed, in the interview with the collectors included in this book, Jane and Kito de Boer emphasize precisely how they intentionally sought to maintain the personal dimension, to acquire only works that they loved, to resist the temptation to fill what others perceived as gaps, and to keep at bay the dead hand of academic balance.

Even academics might be inclined to agree that retaining the personal dimension serves to enhance rather than to diminish the collection’s significance as well as its delight. Numbering around 1,000 works, the de Boer collection (currently located in New Delhi, London and Dubai) is one of the largest and most varied collections of modern Indian painting in private hands. The book is based on fresh research by leading authorities in the field, who have studied the works at first hand. The expertise of each contributor is grounded in their previous publications, but here they go beyond established positions while addressing new material. The book is thus essential to the specialist while at the same time presenting a broad introduction to the field for the benefit of the general reader.

Part One of the book asks the question, why India? In a brief opening interview, the de Boers explain how they first encountered India and why it became a focus in their lives. They reveal how their passion for a country and its people evolved into an art collection.

Part Two presents a history of modern Indian painting in four chapters. As the authors are all familiar with each other’s writing in this field, there is inevitably some dialogue between the chapters. Partha Mitter opens with a survey of the Bengal School,

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in an essay that explains its unassailable position of authority, its assumed ability to speak for the nation in a period of political and cultural emergence. The highway he describes is grand indeed; but my own chapter spotlights some of the byways that are less explored: earlier experiments in oil painting by the so-called ‘Dutch Bengal’ artists, the Calcutta naturalists, and the portrait painters of the Bombay School in the early 20th century. In Yashodhara Dalmia’s chapter, the focus shifts firmly to Bombay, to the work of the Progressive Artists Group, which set itself in opposition both to the Bengal School and to the earlier academic tradition of the Bombay School. Finally, we move back to Bengal, as Sona Datta explores the works of the later generation of artists, taking that story forward to the post-Independence era.

The fact that all four chapters draw almost exclusively on the de Boer collection is a testament to the collection’s size and breadth. Even that does not quite do it justice however. For reasons outlined, the de Boers did not set out to achieve universal coverage, or to be even-handed in their choices; and the collection is remarkable—both quirky and personal—for the strong representation of a few individual artists.

In Part Three, we look at four of these up close. Sanjoy Kumar Mallik explores the arresting—sometimes terrifying—work of Chittaprosad. In a rare interview conducted just a year before he died, Ganesh Pyne opens up about his experience of life and his painting techniques to Sona Datta. And Rob Dean similarly draws out two artists— Ramachandran and Broota—with whom the de Boers have enjoyed a long friendship and fruitful association. What do these four artists have in common, apart from being among the collectors’ favourites? Visually, at first glance, not much perhaps; and thus they bear testimony to the de Boers’ broad taste. But look again and you will see that each of them covers a gamut of emotions and moods, from the visceral to the lyrical.

The concluding section of the book reveals a little more about the collectors themselves. In an interview, they share the story of their collecting: of how they got started, how they progressed and negotiated the pitfalls to reach where they are now.

The de Boers set out their responses to some foreign perceptions of modern Indian art that they have encountered. Of European origin themselves and familiar with art throughout the world, they are well placed to take a dispassionate view of the global status of Indian art, while at the same time revealing their commitment and long-term engagement with the country and its creativity.

It has been a privilege for us, as the book’s editors, to work with the other contributing authors, whose writing and expertise we have long admired. Ivan Hutnik kindly supplied editorial guidance; and Justin Pipberger expertly photographed all the paintings and sculptures. Above all we thank Jane and Kito de Boer for inviting us to work on their superb collection and to edit the book which—we fervently hope—pays suitable tribute to both, it and to them.

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Why India?

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Fig. 2: CHITTAPROSAD BHATTACHARYA, Quit India, Woodblock print on paper, 24 x 32 cm (9.5 x 12.5 in.)

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An Interview WITH JANE & KITO DE BOER

Rob Dean

Why India? You have been collecting Indian art for twenty-five years—far longer than the seven years you lived in Delhi. As Europeans who have lived in many places, what made you start, and stay, with Indian modern art?

Love. A love of the sensory tsunami that is life in an Indian city, the ‘Horn Please’ cacophony of sound, the ‘Holi’ celebration of colour, the smell of wood fires burning on a cold night, the warmth of Indian hospitality, the tang of Goan curry. To live life in India is to live with an intensity that transforms the ordinary into the extraordinary.

We love India—its beauty, its ugliness, its exuberance, its frustrations, its compassion and its brutality. This love does not diminish by absence. Art is a vital connection to the country and people we both love.

Our initial experience of the culture of India was that of untold abundance and under-appreciation. Our journey into India started with physical places. India has more World Heritage sites than almost any other country on the planet—more than the USA, more than the UK, more than Egypt. The Taj Mahal is by no means the most impressive, though it gets most of the attention. Magnificent sites like Hampi, Ajanta, Ellora and Konark don’t get the appreciation they deserve—maybe because they are hard to access. Despite the wealth of culture India offers, when we arrived, India had fewer tourists than Uruguay, Norway or Ireland. It felt as if we had come upon a lost world of secret richness. We set about seeing, tasting, feeling and hearing as much as we could of what this magnificent culture has to offer.

Our love for India finds expression in our collection. There are many motives for people to collect and all are valid. For us, it is about trying to capture the magic of an extraordinarily diverse, rich and insufficiently understood culture.

We often ask ourselves why we keep on collecting. When is enough? Should we hire advisors? Should we set rules? Should we try to ‘fill in the gaps’ in the collection in order to satisfy some form of imagined curatorial standard? Should we focus only on the ‘best of the best’ in order to maximize peer respect? Should we seek out ‘up and comers’ to maximize value? In the end we realized that too much analysis and too much thinking took away the magic.

Our journey as collectors was based on: a set of beliefs, not a plan; considerable study but little analysis; a lot of searching in darkened recesses, less viewing in well-lit galleries.

Four beliefs guided our approach to collecting.

First: Be humble. We had to acknowledge the immensity of Indian culture.

Think of culture as a three-dimensional space: time (i.e., historic continuity), size (i.e., geographic and demographic scale) and cultural intensity (e.g., religion, textiles, music, dance, literature, sculpture, architecture, cuisine, poetry and art). Which other territory has a cultural size equivalent to the subcontinent? China, certainly; Persia, possibly. The subcontinent has millennia of magnificence that is unmatched. This awareness of India’s immensity means that, as a collector, one has to approach the journey with humility.

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Fig. 3: GANESH PYNE, Before the Pillar, Tempera on paper, 42 x 56 cm (16.5 x 22 in.), Signed and dated in Bengali, 1963

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Second: Be open-minded. Indian Modern art was under-explored so we had to experiment and go down dark corridors. The auction markets suggested that there were only a dozen Indian artists of value. This materialistic and reductionist view is a grave misrepresentation of the creativity of the hundreds, if not thousands, of gifted Indian artists.

The comparison between Indian modern art and Indian architecture is illuminating. M.F. Husain might be considered the artistic equivalent of the Taj Mahal. Just as there are hundreds and thousands of wonderful sites beyond the Taj Mahal, ranging from city complexes like Hampi to minor havelis, that are in their own way culturally important, so there is more to India’s art.

When it comes to Indian art, the institutions are underdeveloped: museums are under-resourced, auction houses are small, collectors are few, and galleries have yet to evolve into powerhouses dedicated to introducing and supporting new generations of artists. Likewise, global interest is modest and academic research minimal.

On what basis can anyone really assess what is the ‘best’ when we know so little?

Look at Europe—it took a century before van Gogh or the artists of the Austrian school like Klimt and Schiele were widely appreciated. So it will be in India—tomorrow’s great art has almost certainly been created but is awaiting the appreciation it warrants.

Our belief that Indian culture is under-explored has meant that our approach has been to take an expansive view. We have taken comfort in our ignorance and learned to rely on our eyes and our hearts more than our ears and our mind. We revel in the fact that we collect what others do not appreciate. It is both a duty and a pleasure. We don’t pay much attention to expert opinion. In Gandhi’s words, ‘First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then they join you.’

We didn’t want our collection to be the equivalent of India’s tourist Golden Triangle: Delhi, Agra and Jaipur; these cities give no more than a glimpse of what India has to offer. We wanted to find a way of reflecting the depth and breadth that is the true magic of India.

Third: Distinguish great art from great artists. Many great artists produce work that is of little interest. There is much poor work done by well-known artists. The reverse is also true: great work is produced by less well-known artists. Far too much attention is paid to the ‘name’, not enough to the art. Take Broota, for example. He has an originality, concept, talent and purity of soul that is barely recognized. He is an artist that demands global respect and an international reputation. It will take time but he will get there. The same can be said about Pyne, Chittaprosad, Sultan Ali and many others. These are some of India’s finest artists. They are known but not treasured because—in the absence of serious research—the market defaults to the safety of well-known names, to art brands.

The good news is that this situation is improving as the market evolves. The market is getting better at distinguishing between works of varying quality by a single artist but it is still a long way from being able to value that of lesser-known artists.

Fourth: We believe in authenticity. Paintings are like friends that transform a house into a home. We know many people who are delightful company over dinner.

They make wonderful acquaintances. But friends are different. Friends, you invite into your home and who bring joy to life. Friends are different because you have to trust their character, their authenticity, love their personality and resonate with their energy.

So it is with paintings: we try to look beyond the thin veneer of the ‘what’ and to peer into the murky realm of the ‘why’—the purpose and character of the work.

Much of our collection has been in our home for twenty years. Only very close friendships get stronger the longer they go on. We have stayed with Indian art because India has stayed with us. Art is just one facet of our love for India. This collection is a

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Fig. 4: Jane and Kito’s home in London

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Modern Indian Painting

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Fig. 5: FRANCIS NEWTON SOUZA, Untitled (Citadel), Oil on board, 61 x 122 cm (24 x 48 in.), Signed and dated, 1961

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The Bengal School THE RISE OF ARTISTIC NATIONALISM IN INDIA

Partha Mitter

ONE OF THE CENTRAL CONCERNS OF THE DE BOER COLLECTION is the Bengal School of

painting, the first nationalist art movement that emerged in the early years of the twentieth century under the leadership of Abanindranath Tagore (1871–1951). The collection contains works not only by the founders of the movement but also by later exponents, spanning from c. 1900 right down to the post-Independence period, which lends it a certain organic unity. The immediate background to the movement was the political unrest of 1905 that followed Viceroy Lord Curzon’s forcible partition of Bengal.

The nationalists demanded Swaraj (self-rule) and swadeshi (indigenous products) as they boycotted English goods. Art played a major part in this demand for national self-sufficiency. One may ask what art had to do with the swadeshi agitation against British rule.

To understand this we need to retrace our steps back to the mid-nineteenth century, to the imperial meridian and to the great revolution in art that transformed art practices, institutions and artistic outlook in India. Indeed, the Bengal School of painting, which inaugurated the first national art movement in India, represented a global dialectic that European colonial expansion gave rise to: the spread of Western academic art and resistance to it as an assertion of national identity.1 In the 1850s, the British Raj introduced Western academic art in India as part of a grand design of inculcating good taste in the native intelligentsia. Art schools, art exhibitions organized by art societies, and art journalism helped create a new art-conscious public, while the processes of mechanical reproduction helped disseminate Victorian academic naturalism even among the poorest. Academic artists, who gained a high status, replaced the humble artisans of the pre-colonial era. Among the new genres of painting, portraits were the most popular because they offered commissions to artists, but landscapes also found favour. However, none matched the importance of history painting in colonial India.2 The striking success of Victorian art in India is epitomized by the glittering career of Raja Ravi Varma (1848–1906), admired as much by the Indian maharajas and nawabs as by high officials of the Raj. The cheap prints of his Hindu deities hung even in the humblest of homes, while the opulent beauties of the Indian cinema posters and calendars can lay claim to their descent from Varma’s heroines [Fig. 6]. Varma created the image of the fashionable society painter, the travelling professional who fulfilled commissions by constantly being on the move, breaking in the process the monopoly of the visiting European painters. No Indian artist has ever matched his pan-Indian network.3 While Varma enjoyed a monopoly of official portraiture, his lasting success rested on his historical narratives, the most admired genre in the nineteenth century. If the British rulers were keen to introduce history painting in India for the moral improvement of their Indian subjects, it was no less logical a choice for the Indian nationalists.

Varma was the first Indian painter to evolve a new language of narrative art and a new feminine ideal, aimed at sending the imagination back to antiquity. He used the syntax of Victorian academic art for his ‘authentic’ recreations of the Hindu past based on

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Fig. 6: AFTER RAJA RAVI VARMA, Godrej Soaps Calendar, Oleograph, 50 x 37 cm (19.5 x 14.5 in.), 1933

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ancient Indian epics, as for instance, his celebrated painting series for the Indian states of Baroda and Mysore. His blend of melodrama with ethics in the manner of European history painters became the artistic benchmark for the Indian nationalists.

A combination of talent, industry, entrepreneurship and an India-wide personal network helped Ravi Varma to reach the pinnacle of success. When he died in 1906, he was mourned in India as a national hero. And yet, within a year of his death, his reputation lay in tatters. His works were rejected by the new generation as artificial, unspiritual and a hybrid product of the colonial regime. Why did he suffer such a dramatic reversal of fortune? To understand this, we need to turn to the political developments in both the East and the West. By the late nineteenth century, as the optimism about Victorian industrial society was coming under intense pressure, Marx, Ruskin and other Western philosophers poured vitriol on the rank materialism and technological superiority of capitalism.

Theosophists went further by proposing India’s spirituality as the ideal alternative to Western materialism. These developments coincided with a renewed confidence of the Hindu elite in their culture, a confidence boosted by the European Orientalists, whose translations had helped reconstruct India’s past. Correspondingly, the rediscovery of Sanskrit literature and ancient Indian philosophy had a profound effect on the West.

The new Hindu confidence was symbolized by the historic journey of the charismatic Hindu monk Swami Vivekananda to the Chicago World Congress of Religions in 1893, where he won a rapturous ovation for his maiden speech. Margaret Noble, an erstwhile Irish nationalist, became his favourite disciple. She joined the Indian nationalist movement, becoming a mentor of the Bengali nationalist artists.4 In the West, as academic naturalism reached its climax in the late nineteenth century, it began to face opposition from various quarters, not least because photography began to challenge the predominance of representational art. The anti-naturalists turned to the non-representational or decorative art of other regions, such as Africa or East Asia, which had an indirect impact in India. We have seen the role of academic art in transforming Indian taste because, to the Victorians, history painting represented the pinnacle of art. By this token, Indian paintings, such as Mughal or Rajput miniatures, were ranked lower. Within the Western—supposedly universal—artistic criteria, they were considered as the highest form of decoration. We must bear in mind here that decorative art did not simply mean the ornamentation of objects. The contrast was between the flat treatment of shapes and colours in decorative art, as in Indian miniature painting, and Western illusionist painting, which was privileged as fine art.

This Victorian badge of inferiority became a political issue to the nationalists, who now made the counter-claim that the very superiority of Indian art lay in its deliberate rejection of Western three-dimensional illusionism. Such nationalist assertions fitted in well with the anti-naturalist tendencies in the West. One of the mentors of the nationalist artists in Bengal, the English art teacher Ernest Binfield Havell, was convinced that India’s spirituality was reflected in her art, because Indian art was not tainted by Renaissance materialism. This was at a time when Indian identity was increasingly equated with Hindu identity in nationalist literature, projecting a notion of unity based on a myth of common descent. In art, this exclusiveness took the form of cultural authenticity—the pure essence of traditional Hindu art, as opposed to the hybrid art of colonial India.

It is against this intellectual background that the nationalist art of the Bengal School made its début during the political unrest of 1905. The beginnings were somewhat inauspicious. In 1896, E.B. Havell arrived in Calcutta as head of the government art school, setting in motion the Indianization of the school, which had hitherto been run on Western principles. He started a collection of Indian miniatures that included a fine

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painting of a crane by the Mughal painter Mansur, controversially financing the project by auctioning off the school’s Western art collection. Next he introduced a new curriculum that combined Indian art with nature study. His students felt threatened enough to go on strike while the nationalist press accused Havell of trying to deprive Bengalis of scientific art education, so deeply had Western taste penetrated the province.

Facing a hostile reception from the Bengali public, Havell desperately looked for a local ally who would be able to carry out his reforms. At this juncture he met a young painter named Abanindranath Tagore, nephew of the great poet Rabindranath.

The Tagore family was renowned for its cultural and intellectual contributions, and for fostering a new romantic sensibility. Abanindranath had received a liberal education at home, with freedom to develop his own creative personality. Although he received some formal training in art from a former student of the Royal College of Art in South Kensington, he was temperamentally averse to rigid discipline, finding drawing from the nude and anatomy lessons particularly distasteful. Realizing that Western training would be counter-productive, the English art teacher encouraged him to study Indian painting, which resulted in his first series based on the medieval poet Jayadeva’s romantic work, Gita Govinda. The most noticeable feature of these paintings was a new ideal of emaciated women that did not go down well with the Bengali intelligentsia.5 To Havell, Abanindranath’s nationalist approach made him the right choice for his deputy at the school. The Havell–Abanindranath partnership in the campaign for nationalist art was based on an instinctive bond between the Englishman and the Indian, Havell the older and more active partner, Abanindranath the younger and more reflective one. The young artist acknowledged that Havell taught him to appreciate the delicate skills of the Mughal masters. Abanindranath’s The Passing of Shah Jahan, was a turning point in the creation of nationalist art [Fig. 8].6 The details are consciously Mughal, especially in the treatment of the pietra dura work, but there are significant differences. While rejecting academic art, Abanindranath retained some of the conventions of scientific perspective. He also remained sympathetic to the spirit of Victorian art, which stressed mood, feeling and sentiment. The sombre colours here echo the tragedy in the artist’s personal life—the loss of his little daughter.7 Since Ravi Varma was an acclaimed nationalist painter in his lifetime, why was he rejected by the same nationalists who now considered Abanindranath’s Shah Jahan to be a more ‘authentic’ expression of Indian identity? Varma simply fell victim to the politics of style. In the global relationship between the colonizer and the colonized, there were two models of artistic resistance. One of the best-known models is the Mexican mural art of the 1920s and ’30s. Mexico was colonized by Spain and underwent a period of nationalist resistance to the West. Diego Rivera and other artists contributed to the revolution of the 1920s with ambitious murals glorifying the Aztecs who had ruled Mexico before Spanish occupation. At the same time, these Mexican murals belong wholly within the Renaissance tradition. In other words, anti-colonial resistance consisted mainly in terms of indigenous motifs, and not indigenous artistic styles. Whereas in the case of India and Japan, resistance to Westernization meant the creation of an indigenous ‘style’, which challenged the modern, urban, industrial culture of colonialism. Indian nationalists flaunted the flat style of Indian miniatures branded by Victorians as decorative art in preference to the three-dimensional Western art. The Passing of Shah Jahan and later examples of the Bengal School show this preoccupation with indigenous style as opposed to the subject matter.

The second milestone in the creation of Abanindranath’s nationalist art was the synthesis of Indian and Japanese art. As the Bengali artist sought to infuse The Passing of Shah Jahan with pathos and melancholy, he found the bright colours of Mughal

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Fig. 8: ABANINDRANATH TAGORE The Passing of Shah Jahan Oil on board 1902 By kind permission of the Victoria Memorial Hall and Rabindra Bharati Society, Kolkata, India

Fig. 7: ABANINDRANATH TAGORE Bharat Mata Watercolour and wash on paper 26.5 x 15 cm (10.5 x 6 in.)

1905 By kind permission of the Victoria Memorial Hall and Rabindra Bharati Society, Kolkata, India

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art unsuited to his artistic requirement. The artist’s criticism of his own work was that it lacked bhava (feeling or sentiment). It was during his search for a more appropriate style that he discovered Japanese painting, gave up oils and took to watercolours.

There was an important political dimension to Abanindranath’s conversion. At the dawn of the twentieth century, Asian intellectuals, notably the Japanese Okakura Kakuzo Tenshin and the Indian Rabindranath Tagore, and their Western allies began to forge a Pan-Asian alliance in response to the challenge of Western technology and progress.

Okakura arrived in Calcutta in 1900 as a guest of the Tagores, finishing his famous work Ideals of the East at their home. In Japan, Okakura had been the leader of the anti-Western revival that rejected the dominance of academic naturalism. Okakura declared India to be the ultimate source of the ancient Buddhist art of Japan. He believed with Rabindranath in Asia’s common destiny. The Pan-Asian tendency was a romantic world view in search of disappearing indigenous traditions. The irony is that Western stereotypes, such as the ‘Oriental mind’, provided a powerful focus for Asian aspirations, the belief in the spirituality of Asian societies in contrast to the materialism of the West.8 Okakura was the champion of nihonga or traditional art—as opposed to yoga— the Western style, in Japan. After his return to Japan, he sent two of his finest pupils, Yokoyama Taikan and Hishida Shunso to work with Abanindranath. In Calcutta, the two Japanese copied Hindu deities, and Taikan experimented with Mughal art. Under Taikan’s influence, Abanindranath gave up strong colours and hard outlines, learning to draw each line with great care, and with a light touch. He discovered the importance of gesture and brushstrokes from Japanese art, adapting the morotai wash technique for his own purposes [Fig. 7]. Abanindranath’s atmospheric paintings were developed and refined with the collaboration of his brother Gaganendranath (1867–1938). Their subtle combinations of greys and chromatic modulations of pale shades create a pervasive mood of serenity and stillness. The style reflects the brothers’ contemplative temperaments in keeping with the spirit of Far Eastern art. This Pan-Asian style of art came to be known as oriental art within the cultural politics of nationalist art in India.

The times did not however allow Abanindranath time for contemplation. Engaged

by Havell as his deputy at the school, Abanindranath embarked on a voyage of rediscovering ‘the lost language of Indian art’ with a select batch of students, notably Asit Haldar (1890–1964), Surendranath Ganguly (1885–1909), Nandalal Bose (1882–1966), Kshitindranath Majumdar (1891–1975) and Sarada Ukil (1890–1940), among others. The unrest of 1905 demanded a clear political statement from the leader, and the reclusive Abanindranath made a rare overt political statement with his iconic painting, Bharat Mata (Mother India) [Fig. 7].9 The artist imagines Mother India as a Hindu goddess but in the guise of a chaste Bengali female ascetic, who holds four unconventional objects.

Clockwise from right, they are: a palm-leaf manuscript (secular learning), a sheaf of paddy (food), a breviary (spiritual knowledge) and a piece of cotton material (clothing)—four objects symbolizing swadeshi self-sufficiency. This was his only direct involvement with art as propaganda and, indeed, unlike in Mexico, for instance, these early nationalist painters of India seldom produced posters and other forms of direct political protest.

Rather, their cultural nationalism centred on a critique of Western values.

The final milestone in the construction of nationalist art was the apotheosis of Ajanta, the site of ancient Buddhist mural paintings. Nationalists worldwide assigned supreme importance to murals as the ideal medium for bringing to life national allegories. Rediscovered in the nineteenth century, Ajanta soon became a nationalist icon. In 1910, Abanindranath’s pupils, Nandalal Bose, Asit Halder, Samarendranath Gupta and K. Venkatappa were selected to assist Christiana Herringham, a visiting authority on mural techniques, in her work of copying Ajanta paintings. Despite the reputation of Ajanta,

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Fig. 9: NANDALAL BOSE, Mountain Landscape from Kurseong Sumi-e (ink and wash on handmade paper), 34 x 108 cm (13.25 x 42.5 in.), signed and dated in Bengali, 1929

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only in Nandalal did it leave a permanent trace. He was profoundly moved by the murals and absorbed their feminine ideal, strong lines, and rich earthy colours, leaving behind the hazy atmospheric treatment of oriental art.10 Let us now return to the post-1905 politics of artistic style and the battle between the Bengal School of orientalists and the academic artists over their respective claims to be the authentic voice of national art. The first target of the Bengal School was Ravi Varma’s photographic treatment of women, which was dismissed as being thoroughly undignified. Margaret Noble, the Irish disciple of Vivekananda and mentor of the swadeshi artists of Bengal, described the heroine of the painting based on the ancient dramatist Kalidasa’s play Shakuntala Patralikhan, as ‘a fat woman lying on a lotus leaf, writing a letter’. Abanindranath always insisted that art must be expressed through the ‘inner eye’. This mild-mannered teacher was particularly harsh with his students if they expressed a wish to draw from life. The ideologues of swadeshi art, E.B. Havell, Sri Lankan art historian Ananda Coomaraswamy, Margaret Noble and art critic O.C. Gangoly, adumbrated on the spirituality of Indian art as the very antithesis of Renaissance materialism, an idea that blended effortlessly with Okakura’s Pan-Asian ideals. Some of the more extreme votaries (though not Abanindranath himself) indirectly equated the spirituality of Indian civilization with an exclusive view of Hindu identity, endlessly asserting the cultural ‘authenticity’ of oriental art, as opposed to the hybrid academic naturalism of colonial art schools. Academic artists, who felt threatened by this new exclusive view of art, decided to attack oriental art’s claims to indigenism on the pages of Bengali journals, some of them adopting the British academic painter Sir Joshua Reynolds as their patron saint. The debates over the rival claims of academic versus oriental art were pungent, witty and hard-hitting, offering cartoonists much material for lampooning the extreme positions taken by the Bengal School.

Abanindranath had the good fortune of receiving the backing of powerful patrons and an effective publicity machine not available to academic artists of the period.

Ironically, artistic nationalism won patronage from the British Raj as well. Many of the high officials read Tagore’s poems and developed personal friendships with the Tagore family and other leading figures. At this time, high imperialists such as Sir Francis Younghusband became deeply interested in Hindu and Buddhist thought.11 Equally, they believed in the essential difference between the progressive West and the traditional East, longing for the spirituality lacking in the technologically superior West.

To them, academic naturalism was simply inimical to the Indian temperament. There was another practical aspect to this, as articulated by Lord Ronaldshay, the governor of Bengal: ‘The nationalism of a man who is not a politician is… of greater significance than that of a man who is. Dr Rabindranath Tagore, for example, is a poet, and for the vast numbers of Indians he stands for the very embodiment of the National Ideal… [he speaks] not so much of tyranny and injustice… of a foreign administration, as of the genius which is her own.’12 Faced with mounting political unrest, the beleaguered government championed the Bengal School as the only genuine expression of Indian cultural nationalism. They provided subsidies to Bengal School publications and encouraged students of Abanindranath to head art institutions all over India, notably in Lahore, Jaipur, Lucknow and Madras, to name a few, while subtly withdrawing support for academic artists in various spheres. The Times of India, the government mouthpiece, in its reviews of the Bombay Art Society exhibitions, castigated the leading academic artists of Bombay, including M.V. Dhurandhar, trained at the Bombay art school, holding up the Bengal School as representing the Indian ideal.13 Through the intervention of European allies, Abanindranath’s paintings had featured in The Studio as early as 1905. In 1914, nationalist paintings from Bengal were

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Fig. 15: ABDUR RAHMAN CHUGHTAI, Shah Jahan Looking at the Taj Watercolour on paper, 45 x 28 cm (17.75 x 11 in.), Signed in Urdu

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Fig. 16: SURENDRANATH GANGULY, Kartikeya, Woodblock print on paper, 25 x 16.5 cm (10 x 6.5 in.), c. 1910

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Fig. 17: ASIT KUMAR HALDAR, Kabuliwala, Tempera on paper, 49.5 x 32 cm (19.5 x 12.75 in.), Signed in Bengali

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Fig. 19: GAGANENDRANATH TAGORE How Thou Singest Grey wash on paper 16.5 x 11.5 cm (6.5 x 4.5 in.)

Signed and inscribed

Fig. 18: MUKUL DEY Untitled Watercolour, gold and wash on paper 16 x 26 cm (25.25 x 10.25 in.)

Signed in Bengali

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you might come across lesser-known works by [significant artists] but [also those] who have been ignored in popular discourse over time.”

—Avantika Bhuyan, Architectural Digest India

“… [an] enormous compendium…

What unravel are layers of deliberations and ponderings, like the opening petals of a blooming lotus.”

—Akrita Reyar, Times Now

Rob Dean has worked in the field of modern Indian art since 1998. He has worked as a specialist of modern and classical Indian paintings for both Christie’s and Sotheby’s and now works independently as a gallerist, lecturer, and art consultant.

Giles Tillotson is a writer and lecturer on Indian history and architecture. He is also Fellow and a former Director of the Royal Asiatic Society, London. He is currently Consultant Director at the Maharaja Sawai Man Singh II Museum, City Palace, Jaipur.

Partha Mitter is a writer and historian of art and culture, specialising in the reception of Indian art in the West, as well as in modernity, art and identity in India.

Yashodhara Dalmia is an art historian, writer and independent curator based in New Delhi.

Sanjoy Kumar Mallik is an Associate Professor and Head of the Department of History of Art at Kala Bhavana, Visva Bharati (Santiniketan).

Sona Datta is an art historian and cultural collaborator who until recently was Head of South Asian art at the Peabody Essex Museum in Massachusetts.

Fig. 11: ABANINDRANATH TAGORE Teardrops on a Lotus Leaf Woodblock print on paper 25 x 19 cm (10 x 7 5/8 in.)

Signed in Bengali c. 1915

OTHER TITLES OF INTEREST Jitish Kallat Edited by Natasha Ginwala Meera Mukherjee Purity of Vision Dr. Geeti Sen et al.

Ganesh Pyne A Painter of Eloquent Silence Pranabranjan Ray

Mapin Publishing www.mapinpub.com

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Printed in Malaysia

“The book holds a host of revelations—

MODERN & CONTEMPORARY ART

Modern Indian Painting Jane & Kito de Boer Collection

Edited by Rob Dean and Giles Tillotson 296 pages, 211 colour images 10 x 12.5” (254 x 317.5 mm), hc ISBN: 978-93-85360-58-9 ₹3500 | $65 | £50 Spring 2019 • World rights