Abanindranath Tagore, ' Bharat Mata' (water-colour, 1905).

THE MAKING OF A NEW

'INDIAN' ART
Artists, aesthetics and nationalism in Beng al, c. I85o-1920

T A P A T I G U H A-T H A K U R T A
Fellow in History, Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta

Q;!;,'l7fr.m
CAMBRIDGE
UNIVERSITY PRESS
 RARY·'
\ ART LIBCON
TY , SINJ·.
''- v· �'S
'ERS,lTY53706 ..AVENUE

)&SON Published by the Press Syndicate of the University of Cambridge

The Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge CB2 1 R P
4 0 West 2oth Street, New York, N Y IOOII-42 1 1 , USA
1 0 Stamford Road, Oakleigh, Victoria 3166, Australia

© Cambridge University Press 1992

First published 1992

Printed in Great Britain at the University Press, Cambridge

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Librmy

Librmy qf Congress cataloguing in publication data

Guha-Thakurta, Tapati.
The making of a new "Indian" art: artists, aesthetics, and
nationalism in Bengal, c. 1850 -1 920 / Tapati Guha-Thakurta.
p. em. - t_ambridge South Asian studies) S ;;2_
·:····
. ·.
Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index .
. . :.: -� ·� ISBN 0 52 I 39247 0
1. Art, Bengali. 2 . Art, Modern - 1 9 th century- India- Bengal.
3· Art, Ylodern - 2oth century - India - Bengal. 4· Nationalism and
art - India- Bengal. I. Title. II. Series.
N7307.B 4G84 1992
70 9'·54' 1 4-090 34 - dc2o 9 1 -2357 1 CIP

ISBN o 52 1 39247 o hardback

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 Contents

List of illustrations page xii

Photographic acknowledgements x1x

Abbreviations xx

Glossary xx1

Preface xxv

In troduction
I Artisans, artists and popular picture production in
nineteenth-century Calcutta II
2 The art-school artists in Calcutta: professions, practice
and patronage in the late nineteenth century 45
3 I ndigenous commercial enterprise and the popular art
market in Calcutta : the emergence of a new I ndian
iconography 78
4 Tradition and nationalism in I ndian art : art-histories
and aesthetic discourse in Bengal in the late nineteenth
century I I7
5 Orientalism and the new claims for I ndian art: the
ideas of Havell, Coomaraswamy, Okakura and
Nivedita I 46
6 The contest over tradition and nationalism : differing
aesthetic formulations for ' Indian ' painting r 85
7 Artists and aesthetics: Abanindranath Tagore and the
' New School of I ndian Painting ' 226
Epilogue The Twenties 3I3
Bibliography 327
Index 34 I

XI
 Illustrations

Abanindr anath Tagor e, ' Bhar at Mata ' ( water-co lo ur ,

I 905) - RBS Frontispiece
Worship at a Kali temple near Calcutta, ' Company '
painting fro m Calcutta (water -colo ur , c. I 798-I 8o4 ) -
IOLR. page I 4
2 Sheikh Muhammad Amir of Karr aya, Horse and
Groom, ' Co mp any ' painting from Calcutta (water -
colour, c. I 845) - IOLR. I7
3 Co ur tesan with a rose and mirror , Kalighat painting
(water-co lo ur , c. I 87 5 )- V & A. 20
4 Babu with a hookah, Kalighat line dr awing, mid-
nineteenth centur y- Ashutosh Museum, Calcutta
University. 2I
5 Kali Charan Ghosh, Courtesan tr ampling on h er lov er ,
Kalighat painting (water - co lour , c. I 900) - V & A. 22
6 A co py of a Kalighat image of Elokeshi and the
Mahanta at Tar akeshwar , Bat-tala wood engr aving,
engr av er unknown. 25
7 A Kalighat-style cour tesan (oil, ano nymo us, n . d . ) -
Birla Academy of Ar t and Culture, Calcutta. 26
8 Bat-tala wood- engr av ing, ' The Musk Rats' Music
Par ty ' by Nrityalal Datta- VM. 29
9 Bat-tala wood-engr aving, ' Ghor Kali , by Nr ityalal
'

Datta -VM. 30
I o Bat-tala wood-engr aving, ' Rasar aj and Rasamanjari '
by Madhab Chandra Das - V & A. 3I
II Ramdhan Swar n akar , Por tr ait of Dav id Har e (woo d-
engr aving, c. I 8 7os) - VM. 34
I2 Mahishasur amar dini and Kalki-avatara (oil,
nineteenth century, Chinsura)- IM. 37
I3 Go ur and Nitai with a pro cessio n of Vaishnav a

xu
 ILlustrations Xlll

devo tees ( gouache/water- colour, c. nineteenth century,

Chitpur) - N . R. Chakrav arty, Calcu tta. 38
14 Shiv a and Parv ati (oil, late nineteenth century, locality
unknown) - N G MA 41
IS The Marble Palace : the o u ter f a� ade with the marble
statuary - pho tograph fro m A. Claude Campbell,
Glimpses of Bengal, Vo l. I ( Calcutta, I907). so
I6 Po reshnath Sen, Po rtrait of Prodyo t Kumar Tago re, a
copy of a work by a Euro pean artist (oil, c. I 905) -
RBM . s6
I7 Illustratio ns in Raja Raj endralal Mitra, The Antiquities
of Orissa, Vol. I ( Calcutta, I 875) ( a) Fa�ade of the
Lingaraj temple of Bhuvaneswar -litho graph by
Kalidas Pal. (b) Two sculpted columns - lithograph by
Annada Prasad Bagchi. 62-63
I8 Bamapada Banerj ee, Portrait of Bankim Chandra
Chatterjee (o il, I8go) V M .
- 76
I9 Nabin Chandra Ghose, Po rtrait of ' Raj a Ram Mohun
Roy, the Great Hindoo Refo rmer ' (lithograph, r858) -
VM. 8o
20 Girindrakumar Datta, Caricature of the Euro pean driv e
against nudity and obscenity in I ndian society
(lithograph) -Basantak, r875 . 8s
2I Priyagopal Das, Title-page illustratio n ( wood-
engraving)- Mukul, I895· 87
22 Krishnahari Das, ' The Kalki Avatara ' , illustratio n in
Raja So urindro Mo hun Tago re, The Seven Principal
ivfusical Notes of the Hindus ( Calcutta, I892). 88
23 Harishchandra Haldar, Illustration to Bankim
Chandra Chatterj ee's ' Bande-Mataram ' Balak, I885.
- go
24 Abanindranath Tago re, I llustratio n to Dwij endranath
Tagore's ' Swapnaprayan ' -Sadha na, I st issue, I8gi-g2 . gr
25 Portrait of H. H . Lo cke, Principal" of the Calcutta
Schoo l of Art (lithograph) - Shilp a.:pushpanjali, I886. 94
'26 Po rtrait of Dwarakanath Tago re (lithograph, c . r878
by the Calcutta Art Studio ) - VM. 95
'27 Savitri and Satyav an ( chro molitho graph, c . I878-80 by
the Calcutta Art Studio ) - Ashmo lean Museum,
Oxfo rd. 97
'28 Nala-Damayanti ( chro mo lithograph, c. I878-8o by the
Calcutta Art Studio ) - Ashmolean �1 useum, Oxford. g8
Xl\' I llus rt ations

29 Saraswati ( chro molitho graph, c. I877-78 by the

Calcutt a Art Studio ) - Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. 99
30 Radha and Krishna ( chro molithograph by the
Kansaripara Art Studio ) - R. P. Gupta, Calcutt a. I02
3I 'Janmasht hami ' : Vasudeva escaping wit h t he child,
Krishna (lithograph) - S hilpa p - us hp anjali, I886. I04
32 Ravi Varma, ' Hamsa Damayant i ' (Damayanti and the
swan) (oil, I8gg) - Sri Chitra Art Gallery,
Trivandrum. I05
33 Ravi Varma, 'Kamsa Maya ' (Kamsa and the divine
illusio n ) (oil, c. I888) - Laxmi Vilas Palace, Baroda. I07
34 Ravi Varma, ' Krishna Drisht a ' (The viewing of the
infant Krishna) (oil, I888) - Maharaj a Fateh Singh
Museum Trust , Baroda. I 09
35 J. P. Gangooly, ' Wet Banks of the Ganges ' (oil, n.d . )-
Natio nal Gallery of Art , Madras. II2
36 J. P. Gangoo ly, ' The Talking Parrot , Vaishampayan ',
illust ratio n o f a scene fro m Banabhatt a's Kadambari (oil,
c. I 8g8-gg) , originally in the co llectio n of the Tagore

Castle, Calcutt a- fro m Pradip, Magh r 306/I goo. I I3

37 Bamapada Banerjee, Arj una and U rvashi (oleograph,
I 8go) - VM. I I4
38 Bamapada Banerjee, Abhimanyu and Uttara (oil,
c. r8go) - IM. I I5
39 Ravi Varma, ' Vishvamit ra and Menaka ' (oil, c. I 8g8)
-Maharaj a Fateh Singh Museum Trust , Baroda. I29
40 Ravi Varma, ' Arj una and Subhadra ' (oil, c. I8g8) -
Maharaj a Fateh Singh Museum Trust , Baroda. I3 I
4I G . K. Mhat re, ' To The Temple ' (plast er-cast
sculpture, I895) - J. J. School of Art , Bo mbay.
Reproduced from JIAI, January I8g8. I 34
42 M. V. Dhurandhar, ' Gouri Utsav ' - from Prabasi,
Jaishtha I3 I O/I903. I4 I
43 M. V. Dhurandhar, ' The Sacred St eps ' - fro m T he
Mod ern Rev i ew , June I 907. I 42
44 M. V. Dhurandhar, Shakunt ala at t he court of king
Dushyant a - fro m Prabasi, Jaishtha I3 IO/I 903. I44
45 Ishwari Prasad, Port rait of E . B. Havell (wat er-colo u r,
c. rgo5) - IOLR. I 50
46 Avinash Chandra Chattopadhyay, ' Nirj at it e Ashirvad '
 Illustrations XV

(Blessings Amidst Torture) -fro m Prabasi, Jaishtha

I 3 I 4/ I g07. I g7
47 Gunendranath Tago re, Still-life sketch (water-colo ur,
n.d.) - RBM . 22 9
48 Abariindranath Tagore, Po rtrait of the yo ung
Rabindranath Tago re (p astel, c. r 8g r-95 ) -Bose
I nstitute, Calcu tta. 23I
49 Abanindranath Tago re, Landscap e sketches (water-
colo ur, sketch-book, r 8g r )- Sumitendranath Tago re,
Calcutta. 2 32
so A p age from Francis Martindale 's album of
' illuminated ' manuscrip t, illustrating a poem by
Coleridge (gilt and water-co lo ur, r 8g 7 ) -
Sumitendranath Tago re. 234
51 Abanindranath Tago re, ' Shuklabhisar ', illustratio n of
a padavali by Govindadas (water-colour, c. r 8g7) -
Sumitendranath Tago re. 236
52 Abanindranath Tagore, The Birth of Krishna,
Krishnaleela series (water-colo ur, c. I 8g8-gg)- RBS . 237
53 Abanindranath Tagore, Buddha and Suj ata (water-
co lour, c. r go r ) -I M . 238
54 Abanindranath Tagore, The Trav eller and the Lo tus,
illustratio n of Kalidasa's Ritu-sam hara (water-colour,
c . r goo ) - IM. 239
55 Abanindranath Tagore, ' Abhisarika ', illustratio n o f
Kalidasa's Ritu-sam hara (water-co lour, c. I goo ) - I M . 2 40
s6 Abanindranath Tagore, The Passing of Shah J ahan (oil
o n wood, r go2 ) - RBS. 2 44
57 Abanindranath Tagore, The Bui� ding o f the Taj
(water-co lo ur in the gouache te<;h- nique, c. r go r ) - RBS. 246
ss Abanindranath Tago re, Shah J a.han dreaming of the
Taj (water-colo ur, c. r go r-2 ) - I M . 247
59 Abanindranath Tagore, Exp eriments with Jap anese-
style brush and ink p ainting, (sketch-book, 1 903) -
Sumitendranath Tagore (a) Bamboo leav es (b) Figure
study of Taikan. 248
6o Gaganendranath Tagore, View of a mosque and
skyline (brush and ink, c. r g r 6- r 8) - Birla Academy of
Art and Culture, Calcutta. 25 I
6r Scroll p ainting by Yoshio Katsuta, Rama, Sita and
XVI Illus tra tions
Lakshrn�nn in the forest (tempera v11 :,ilk, c. rgo6-7)-
Sumi tendranath T agore . 252
62 Abanindr anath Tagor e, Sita in captivity in Lanka
(water-colo ur , c . 1906-7 ) -fro m Praba si , Chaitra
I 3 I 4/ I go8. 254
63 Abanindr anath Tagor e, The Banished Yaksha of
Kalidasa's Meg hadu ta , (water-co lo ur , c. r 904) - RBS. 256
64 Abanindr anath Tagor e, ' Dewali or The Feast of
Lamps ' (water -colo ur , c. I 904) - I M . 257
65 Abanindranath Tagor e, ' Bharat Mata ' (water -colo ur ,
1 905) - RBS. 258
66 Abanindranath Tagore, Kacha and Devayani (fr esco
o n sto ne-slab, c. I 905-6) - Gov t. School of Ar t,
Calcutta. 260
67 Abanindranath Tagor e, ' Ganesh J anani ' (water-
co lo ur , c. I 9 I O) - I M . 26 I
68 Abanindranath Tagore, ' Tissar akshita, Queen o f
Aso ka ' (water -colo ur , c. I 9 I o ) - Royal Collectio n,
Windsor Castle, E ngland. 263
69 Abanindranath Tagor e, Por tr ait of his mo ther (water -
colour , c. I 91 2- r 3) - NGMA. 264
7 0 Abanindranath Tagor e, Rabindr anath in the role of
the blind bar d of his dance-dr ama, P halguni (water -
colo ur , c. I 9 I 6) - RBS. 266
7 I Abanindranath Tagore, Ar abian Nights ser ies, ' The
Hunchback of Fish bo ne ', (water -colour , c. I930-33) -
RBS . 268
7 2 Nandalal Bose, Arjuna as a dancer in the co ur t o f King
Vir ata, student wor k do ne at the School of Ar t,
Calcutta (unfinished water-co lo ur , c. I 905-7 ) - V & A. 27 I
7 3 Surendranath Ganguly, Study of a par akeet, student
wor k do ne at the School of Ar t, Calcutta (water -colo ur ,
c. I 905-7 ) - V & A . 27 2
7 4 Abanindr anath Tagore with his first batch of students -
r eproduced fro m VBQ, Abanindr a number , I 94 I . 27 3
7 5 Nandalal Bose, The Ar tists' S tudio , Jor asanko (pen and
ink, c. I 909- I O) - reproduced fro m JI SOA, Nov ember
I 96 I . 27 6
7 6 K . Venkatappa, ' Bridging over to Lanka ', illustr atio n
fro m the Ramayana i n Coo mar aswamy and Nivedita's
Myt hs of theHindus and Budd hists (Calcutta, I 9 I 3 ) - IM. 282
 Illus tra tion s XVll

77 lJ pendr akishor e Ra ychowdh ur y, Illustr atio n to the tale

of the Seven Pr inces in Hindus thani Upaka tha (Calcutta,
Igi2) . 283
78 Sukumar Ray, Illustratio n in Sandes h, Igi6, later used
in his boo k, Abol Tabol . 284
7g Nandalal Bose, ' Sati ' (water -colo ur , c. Igo7) - IM. 287
So ·Nandalal Bose, ' Gandhar i ' (water -colo ur , c. Igo7)-
from Prabasi, Chaitra I3 I51 I gog. 288
8r Nandalal Bo se, 'Jagai- Madhai ', the two dr unken
sinners who wer e co nv er ted to Vaishnavism (dr awing,
c. I go7-8) - IM. 28g
82 Kshitindr anath Majumdar , Radha and Krishna
(water -co lo ur , c. Ig2o) - I M. 2go
83 Nandalal Bose, Shiva drinking the wor ld's poiso n
(water -co lo ur , c. IgiO- I5) - NGMA. 2gi
84 Nandalal Bose, ' Par thasar athi ' ( water -colour , c. Igr 2)
- IM. 2g3
85 Sailendr anath Dey, Yasho da and Krishna (water -
co lour , I g I3 ) - fro m Prabasi, J aishtha I32 I/Ig i 4) . 2g5
86 Surendranath Kar , ' Hir anmayi bidding far ewell to
Pur andhar ', an illustr ation o f Bankim Chandr a
Chatterj ee's novel Yugalangur iya (T he Two Rings) - fro m
Prabasi, Chaitra I 320/I gi4 . 2g6
87 Char uchandr a Roy, ' Phalguni ' (Spring) , (water -
colo ur , c. Igr5-I6) - fro m C ha tterjee's Pi cture Album , No . r . 2g8
88 Mukul Dey, ' Tar pan ', Wo men bathing in the riv er
during a lunar eclipse (etching based o n a water-
colo ur , c. rgi7- I8) - NGMA. 300
8g Gaganendr anath Tagor e, ' A Wrong Co mbinatio n :
Dance of the Emancipated Bengalee Lady ' , caricature
from Adb hu tLok (Realm of the Absur d ) (Calcutta,
rgr8) - RBS. 302
go Gaganendr anath Tagor e, ' The Ar tist Passing Away
into the Other Wor ld ' , Cubis t co mpositio n (water-
colour , c. 1920-25) - RBS. 3°4
gr I shwari Pr asad, ' Shiv a and Parvati o n Mo unt Kailasa '
(water -colo ur , n.d. ) - IM. 307
g2 Gaganendranath Tagore, ' Dwar aka Puri ', Cubist
compositio n (water -colo ur , c. rg20-25) - RBS. 3I5
g3 Rabindr anath Tagor e, ' Black Bir d ' , fro m C hi trali pi
(Calcutta, rg4o ) . 317
XVlll Illustrations
94 Hemendranath Maj umdar, Untitled (wash and
tempera, n . d . ) - NGMA. 32 0
95 J. P. Gangooly, The Banished Yaksha of Kalidasa's
Meghaduta, ' Indian-style ' painting (water-colour,
c. 1 908) - from Bharati, Ashar I 3 I 6/ 1 909. 324
96 Jamini Roy, ' Praying for the child ', a study of a
Santhal mother and child (water-colour, c. 1 9 1 5-20) -
from JIAA, 1 920-2 r. 325
 Photographic acknowledgements

I wish to thank the following institutions and persons for permission

to study and reproduce pictures in their collections:

Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

I ndia Office Library and Records, London
The Trustees of the Victoria & Albert Museum, London
Ashutosh Museum of I ndian Art, Calcutta U niversity
Birla Academy of Art and Culture, Calcutta
Sri Chitra Art Gallery, Trivandrum
I ndian Museum, Calcutta
Maharaja Fateh Singh Museum Trust, Baroda
National Gallery of Art, Madras
National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi
National Library, Calcutta
Rabindra Bharati Society, Calcutta
Rabindra Bharati U niversity Museum, Calcutta
Victoria Memorial, Calcutta
N. R. Chakravarty, R. P. Gupta and Sumitendranath Tagore,
Calcutta

XIX
 Abbreviations

AGRPI Annual General Report on Public I nstruction, Bengal

BGP/E Bengal Government General Department, Education
Proceedings
I OLR I ndia O ffice Library and Records, London
IM I ndian Nluseum, Calcutta
I SO A I ndian Society of Oriental Art
J ISOA Journal of the I ndian Society of Oriental Art
JIAA Journal of the I ndian Academy of Art
JIAI Journal of Indian Art and Industry
NGMA National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi
RBM Rabindra Bharati U niversity Museum, Calcutta
RBS Rabindra Bharati Society, Calcutta
V & A Victoria & Albert Museum, London
VBQ Visva Bharati Quarterly
VM Victoria Memorial, Calcutta

XX
 Glossary

A comment is necessary on my transliteration of Bengali and,

occasionally, Sanskrit words. For the sake of convenience, I have
avoided the use of diacritical marks and have tried to stick, as far as
possible, to the phonetic spelling of words. The difference between
the palatal and dental s, though pronounced the same way in
Bengali, is indicated through the respective uses ofsh and s. There has
been an exception, however, regarding proper nouns like Silpa­
sastra, Sukracharya or Santiniketan, where I have retained the
spellings which were used in the writings of the time or which are in
general usage.
adarsha ideal
alp ana patterns drawn on the floor by women during
festivals or rituals
andarmahal inner rooms of a mansion, inhabited by women­
folk
antarmahal inner, private space
atikrama transgression
babu a title (usually respectful) affixed to the name of
a Bengali gentleman
baithak-khana drawing rooms, or special house for parties and
entertaining guests
haul itinerant folk singers of Bengal
bawarchi cook
bhadralok Bengali middle-class gentlemen
bhakti devotion
bhanga/bhangi inflections, posture
bhava emotion, feeling, sentiment
bhavatmaka centred around bhava
bhava-vyanjana the evocation and intricate play of sentiment
bidi country-made cigarettes

XXI
XXll Glossa ry
chal chitra paintings decor ati ng the o uter fr ame m the
images of goddess Durga
chaprasi attendant
chitra picture , painting
chitrakar fo lk painter
dakshiner so uthern
d evi goddess
dhyana meditatio n
dhyana -yoga profo und meditation
ek- chala images of goddess Durga and her family under a
single semi-circular frame
guru teacher , mentor , spiritual leader
kala ar t, skill, any mechanical or fine ar t
kamar, kumor po tters and claymodellers
karigar ar tisan, cr aftsman
karigari wor kmanship
kulin Br ahmin of high lineage
mahanta head priest o f the temple
mantra r eligio us incantatio ns or magical for mula
maya illusio n
naksha design
nayak hero
nayika heroine
padavali V aishnav a po etry
pat fo lk paintings (narr ative scro lls or single-fr ame
images)
pata -chitra as above
patua fo lk painter
paurani c per taining to epics, mythology or the Pur an as
prabasi per so n or co mmunity r esiding outside their home­
land
qualam tr aditio nal ' school ' of painters
raga musical mode
rakhi-bandan festiv e occasio n, when rakhis (decor ative wr ist
bands) ar e exchanged between fr iends or
brothers and sisters
rasa aesthetic tenor , aesthetics
rishi sage, seer
rupa for m , beauty
rupatmaka centr ed aro und rupa
 Glo s a ry X Xlll

sad hana penance, dedicatio n

san tan children
saunda rya beauty
s hank hari conchshell worker
s hastrac har co nfo rmity to the prescriptions of the Shastras
s hastric pertaining to the Shastras
s hak h fancy
s hikar hunting sessio n
s hiks ha training, education
s hilpa art, craft
sutrad har carpenters o r masons
swab havikata naturalism
swarnakar go ldsmith
sw echchha char licence to do as one pleases
t hakur-dalan an altar, situated in the co urtyard of large
mansions, where images are worshipped and
pujas perfo rmed.
u chcha s hilpa high art
vyatikram deviation, disto rtio n
yaks ha tree-god, a class o f semi-divine being
yog z ascetic, devotee
zamindar member of landowning gentry
 Preface

The research for this work was begun in Calcutta in the early r g8os
and concentrated between 1984 and r g88, when it was written up as
a D .Phil. thesis at the University of Oxford. The many years that
went into the writing of the dissertation and its conversion into the
book have left a long trail of debts. What I write here remains,
inevitably, an inadequate record of all the help that has made
possible this end product.
A Junior Research Fellowship at the Department of History,
Calcutta University and, later, the West Bengal S tate Scholarship in
History provided the main funds for this work in Calcutta and
Oxford. In Oxford, the Frere Award and grants from the Bryce and
Read funds and the Radhakrishnan Memorial Trust helped bear the
additional expenses of field work and photographing of pictures. The
Centre for S tudies in Social Sciences, Calcutta, gave me the much­
needed opportunity to continue full-time research ; St Antony's
College, Oxford and the Charles Wallace I ndia Trust in London also
helped with facilities and funds in the last stage of preparing the book.
The attempts of this study to move between the disciplines of
history and art history has had its pitfalls, particularly in the
collection and presentation of visual material. The lack of proper
documentation of the pictures of this period and the frequent absence
of photographic facilities are reflected in the unevenness of the
quality and range of illustrations in this book. I n a situation where
the restoration of oil paintings is almost non-existent and such
pictures are neither systematically collected or catalogued, the gaps
are specially evident with regard to Academic oil paintings and art­
school work in Calcutta of the late nineteenth century. Access to the
paintings of Abanindranath Tagore and the Bengal School has been
easier. However, rather than always following up the original works
of various artists in scattered holdings, my study has made use of the

XXV
XXVI Preface
rich material that presented itself in the ext ensiv e reproductio ns of
paintings in co nt empo rary jo urnals and books. This has helped often
to place paintings within a particular date. In any case, the painting
of these pictures has been as impo rtant to me as the way in which they
were propagated and popularised . Wherev er known, the locatio ns of
the o riginal pictures are cited, even if t he photograph is f rom a
reproductio n ; where the reproduct io n of a painting in a journal has
been my sole referrent to the work, o nly that so urce is mentio ned.
All the museums and private collectio ns that hav e co nt ributed to
my research are listed in the photographic acknowledgements and
the bibliography. But I wish especially to acknowledge here the
generous help I have receiv ed f ro m Betty Tyers and Robert Skelton
at the Victoria & Albert Museum , Londo n; from Andrew Topsfield
at the Ashmo lean Museum, Oxfo rd ; in Calcutta, fro m the staffof the
Rabindra Bharati Societ y, t he Rabindra Bharati Univ ersit y
Museum, t he Victo ria Memorial, the Birla Academy of Art and
Culture, and f ro m Sumitendranat h and Shyamasree Tago re. I am
also v ery grat eful, for t he assist ance that was always fo rthco ming
fro m the st aff of the Natio nal Library in Calcutta, t he Rabindra
Bhav an archives in Santiniketan, the I ndian I nstit ut e Library in
Oxfo rd , and the I ndia Office Library and Reco rds in Lo ndo n . A
special t hank yo u is due to the friends in Calcutt a- Dilip Banerj ee,
Arup Sengupta and Ruchir Joshi - who did much of the photo­
graphing of pictures, devo ting a lo t of time and effo rt and often
working under v ery difficult co nditio ns. My t hanks also to
Chitrabani, Calcu tta, fo r the quick processing and printing of many
of t he illustratio ns, and to Cambridge Univ ersity Press, for the care
wit h which the pict ures hav e been repro duced.
Fo r the interest and enco uragement that launched me o n this work
and sust ained me thro ugh it s difficult ies, I remember with gratit ude
my t eacher, Raj at Ray of Presidency College, Calcut ta, and t he
many stimulating discussions with Rat nabali Chatt erjee. The super­
visio n of Tapan Raychaudhuri both st reamlined the work and
o pened up new dimensio ns. What meant even more was the warmth
and hospitality which Tapanda and R ashidi lav ished o n me,
providing me with a ho me in Oxfo rd . Oppo rt unities to discuss my
work, at v ario us stages, with the lat e jaya Appasamy in Delhi, B. N .
Goswamy in Chandigarh, Ronald Ro binso n, Ranajit Guha,
Mildred Archer and Ro bert Skelto n in England were v ery rewarding.
I am also indebted to Dipesh Chakrav arty, Sumit Sarkar, Barun De
 Pr ifa ce XXVll

and, particularly, to Partha Chatterj ee for their critical comments

and suggestions on my thesis. On the side of more technical help,
Hari Vasudevan deserves foremost credit for his speedy typing of
large sections of the voluminous manuscript, and his competent
editing. I must also thank Arun Ghosh of the Centre for Studies in
Social Sciences for assistance with preparing the index.
Throughout, the support of my parents, family and close friends
has been vital for my morale and confidence. My parents, though
often far away, were always there - to them, I dedicate this book. In
Calcutta, Tapti, Joya and Kumkum, and in Oxford, Amrita, Parul
and Tanvir kept me going through all the ups and downs of thesis
writing. Mrinalini arrived between the thesis and the book, and
made all the difference. Leaving her behind was one of the most
diffi cult aspects of finishing this book. As always, the most crucial
acknowledgement trails at the end . Hari has given unsparingly of his
time and attention at every stage of this work, but for which it could
never have bee n completed . For him, no public words of gratitude
can ever suffice.
 Introduction

The book is a study of the emergence of new kinds of art, artists and
aesthetic values in Bengal in the colonial and nationalist period. It
examines the shifts, not only in the form and practice of painting, but
also equally, in the ideas and opinions about I ndian art during these
years, for the transformations at these two levels were inextricably
linked. The changes in pictorial styles and modes of representation
assume their real significance only as a part of a wider process of
changing visual tastes, expectations and ideologies.
Art history in India has, for long, remained confined within the
self-imposed insularity of the discipline : an insularity that stems f rom
a certain en trenched definition of ' art ' and a narrow demarcation of
its scholarly and aesthetic domain. My work attempts to recover the
study of art from the existing strictures and closures of the discipline,
and locate it within the broader context of the social and intellectual
history of Be� gal of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.
I ts approach derives from the basic premise that ' there can be no art
history apart from other kinds of history ' .1 This statement of T. ].
Clark, with its pointed implications for redefining and broadening
the areas of enquiry in European art history, has its special relevance
for the period and problems under survey here. For the developments
in art and aesthetics in colonial Bengal have remained somewhat on
the margins of both the conventional histories of Indian art and the
new social histories of thought and culture. Both have operated with
certain in-built notions of ' great art ' and artistic excellence, as the
sacrosanct standards of histories of art and culture. And, by these

1 TOJ. Clark, Image rifthe People : Gustave Cowobet and the 1848 Revolution (London, 1 982), po 180
Arguing for a new social history of art, he calls for' a multiplicity of perspectives ' to explain
'the connecting links between artistic form, available systems of visual representation, the
current theories of art, other ideologies 0 and more general historic structures and
0 0

processes 'o
2 T he making of a new ' Indian ' art
standards, the changes and achievements in art of this period have
appeared to be neither of special artistic significance, nor central in
the wider cui tural u pheaval of Bengal.
But, if the very categories and standards of evaluation are thrown
open to question, they themselves can be placed within a particular
history of their own - a history of how new notions of ' art ' and
' artis t ' , ' taste ' and ' beauty ' evolved and came to dominate in
colonial India. This history, in turn, encapsulates the fundamental
consequences of colonialism and nationalism in the sphere of thought
and culture. The story of changing styles and techniques can then be
situated within a broader spectrum of the encounter with new
dominant forms of knowledge and the consti tution of new social
aspirations and identities. Along with artistic form, taste also emerged
as an important site of struggle between different groups who
produced pictures and for whom pictures were produced . It became
a prime target for refinement and regeneration in Bengali culture.
The making of a new ' I ndian ' art in Bengal at the turn of the century
was embroiled in a complex set of mediations between artists,
patrons, critics and a ' public ', ambiguous but always present. 2
The overlapping impact of colonialism and nationalism has
demarcated the period of my study, focusing it on the years between
the 1 8sos and 1 g2os. With the setting up of the first British art schools
in I ndia, the 1 85os witnessed a new systematised phase of colonial
intrusion and involvement in the sphere of art and crafts. This vitally
transformed the patterns of patronage, training and livelihood,
setting up institutions like the School of Art in Calcutta that were to
be central in the formation of new catego.( ies of ' art ' and ' artists ' . At
the same time, the late nineteenth and early twentieth century saw a
growing aesthetic self- awareness and a special concern with indi­
viduality, creativity and an ' Indian ' identity among the newly
constituted group of artists. These preoccupations stemmed primarily
from a · n ationalist movement in painting that flourished in Swadeshi
Bengal among a group of Calcutta artists, led by the reformist art

2 Francis Haskell, Rediscoveries in Art: Some Aspects of Taste, Fashion and Collecting in England and
France (Oxford, 1 976) was a pioneering study of the climate of changing visual tastes in
nineteenth century Europe, analysed through trends of art criticism, art histories, art
collecting, and organisation of museums and exhibitions. Placing individual artists and their
work within this scenario of aesthetic and ideological revaluations remains a more difficult
project, best attempted in books like T. J. Clark's The Painting of Modern Life : Paris in the art
of Manet and his followers (London, I 985) .
 Introdu ction 3

teacher, E. B. Havell, and the pioneer artist, Abanindranath Tagore

(a movement referred to since as the Bengal School) . 3
By the r g2os, a powerful entity of a new ' national art ' had
emerged under the auspices of this movement, seeking to reverse the
' Western impact ' by propagating an alternative model of ' Indian­
style ' painting associated with the work of Abanindranath and his
following. While the colonial encounter involved a sharp disj uncture
with existing forms and practices, it also created new paths for a
conscious rediscovery and reformulation of ' tradition ' among a new
group of artists and critics. The outcome was the arrival of a wholly
different creed of Indian art, with a range of new aesthetic and
ideological connotations surrounding its self-definition as ' art ' and as
' I ndian ' .

One of the m ain issues raised by this study is the need critically to
reexamine these ideologies of ' art ' and ' Indian-ness ' , which have
structured much of the discussion of the emergence of modern Indian
art. A legacy of the colonial and nationalist period, resonances of
these ideologies linger on. Colonial rule had imposed radically new
models of ' art ' and ' artist ' on indigenous society, bolstering these
with an elaborate structure of patronage and education. Nationalism
internalised these models, appropriated them towards its own ends,
arguing its alternative claims largely within its framework. The
exclusiveness of the colonial art establishment was matched by the
counter- exclusiveness of the nationalist art movement. As the new
ideals of taste, beauty and aesthetic refinement became central in the
self-identity of the Bengali middle-class, nationalism sought to
supplant colonial practice with its own ' high art ' culture. What
emerged from these trends was a particular dominant ideology of
Indian art, which was to be powerfully propagated and established as
the only legitimate ' national art ' of modern India. ,.
This ideology of Indian art, while it gave the movement of
.
Abanindranath Tagore its main weight and its unique status,
inscribed itself into the whole reading of Indian art history. It
produced a type of art history which selectively defined and strung
together the history of ' great art ' tradition through the ages,
highlighting certain schools and periods, and collapsing others that

3 Contemporaries referred to this group as the 'New Calcutta School ' or the 'Neo-Bengal
School '. The term 'Bengal School' came into usage later, in the context of the all-India
spread of the movement and challenges from other parts of the country.
 The making of a new 'Indian' a1 L
could not be fitted into its framework. Most of the developments of
the nineteenth century remained outside the scope of this art history
- for the period was dismissed as one of alien intrusions, disruption of
tradition and mediocre imitative standards. While the great tra­
ditions of I ndian painting were seen to have petered out by the late
eighteenth century, with the decline of Pahari painting,4 studies of.
modern I ndian art tended to j ump over this interim period, in search
of new creative beginnings in the twentieth century.5 As ideas of
modernity differed, the focus has moved back and forth from
Abanindranath to the post-Abanindranath phases of modern I ndian
art.
In general, till recently, studies of this period of colonial transition
have been dominated by the phenomenon of a ' renaissance ' of
I ndian painting among Abanindranath Tagore and his group of
artists, who broke away from the sterile imitative trends of Western
Academic art then pervading the country. Jaya Appasamy's mono­
graph on Abanindranath, 6 and Ratan Parimoo's study of Abanin­
dranath, Gaganendranath and Rabindranath Tagore7 share the
general consensus that this art represented the ' first aesthetic
development ' and the only respectable area of concern for the art
historian of this period. Whilejaya Appasamy considered all forms of
westernised art in nineteenth-century I ndia to be in ' a state of
stagnation ',8 Parimoo's book, even as it devotes greater attention to
the ' Western impact ', handles it as a blanket concept, involving rigid
Academic training and the reduction of I ndians to copyists,
draughtsmen and third-rate portrait painters. And nationalism, like
westernisation, is relegated to a generalised backdrop of trans­
formations against which the new art emerged. 9 The transition from
the phase of sterile westernisation to that of creative nationalism in
I ndian art remains in need of a more critical enquiry. Such linear

4 The end of Pahari painting is the point where most of the general histories oflndian art trail
off- see, for example, Douglas Barrett and Basil Gray, Indian Painting (Geneva, I 978) or
J. C. Harle, The Art and Architecture of the Indian Subcontinent, The Pelican History of Art
(Harmondsworth, I g86) .
5 For most of our first art historians, Abanindranath, alone, emerged out of the darkness and
decadence of the colonial period to herald a new optimistic era of Indian art. At the same
time, books like Ajit Mookerjee's Modern Art in India (Calcutta, 1 956) or W. G. Archer's
India and Modern Art (London, I 959) treated the phase of the Bengal School as one of
archaisms and faltering development that preceeded the coming of a 'genuine ' modern art
in the works of Rabindranath Tagore or Jamini Roy.
6 Abanindranath Tagore and the Art of his Times (New Delhi, I g68).
7 The Painting of the Three Tagores, Abanindmnath, Gaganendranath, Rabindranath - Chronology and
Comparative Study (Baroda, I 9 73)· 8 Appasamy, pp. I , g-I 4 .
9 Parimoo, pp. I 7-22, 23-4 1 .
 Introduction

models of history leave little room for studying either the complexities
and diversities of the changes generated by \tVestern contacts, or the
specific nature and weight of nationalist preoccupations in art.
Of late, a more positive view of westernisation as ' modernisation '
has emerged in the writings of Partha Mi tter. Emphasising the
indigenous absorptions of a ' Western-style ' that shaped the nature of
modern I ndian art, the Bengal School is placed against the trends of
Acaden1ic painting in Bombay and the avant-garde trends of the 20s
and 30s . 10 By contrast, the disruptions and dislocations of the colonial
experience figure centrally in Ratnabali Chattopadhyay's recent
book, which surveys the broad sweep of changes from the court
painting of Murshidabad to the modern art of Jamini Roy.11 ·

Highlighting the marginalisation of the traditional court and

' bazaar ' painters and the formation of a new entity of middle-class
artists supported by a middle-class art public, the book places the
changes in art forms at each historic j uncture within this central
transformation of society and ideology in colonial Bengal.
With a tighter focus on time and place, the present work attempts
to discern the different strands of change of both the ' westernising '
and ' nationalist ' phases, studying their oppositions and their conver­
gences. The choice of the time span- the inclusion of almost five
decades of change prior to the rise of Abanindranath's ' new school of
I ndian painting ' -is intended to underline certain continuities and
ambivalences in the situation along with the turning points. Clearly,
Abanindranath's art movement represented a major break: it
marked the coming of age of I ndian 'art ' and ' artists ' , in the new
modern sense of the terms. But it is essential to place thi-s movement
within the specific historic context of its evolution - to see it as an
outcome of the very discontinuities which it militated. against. The
idea of an ' Indian ' aesthetic that could be recovered and recon­
structed from the past must be pitted against the fundamental process
of colonial education and severance with tradition that produced
modern Indian art. An overview of the entire period isolates the
Bengal School as one dominant tier amidst many other levels of
painting and print-making that had evolved out of \tVestern
influences, but were no less I ndian in the images they explored or the
markets they catered to . I t also helps to identify the sharply polarised
_
10 Partha Mitter, ' Art and Nationalism in India ', Histo1y Today, July I g82; ' I ndian Artists,
Western Art and Tradition' in K. Ball hatchet, ed., Changing South Asia: City and Country
(London, I g84).
11 From the Karkhana to the Studio: Changing Social Roles ofPatrons and Artists in Bengal (New Delhi,
Iggo ).
6 The making of a new 'Indian ' art
categories of ' Western ' and ' Indian ' styles as largely a product of the
exclusive nationalist ideology of this school. The dividing lines
between ' westernised ' and ' nationalist ' painting, between an imi­
tative Academic art and a creative I ndian art were often more
ideological than actual : they were consciously reared to sustain the
' new-wave ' and ' nationalist ' identity of Abanindranath's move­
ment. This is not to suggest that these distinctions and hierarchies can
be dissolved. But more complex grids in these separate categories and
a closer overlapping of these become apparent once the study moves
beyond the artificial seclusion of the Bengal School to encompass the
broader arena of artists, institutions and art activity that had evolved
over the late nineteenth century. This perspective places the
phenomenon of the new ' national art ' within a continuing process of
the changing social status of I ndian artists and the changing
configurations of aesthetic tastes over this period.
There are two central themes which run through this book,
mapping out its division into two broad sections. The first concerns
the different facets of the process ofwesternisation: the permeation of
new techniques and modes of representation ; the shifting status of
artisans and artists ; the expansion in patronage and market, and the
emergence of new professional and commercial opportunities in art.
The first three chapters identify the multi- tiered nature of the
westernised art world that emerged in Calcutta by the turn of the
century. At the peak prevailed an exclusive world of ' high art '
centred around the fine-art exhibitions, the perfected practice of
Western-style oil painting, and the patronage of the European and
Indian rich ; beneath it flourished a spectrum of second- tier art
professions, those of small- time portrait painters, drawing masters,
engravers and lithographers ; in parallel, occurred a widespread
diffusion of vVestern norms and techniques that transformed the
popular commercial art of the city, replacing traditional forms by a
different variety of ' Indian ' pictures. Calcutta's new gentlemen
artists straddled all three worlds of art activity.
While this dissolved some of the barriers between ' high ' and
' bazaar ' art, different hierarchies evolved as new standards of
stylistic finesse pressed upon the traditional market for religious
pictures and book illustrations . One of the main significances of this
trend lay in the ways the Western art training were absorbed and
appropriated within the popular art market. This connects the entire
theme of westernisation with the widespread change in visual tastes
 Introduction 7
that was cutting across social divides which, far from dismissing a
' Western-style ' in Indian pictures, saw the new realism as an
essential ingredient of ' art ' and of the I ndian iconography of the
time.
The painting of ' Indian ' pictures acquired radically different
connotations, with the rise of Abanindranath Tagore and his art
movement. I t became a novel emotional and intellectual issue,
symbolising the recovery of tradition and lost identity. The shifts
towards an alternative pictorial form became an integral part of a
much wider transformation in ideas and aesthetics, in the scholarly
and critical approach to India's art heritage, and in the very notions
of ' art ' and ' artist ' .
The second section of the book moves from the sphere of the
practice of the arts into this inter-related sphere of changing values
and perceptions within which it locates the emergence of new art
forms. I ts maj or theme is the role and nature of nationalist ideology
in art during these years, in its varying concerns with progress,
national regeneration and the recovery of tradition. I t deals with the
central paradox of an art movement that was avowedly nationalist,
yet consciously depoliticised. The new art of Abanindranath and his
following was bred in the atmosphere of the Swadeshi movement in
Bengal, and was clearly labelled in its time as ' Swadeshi ' . Yet its
ideologies of ' art ' and ' I ndian-ness ' would constantly distance it
from the sphere of politics. Art was firmly sealed off and contained
within its own sphere of the ' aesthetic ' and ' spiritual ' .
From its status as a lucrative and respectable profession, art in the
late nineteenth century was fa st becoming a part of the high literary
culture of Bengal. The interest in the acquisition and polishing of the
right skills and techniques was topped by new preoccupations with
aesthetic sensibility and the expressive and emotive powers of art. Art
came to be seen less as a matter of traini ng, and more as an area of
innate talent and creativity. From his direct reliance on the patron
and the buyer, the artist emerged in a new stand vis-a-vis the critic,
the writer and a wider ' art-public ' . At the same time, the cultivation
of art and artistic tastes became crucial in the constitution of a
middle-class culture. These were central strands of the transforma­
tions in the realm of art and taste in Bengal.
The later chapters of this book make a close study of this
intellectual milieu which gave art its new meanings and values in
Bengali middle-class society, during the late nineteenth century and
8 T he making of a n ew ' Indian ' art
the years of Swadeshi. They examine the Orientalist and nationalist
environment of writing, debates and polemics which accreted around
the Bengal School of painting, generating around it a broader forum
of artistic self-awareness and assertions.
The recent studies on nationalist thought of the late nineteenth
and early twentieth century have drawn attention to its richness and
its ambivalence - to its political and cultural discourse of power and
regeneration, to its mixed and guarded perceptions of the West, and
to its definitions of ' self' , and ' tradition ' vis-a-vis the image of the
Western colonial power. 12 One main concern in these writings has
been the extent to which the ideas of ' nation ', ' nationality ' and
' tradition ' have been produced and shaped by European Orien­
talism, by post-Enlightenment Western rational thought. 1 3 The
importance of a new wave of Orientalist researches and writings in
determining the main thrust of nationalist fervour is specially
manifest in the sphere of art. The process of westernisation and
modernisation had provided the Bengali middle classes with a new
social model of ' artis t ' and ' high art ' . At the same time, a second
stream of European knowledge - the Orientalist discoveries and
definition of an Indian art tradition - guided much of the anti­
colonial departures in art, equipping the new Indian artists with a
sense of a past heritage, and a present goal of recreating a ' national
art ' . The transition from the initial dismissals and denigrations of
Indian art to a new romantic and spiritual involvement with the
subject gave the new Orientalist writings a greater power and edge
over the older Orientalism. The ' hegemony ' of the new knowledge
and scholarship lay precisely in the open stand it took against colonial
policies and ideas, and in the power it wielded over nationalist
representations of I ndian art. 14
Yet, even as it was shaped and conditioned by Orientalist
constructs, nationalist ideology in art in Bengal acquired a life force
that was . distinctly its own, creating an art culture that thrived
through debates and dialogues, challenges and counter definitions.
12
See, for example, Ashis Nandy, The Intimate Enemy, Loss and Recove1y of Self under Colonialism
(New Delhi, 1 983), Partha Chatterjee, Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World, A Derivative
Discourse ? (New Delhi, 1 986) and Tapan Raychaudhuri's, Europe Reconsidered, Perceptions of
the West in Nineteenth-centmy Bengal (New Delhi, 1 988) .
13 Here the main conceptual framework for analyses has been provided by E . W. Said's
Orienta/ism (Harmondsworth, 1 985) , with its central hypothesis about the way Orientalism
' created ' the Oriental, and the Orient was ' contained and represented ' within this
dominating framework of knowledge. .
14 The ' cultural hegemony ' of Orientalism (Said, Orienta/ism, p. 7) changed many shades and
was reinforced, as Orientalism established its alliances with nationalist thought.
 Introduction 9

The language of nationalism, in some ways ' a derivative discourse ',

was no less ' a different discourse ' in its i maginings of power, glory
and achievement.15 My study argues that the professedly ' national­
ist ' claims of Havell, Abanindranath and their circle represented
only one strand of nationalist sentiments in art - even as it established
itself, in close conjunction with the new Orientalism, as the most
articulate and dominant ideology of the day. I t had been preceded
over the late nineteenth century by a growing preoccupation with
issues of tradition, artistic progress and refinement. The heightened
exuberance of the Swadeshi movement (c. 1 903-8) , as it left i ts vivid
imprints on various realms of thought and culture, also changed the
thrust of artistic concerns in Bengal. Abanindranath's art movement
revelled in the spirit ofSwadeshi, contributing a new visual dimension
to its ' appeal to imagination ' .16 I t evolved its exclusive claims to a
' nationalist ' identity through the force of a new visual idiom, a new
language of art criticism, and a special ' Indian ' aesthetic. I t created
its own fortified ' high-art ' culture around its particular formula of
' Iridian-style ' painting. The notion of a ' legitimate ' taste, reared on
an exclusive Indian sensibility, became an instrument of power in the
hands of this select coterie of artists and ideologues. But even in its
heyday, this dominant nationalist ideology met with a heated feed
back of ideas, challenges and criticisms which cut through the veneer
of unanimity that surrounded the cause of Indian art. Far from
detracting from the power of nationalism in Indian art, these debates
contributed to it a richness and complexity that can best be savoured
in the diverse shades of opinion and convictions. There was no single
nor one genuine Indian art which was produced during this period of
change and endeavour in Bengal. The relative authenticity or falsity
of these multiple interpretations of Indian art is not the point at issue.
Their importance lies in the way these differing claims were construed
and projected, and the way they coexisted within a particular milieu,
with powerful ramifications on the practice and propagation of art. 17
Nationalism produced its special ' community ' of artists, who saw
themselves as different from all others before and around them, who
also ' imagined ' themselves as genuinely I ndian by placing themselves
on an imaginary line of continuity with a glorious past and a ' great
15 Partha Chatterjee, pp. 4 i -43.
16
Sumit Sarkar, The Swadeshi Movement in Bengal (New Delhi, 1 973), pp. 286-87.
17 As Benedict Anderson writes, the power of nations and the communities they engender lie
not in their falsity/genuineness but in the style in which they are imagined and created ­
Imagined Communities, Riflections on the Origin and Spread Of Nationalism (London, 1 985), pp.
1 4- 1 5 .
IO T he making of a n ew ' Indian ' art
art ' tradition. Abanindranath and his group held themselves up as
this new select community of ' Indian ' artists. The phenomenon of
Abanindranath and his art movement is studied in the specific
context of Orientalist and nationalist discourses on Indian art. The
self-definition and sense of separateness of the movement was closely
wrapped up in this discourse. And this broader aesthetic and
intellectual culture is crucial to the understanding of both the
successes and the inherent limitations of the Bengal School. There
was a central dissonance between form and ideology, between
pictorial structures and aesthetic assertions that lay at the heart of
this movement. While it emerged out of a wave of creative self­
expression, the very nature of the movement posed its inevitable limits
to individuality and innovation. The unresolved tensions between
westernisation, modernisation and nationalism of these years would
anticipate the continuing flux in the course of Indian art over the
subsequent decades.
 CHAPTER I

A rtisans, artists and popular picture production in

nineteenth- century Calcutta

Ideas of ' art ' and ' artist ' would undergo radical redefinitions in
colonial India. As in other areas of British settlement, colonial rule
impressed its presence in Calcu tta through the demarcation of a new
world of ' high art ' and an exclusive category of ' artists ' . European
painters and engravers who frequented I ndia from the I 78os, with a
monopoly over the patronage of the emergent colonial elite,
epitomised the new definition of the ' artis t ' . Emulating the European
example, a similar identity of an ' artist ' evolved in indigenous society
by the mid-nineteenth century. Consciously sifted out of the existing
arena of ' native ' practices, the identity was marked out by social
status and respectability, Academic training and prospects of a
lucrative career. In time, such social and professional attributes were
compounded by new requisites of talent and creativity, as against
mere acquired skill.
The first generation of the new ' artists ' ofBritish India aspired for
the same recognition and success as their European peers. They set
out 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 arts ' exhibitions, acquiring also the new technical skills of
engraving and lithography, in response to the growing commercial
prospects of print-making. I n Calcutta, the Government School of
Art, set up under private initiative in I 854, became the pivotal
institution in the emergence of a new group of Bengali middle-class
artists. The School functioned as an alternative to a literary,
university education, providing vocational and technical training to
those among the educated middle-class ' who have an aptitude for
art-work and look [to the School] as the only way left which will lead
to active employment without affecting their caste or social status ' .1
1 Papers related to the maintenance ofthe Schools ofArt as state institutions, proceedings of a conference
held at Lahore in r 8g4, p. go.

I I
I2 The making of a new ' In dian ' art

A part of a country-wide programme of art education in India, the

Calcutta School of Art systematised and concentrated the full weight
of the colonial transformations in the training and patronage it
offered.
However, the adaptation to new tastes, techniques and professional
opportunities in art had preceded the establishment of the School of
Art, and spanned many levels of painting and picture production
outside its realm. This chapter moves beyond the direct reach of
Western training to study the changes sweeping through the work of
the ' bazaar ' painters and engravers of Calcutta. The state of flux in
the indigenous art world helps to situate the School of Art within its
broader milieu, unravelling the different pulls and pressures at pia y.
By the middle of the nineteenth century, the two social categories of
' artis t ' and ' artisan ' stood sharply differentiated and graded . While
the Western category of ' artist ' was gradually loosening to ac­
commodate Indians of gentry and middle-class backgrounds, pri­
vately trained in oil painting by European tutors, the category of
' artisan ' included a mixed community oflocal painters, draughtsmen
and print-makers, who were responding equally to the pressures of
westernisation and new market demands.
There were, for instance, the ' Company ' painters, 2 generally
descendants of artist families of declining court centres like Murshi­
dabad, Patna, Lucknow or Delhi, who had come to form a floating
population of migrant artists. Picked up by British officials and
civilians, they were tutored in the ' right ' conventions of shading,
perspective and naturalised drawing, and commissioned to paint
their masters' houses and servants, their scenic surroundings or
ethnological specimens of different Indian ' trades and castes ' . In the
latter half of the century, ' Company ' painters increasingly vanished
from the scene, their market usurped by the camera or by the new
trained draughtsmen, engravers and lithographers produced by the
School of Art since the 1 86os. However, outside the bounds ofBritish
commissions and patronage, a wider enclave of' bazaar ' artists in the
city and its outskirts were also drawn into the currents of Calcutta's
rapidly changing art market. Among them were the migrant
community of rural patuas, 3 settled in the vicinity of the Kalighat
2 The term ' Company ' is used to classify a particular group of painters and their pictures
which were associated specifically with the patronage of the civilians and officers of the East
India Company, in the different areas of British settlement over the late eighteenth and
early nineteenth centuries.
3 The term, patua or chitrakar in Bengali means a picture painter, and denotes an artisan rather
than an artist. The term pat indicates a type of unfolding scroll painting, blocked off into
 Artisans, artists and popular picture production
temple ; the large group of wood and metal-engravers based around
the small Bengali presses at Bat-tala ( the hub of early Bengali
printing and the cheap book trade) ; and the anonymous oil painters
of mythological pictures operating around the same zone - these
were the main groups that stood at the crossroads of change, as
traditional conventions and iconography made its concessions to
new techniques, mediums and demands. This chapter provides a
broad survey of the major trends of change and adaptation that
permeated this ' bazaar ' art of the city. This is crucial to the
understanding of the nature of the new urban art of Calcutta of the
later nineteenth century, which had its mainstay in the School of Art
but continued to pervade a wider milieu of lesser artists and cheap,
popular pictures. The hierarchies between ' artist ' and ' artisan '
remained ; but many of the old gradations were blurred and new ones
defined, as a different breed of Indian artist emerged out of the flux
to be set apart from the older groups of artisans, craftsmen or patuas.

' '
C O MPANY PAINTERS AND THE PRESSURE OF WESTERN
4
DEMANDS

As the provincial Mughal courts declined, and the locus of power and
patronage shifted to the British in these old seats of Nawabi culture,
European oil painters stepped in where the traditional court artists
had once thrived. The shifts in the tastes of the Nawab and the
dwindling of court patronage reduced the latter to the state of
' bazaar ' painters - a new colonial category that underlined their
displacement and forced exposure and adj ustment to Western
demands in an open market. European paintings and engravings of
Indian scenes began to be supplanted, more cheaply and abundantly,
by the pictures produced by this pool of displaced artists. In
commissioning pictures from these ' bazaar ' painters, the British
preferred those with hereditary links with old court painting ateliers.
Yet the skills of these miniature artists were valued primarily for their
adaptability to Western naturalistic conventions and the flair for

narrative sequences of pictures, or a single-frame square painting (as were produced at

Kalighat).
4 For studies of the different genres and regional varieties of ' Company ' painting, see the
works ofW. G. and M. Archer ( 1 948, 1 955, 1 962, 1 972, etc . ) , cited in the bibliography. Also
R. W. Skelton, ' Murshidabad Painting ' - Marg, X, No. 1 , December 1 956. Large
collections of these paintings are in the collection of the Victoria & Albert Museum (V & A)
and the India Office Library (IOLR) , London.
Fig. r. Worship at a Kali temple near Calcutta, ' Company ' painting from Calcutta (water-colo'-! r, c. 1 798- I 8o4) .
 Artisans. artists and popular picture production
preci�ion and detail in the pictures and diagrams ordered of them.
Caught in these changing demands, the traditional painter was
reduced to a mere ' copyist ', his creativity supplanted by his ability to
replicate and produce pictures to order. The outcome was the hybrid
genre of ' Company ' painting : studies of British life in India, or of
Indian topographic, architectural, ethnographic and ' Natural His­
tory ' specimens, which the colonial masters wished to document and
carry home as Indian mementoes. Calcutta grew to be a flourishing
centre of ' Company ' painting from the late eighteenth century on,
with the influx of painters from the declining courts ofMurshidabad,
Lucknow or Patna.
The type of ' Company ' painting which had been produced in
Murshidabad or Patna around the late eighteenth century had
generally retained a strong stamp of a provincial minia�ure style,
using stiff stylised figures, ornamental details and a very bright
palette. A clear transition in style is, however, evident at Murshi­
dabad by the I 79os, when local painters took to copying in gouache
the oils of the visiting English artist, George Farrington - paintings
which showed the puppet Nawab Mubarak-ud-daulah at durbar with
the British Resident or attending local festivals like Holi and
Muharram. 5 European paintings had become models for emulation.
The orientation of' native ' painters in Western methods occurred less
through direct training and more through such exposure to European
works and the growing pressures of accommodating a similar pictorial
scheme. The British artist, by winning the favours of the Nawab, led
his Indian counterparts to opt for the same stylistic modes. As many
of the :Niurshidabad artists migrated and settled in Calcutta, with the
steady decline of the court, there was a more pronounced adaptation
to new styles and themes to cater to the tastes of the new British
clientele. Bright, opaque colours gave way to muted, translucent
watercolours and graded tones of light and shade. Earlier crudely
stylised figures acquired more refined proportions and naturalised
features. The popularity of the scenic engravings of William Hodges
and the Daniells encouraged a turn-over, among local painters, of
similar views of up-country Mughal monuments of Lucknow, Delhi
and Agra, or of temple sites around Bengal (Figure I ) . Even in other
studies of ' native ' festivals, trades and castes, a landscape backdrop

5 M. Archer, India and British Portraiture, 177o-r825 (Oxford, New Delhi, Karachi, r g 7 7 ) , pp.
r 22-r 2g. Farrington's original oils are now difficult to locate, and an impression of them
survives only in these Indian copies which are now in the IOLR.
r6 The making of a new ' Indian ' art
of blue sky, green fields, and a fading horizon line of trees became a
regular feature. The addition of long cast shadows, which stared out
from under lone figures standing in blank space, became practically
a ritual necessity for these painters : a trademark of their accom­
modation of Western naturalist technique. Simultaneously, the
production of a vast output of ' natural history ' drawings (of flowers,
foliage, insects, birds and animals) , initially for private patrons like
Sir Elijah and Lady Impey and, later, for Company botanists and
zoologists like William Roxburgh, N athanial Wallich and Francis
Buchanan, involved the most rigorous drilling of the Indian copyists
in accurate and realistic draughtsmanship. 6
Through all these adj ustments and adaptations to British require­
ments, the inherited flair of the miniature artist for intricate details
persisted in these paintings - in the treatment of architectural
ornamentation, varieties of flora and fauna, or the different ethnic
characteristics of dress and accessories. ' Company ' drawings and
paintings, while being a product of British demands and aesthetic
conventions, carried, no doubt, the special stamp of Indian skills : the
skills of detailed, decorative work for which the Indian ' bazaar ' artist
was most valued by the British patron. Yet these ' bazaar ' artists
remained strictly relegated to the status of skilled copyists and
draughtsmen ; their work was important only as diagrams or
anonymous documents of the varied British interests in India. The
debasement of their skills and status had its inevitable repercussions
on the nature of the images they produced. The exotic Oriental types
evoked by the European artists in India - the bej ewelled nautch girls
and harem beauties - were replaced, here, by menial ' native '
ethnotypes : by ayahs, washerwomen, sweetmeat sellers or street
entertainers. The anonymity of these ' Company ' painters coincided
with the anonymity of the figures they depicted, whether a
dehumanised species of Indian servants or ethnological specimens of
different local ' trades and castes ' . These figures were reduced to a
certain ' native ' stereotype, with a set dark-skinned appearance and
static poise reserved for the Indian ' lower orders ' , which were
repeated in picture after picture with j ust the required differences of
6 These changes are amply evident in several ' Company ' paintings from Calcutta in the
collection of the IOLR. For example (i ) the sets on the different festivals and occupations
of Bengal, c. 1 798-r 8o4 ; (ii) the r 6 water-colours of architectural monuments of
Sikandrabad, Fatehpur Sikri, Agra, etc., c. r 798-1 8o4 ; or (iii) the twenty-seven volumes of
the Marquis of Wellesley collection of drawings of the ' Flora, Fauna, Birds, Insects and
Fishes of lndia and the East Indies ', r 7g8- r 8o5.
 Artisans, artists and popular picture production

Fig. 2. Sheikh Muhammad Amir of Karraya, Horse and Groom, ' Company '
painting from Calcutta (water-colour, c. 1 845) .

costume or environment. Faceless and inert occupants of pictorial

space, these images became the visual embodiments of the ossified
colonial notions of Indian ' castes ' and ' tribes ' .
This type of standardisation of pictures (ofboth the figures and the
setting) reduced these ' Company ' artists to artisans and their
paintings to a kind of skilled craft. This was true even in the rarer
cases of artists who graduated to a greater status of individuality and
are known for signing their pictures as, for example, E . C. Das, who
painted a stereotyped set of different Indian servants, 7 or the more
well-known and talented Sheikh Muhammad Amir ofKarraya, who
worked for a European businessman, Thomas Holroyd, in Calcutta.
Sheikh Nluhammad Amir's paintings, while they continued to fit the
standardised format of sets of household servants, local castes and
tradesmen, reflected one of the highest points of refinement and
elegance in ' Company ' painting. His delicate, photo- realistic studies
of the horses, horse-drawn carriages and grooms of his European
patron became his distinctive trademark8 (Figure 2 ) . In Calcutta's
7 Four water-colours, titled Barber, Sircar, Dewan and Munshi, signed E. C. Doss, c. 1 846,
(collection : IOLR ) .
8 Many samples o fSheikh Muhammad Amir ofKarraya's paintings are i n the IOLR and the
V & A.
r8 The making of a new ' Indian ' art
colonial set-up, such polished skills must have ensured Sheikh
Muhammad Amir a greater security of patronage and livelihood
than most of his group.

' '
K A L I G H A T P A INTIN G : T H E BAZAAR ART OF THE
BLACK TOWN

While one group of local painters gave themselves over fully to the
drill and demands of British commissions, there were other groups ­
most notably, the Kalighat patuas - who continued to operate in the
autonomous space of the Black Town, within an indigenous sphere of
tastes and practice. The whole space of the ' bazaar ' picture-trade in
nineteenth-century Calcutta was defined by the colonial presence, as
a contrast to the exclusive ' high art ' circle it fostered. The wide
popularity and circulation of Kalighat pain tings, obvious even from
European accounts and visual evidences of the early nineteenth
century, gave these an accepted position as the main ' art form of the
natives ' in colonial Calcutta. By the new parameters set by Anglo­
Indian art, picture production at Kalighat and Bat- tala stood clearly
demarcated as ' native ' and ' traditional ', with an inherited pool of
images, conventions and clientele.
It is in this context that W. G. Archer's emphasis on Western
influences in Kalighat painting9 became a matter of debate and
controversy. I n reaction to Archer, Indian scholars reiterated the
inherently ' I ndian ' and folk identity of the Kalighat pats, pointing to
the marked linearity and bold stylisation of forms evolving out of the
folk tradition of scroll painting, the brightness and opacity of colours
even as the medium shifted to water-colours, and the use of shading,
less to suggest volume and more to reinforce the rhythm of lines. 10
B . N . Mukherjee has also traced back many of what Archer classified
as the new Western stylistic elements of the Kalighat pictures to some
earlier pre-British paintings in Bengal. The folio-sized sheets of
paper, the opaque water-colours or the blank backgrounds have all
been located in two illuminated manuscripts of Bengal of the late
9 W. G. Archer, Bazaar Paintings of Calcutta, The Style of Kalighat (London, 1 95 3 ) , pp. 7-8 and
Kalighat Paintings (London 1 97 1 ) , pp. 4-6.
10
Ajit Mookerjee, Folk Art ofBengal (Calcutta, r 939) ; Prodyot Ghosh, Kalighat Pats : Annals and
Appraisals (Calcu tta 1 967) ; S. K. Saraswati, ' Fine Arts ' in Atul Gupta, ed ., Studies in the
Bengal Renaissance (Calcutta, 1 958). Hana Knizkova, in The Drawings of the Kalighat Style
(Prague, 1 975), pp. 22-24, also places these paintings squarely within the traditions of
contemporary Bengali terracotta and bronze sculptures and folk painting.
 Artisans, artists and popular picture production rg

seventeenth and eighteenth century, which stand as a precursor of

the Kalighat style.11 Even in the branching out of the Kalighat patuas
from the existing genre of religious pictures to contemporary social
themes and images, they adopted a popular earthy mode of satire,
which hit out precisely against the westernised urban society of
Calcutta. The Kalighat lampoons of Calcutta's degenerate babus,
corrupted womenfolk and licentious sadhus thrived as a part of the
wider literary culture and social ethics of ' native ' Calcutta. The
satirical images and nuances in the paintings found their parallels in
contemporary Bengali novels, in the popular bawdy farces published
from the Bat- tala presses, and in the songs, doggerels, pantomines
and entertainments that made up the street culture of the Black
Town . 1 2
Within the rural folk tradition of the pat painting, the Kalighat
paintings undoubtedly constituted a major departure. The inventive­
ness of this art lay in the way these migrant village patuas adapted to
their changed urban environment, to its new facilities and pressures,
from within the enclosed space of their traditional community and
practice. The basic imperative of producing pictures cheaply, quickly
and in vast numbers to cater to the growing market of the city, caused
-the main changes in the form and format of their work. It led, for
instance, to the use of paper vis-a-vis cloth, to the adoption of water­
colours in the place of gouache and tempera, and to the shift from the
continuous narrative of scroll painting to single-frame images against
blank backdrops. It also brought on a range of new themes and
images in Kalighat pictures, some of which were drawn from subjects
typical of British and ' Company ' painting, while most emerged from
the immediate social scenario of Calcutta's babu society in which these
patuas struggled to orient themselves. These social contemporary

11
B. N. Mukherjee, ' The Kalighata Style - The Theory of British Influence ' in Indian Museum
Bulletin (Calcutta, r g84).
12
See, for example, Tekchand Thakur's Alaler Gharer Dulal, Kaliprasanna Sinha's, Hutum
Pyanchar Naksha, or Bhabani Charan Bandopadhyay's Nababibibilas, Nabababubilas and
Kalikata Kamalalay. The climate of popular literary farces and its connections with popular
pictures is discussed in Nikhil Sarkar, ' Calcutta Woodcuts : Aspects of a Popular Art ' in Asit
Paul, ed., Woodcut Prints of Nineteenth-centu1y Calcutta (Calcutta 1 983), p. 30. More recently,
Sumanta Banerjee, The Parlour and the Streets, Elite and Popular Culture in Nineteenth-centu1y
Calcutta (Calcutta, r g8g) places the visual images of Kalighat within a rich body ofliterary,
rhetorical and verba.! imagery, with its strong currents of humour and irreverence, that
flourished in the popular songs, jatras and sang performances (pantomines) of Calcutta of
the time. The paintings are thus located in the specific socio-cultural milieu to which the
patuas belonged.
20 The making of a new ' Indian ' art

Fig. 3 · Courtesan with a rose and mirror, Kalighat painting (water-colour, c. r 87 5 ) .

themes were enlivened within a highly innovative genre of lampoons

and babu-bibi pats that found a ready market among the existing
clientele of religious pictures.
Pitted against the new society of Anglo-Indian Calcutta, the sharp
sense of moral discomfort and disorder of the patuas expressed itself in
a powerful repertoire of satirical images. 13 The most recurrent of
these were the images of the Bengali babu as a fop, a dandy and a
dissolute womaniser, of corrupt and licentious priests, or of brazen
courtesans, who threatened through their open sexuality, ensnaring
13 For a fuller development of this theme, see Ratnabali Chattopadhyay, ' Kalighat : Painting
and Experience in Outcast Calcutta ' in From the Karkhana to the Studio.
 Artisans, artists and popular picture production 2I

Fig. 4· Babu with a hookah, Kalighat line drawing, mid-nineteenth century.

and enslaving the babu ( Figures 3, 4) . If the babu ( the symbol of the
westernised, dissipated nouveau-riche) emerged here as the chief target
of ridicule, the fallen woman (the traditional image of the JVayika
transformed into new images of the shrew and prostitute) was singled
out as the chief agent of disorder and destruction. In Kalighat
paintings, the same bold flowing lines that expressed the maternal
graces of Yashoda or the lyrical beauty of Radha were also used to
express the violence of a reversed world order of the woman trampling
and subj ugating the man. A striking example is a painting where the
traditional iconography of Kali standing astride Shiva is super­
imposed on a picture of a mistress trampling her lover, to give a
sharper edge to the theme of the rapacious courtesan ( Figure 5 ) .
Even in their position as victims, women fea tured centrally in the
paintings of Kalighat, with an implicit verdict about the sexual
temptations they offered, and the disorder that resulted. This is most
vividly the case with the theme of the famous Elokeshi scandal of the
time, which was taken up, stage by stage, by the Kalighat patuas - the
22 The making of a new ' Indian ' art

Fig. 5· Kali Charan Ghosh, Courtesan trampling on her lover, Kalighat painting
(water-colour, c. 1900 ) .

seduction of a married woman, Elokeshi by the temple Mahanta of

Tarakeshwar ; the discovery of her adultery ; the dramatic beheading
of the woman by her enraged husband, Nabin ; and the court-room
trials of Nabin and the Mahanta. Out of the images of the scandal, the
painters created the broad archetypes of the main social evils of their
time. The scenes of Elokeshi with the Mahanta became a symbol of
loose morals and perverse sexuality ; the killing of Elokeshi, an
indication of the turbulent upheavals in domestic life and society
these led to.
 Artisans, artists and popular picture production

While the context in which the Kalighat pats flourished was

colonial and urban, the basic values which they reinforced (both
visually and socially) remained largely rural and traditional. The
whole thrust of social satire in these paintings reflected the dislocation
of the village patuas and their alienation from the westernised babu
society of Calcutta. The sense of security of these Kalighat patuas, it
has been argued, lay closely enmeshed in the feudal conservative
values of Hindu society - and they looked askance at the rupture of
traditional hierarchical relations between man and woman, husband
and wife, priest and disciple, with which they associated the right
order of things. 1 4 Their resilience against the wayward ways and
demands of the city showed itself at the two important levels at which
these painters stayed enclosed within their inherited community and
conventions. Transferred to the city, these painters continued to stick
rigidly to the village clans from which they had emerged, with the
same hereditary and caste affiliations. 15 Artistically, too, they
continued to work within a markedly non-naturalistic, two-dimen­
sional style, transforming on their own terms whatever new elements
they drew on. Thus, the borrowed medium of water-colours was
made to lend itself to the traditional format of flat, bright colouring ;
and shading was used along outlines mainly to highlight the rhythm
of lines and the amplitude of contours. And the style they created ­
the sweep of lines and the bloatedness of faces and figures - lent itself
brilliantly to the nature of their satire.
Though scholars have talked of the way these Kalighat paintings
permeated a huge market of ' all classes and communities . . . as
pilgrims know no caste or difference in wealth ' , 16 the main clientele
of these cheap pictures was the common people of the city, who felt
equally alienated from the changed values and westernised ways of
Calcu tta's high society. In the nineteenth century, in so far as these
pictures found their way into rich homes, it was primarily as
religious souvenirs of a pilgrimage spot . 1 7 The great ' discovery ' of the
Kalighat pats as a vibrant and original folk art form of colonial
Calcutta by elite collectors and connoisseurs began much later in the
1 920s and 1 930s, by which time the living tradition had become
defunct and the pictures grew to be collectors' items. Later aesthetic

14 ibid. 1 5 Nikhil Sarkar , pp. 3 7-38.

16
Mukul Dey, ' Drawings and Paintings of Kalighat ' - Advance, Calcutta 1 932.
17 Hana Knizkova, pp. 26-27.
 The making rif n n er.r: ' Indian ' aJ L

evaluations and appraisals of Kalighat painting18 should not deflect

attention from the fact that these paintings, throughout the nine­
teenth and early twentieth century remained confined to the sphere
of ' bazaar ' art, and the men whQ produced them remained no more
than skilled artisans of a painter caste. As items of mass production
for a mass market, style and images in these paintings stuck to a .
routine uniformity, often with the same themes repeating themselves .
Like the bulk of the ' Company ' draughtsmen and painters, and like
the village community of patuas, the Kalighat painters remained
anonymous. None of them seems to have moved into the more
prestigious arena of the ' fine arts ' or to the status of individual,
professional artists. The few names of Kalighat patuas that have come
down to us - like Nibaran Chandra Ghosh (c. r 835-1 930) , Kali
Charan Ghosh ( 1884- 1930) or Kanai Lal Ghosh (b. 1 90 7 ) - are
known mainly because W. G. Archer purchased work directly from
these artists or their immediate descendants. 19
These Kalighat painters, in any case, represented the last dying
phase of an art form which was already flo undering by the last
decades of the nineteenth century. Resentful of the erosion of ethics
and morality in Calcutta's quicksilver society, the patuas were also
apprehensive of the city's changing world of printing technology
which threatened to disrupt their livelihood . Denied the patronage of
the babus, it was this other immediate challenge of mass-produced
prints which eventually forced these painters out of the market and
marginalised them even in the domain of the ' bazaar ' . Faced with
the competition of new printing technologies, some of these Kalighat
painters took recourse to lithography to produce pictures more
cheaply and quickly. 20 As the sweep of lines and forms became more
stark and simplified, a number of pictures began to appear with
lithographed outlines, touched up with patches of bright colour and
silver details.
18 Scholars have emphasised the unique and amazingly ' modern ' characteristics of this art,
drawing parallels with the work of later modern Indian artists like Jamini Roy, and even
European artists like Fernand Leger. Discovering in these pats a rare example of a vivacious
and independent art form in a colonial era, they have contrasted them with the imitative
Academic work ofWestern-style artists, on the one hand, and the sentimental wash paintings
ofBengal School artists, on the other. The Kalighat pictures have been highlighted as the real
roots of modern Indian art and the most striking expression of Indian sensibility. See, for
example, Ajit Ghose, ' Old Bengal Paintings ' - Rupam,July-October, 1 92 7 ; Sudhindranath
Datta, 'Jamini Roy ' - Longman's Miscellany (No. 1 , Calcutta, 1 943) ; Ajit Mookerjee, Modern
Art in India ; W. G. Archer, Bazaar Paintings of Calcutta.
19 Paintings by Nibaran Chandra Ghosh and Kali Charan Ghosh are in the collection of the
20
V & A and the IOLR. W . G. Archer, Kalighat Paintings, p. 7·
 Artisans, artists and popular picture production

Fig. 6. A copy of a Kalighat image of Elokeshi and the 1\1ahanta at Tarakeshwar,

Bat-tala wood engraving, engraver unknown.

Far more widespread, however, were the wood-cut and metal­

engraved varieties of the Kalighat paintings, produced indepen­
dently by the community of engravers at Bat- tala. There is a
likelihood that the Kalighat painters themselves took their pictures to
the wood-engravers of Chitpur to have them replicated and more
widely circulated on the market. 21 It remains a matter of speculation
whether the Kalighat painters and Bat-tala engravers were competi-

21 Pranabranjan Ray, ' Printmaking by Woodblock up to 1 90 1 : A Social and Technological

History ' in Asit Paul, Woodcut Prints, p. 95·
 The making uf a new : Indian : art

Fig. 7 . A Kalighat-style courtesan (oil, anonymous, n.d. ) .

tors or collaborators within the same zone o f picture production.

Whatever the case, the Bat-tala prints, directly grafting on the
themes and images popularised by Kalighat paintings, sold at a lower
price than the pats to capture the same and a larger market. 22
Examples of direct piracy and transplantation ofKalighat images are
innumerable : a clear instance is this wood-engraved version of an
identical scene from the Elokeshi scandal (Figure 6) . Images from the
Kalighat pats were occasionally to find their way even into large oil
22
While most Kalighat paintings were priced one anna each, these Bat-tala prints cost only
one paisa plain, and two paisa when tinted with patches of red, blue or green - Nikhil
Sarkar, p. 3 2 .
 Artisans, artists and popular picture production 27

paintings by anonymous artists of similar voluptuous and lascivious

courtesans, fleshed out with the new illusionist techniques ( Figure 7 ) .
As printing technology developed further and chromolithographs
flooded the market, many of the Kalighat images were also to be
repeated in these prints, with the forms becoming more heavy and
rigid, and the colours more loud and garish. 23

E N G R A V I N G A N D P R I N T I N G A T B A T-T A L A I N T H E A G E OF

T H E C H E A P P I C T U R E-P R I N T

By the I 86os and I 87os, the wood and metal engravers of Bat-tala
had emerged as the most prominent ' artisan ' community in
Calcutta's art market, and the prints they produced had become the
most flourishing items of ' bazaar ' art, pushing Kalighat pictures
more and more to the periphery. There had been an impression that,
like the ' Company ' draughtsmen and painters, this community of
wood and metal engravers also grew and worked under the close
tutelage of European print-makers and the first British printing
presses in Bengal. But this impression has been modified by recent
studies. 24 Certainly, I ndian artisans were trained to help in the initial
printing of books in Bengal by Europeans. For instance, in the
publication of Halhed's A Grammar of the Bengal Language ( I 7 78) by
the East India Company at Serampore, the printer Charles Wilkins
was assisted by another engraver, Joseph Shephard and a Bengali
artisan, Panchanan Karmakar ; while ' a native artist ', Kashinath
Mistry, produced the copper-plate engravings for a highly praised set
of illustrations in Joyce's Dialogues of Mechanics and Astronomy,
published by the Calcutta School Book Society in I 8 r 7 . 25 The reports
of the Calcutta School 'Book Society of I 8 I 8- I g reveal the names of
other Bengali engravers, who were also employed to work on
diagrams and plates for their books, copying them often from the
original pictures in English texts. I n the realm of wood-cuts, one of
the first European print-makers in Calcutta, Reverend John Lawson,
who published an illustrated monthly in Bengal, Pashvabali ( I 822) , is

23 A chromolithograph of Kansaripara Art Studio is very obviously based on a Kalighat

painting of a courtesan playing a tabla, titled ' Nalini Sundari ' (collection : IOLR) .
24 Pranabranjan Ray, pp. 86-87. He points out that none of the early European print-makers
in India had done any relief printing from cut or engraved blocks of wood : a genre of
printing widely taken up by Indians in Calcutta in the nineteenth century. The Europeans
had all worked with metal engravings and aquatints.
25 Sukumar Sen, Bat-talar Chhapa o Chhabi (Calcutta, I g84) p. I I .
 The making qf a new ' Indian ' art
also known to have worked with I ndian artisans ofSerampore. 26 But,
simultaneous with the European publications, a number of Bengali
books with wood and metal-engraved illustrations had appeared,
which had practically nothing to do with European publishing ­
books like Bharatchandra Ray's Annada-mangal ( I 8 I 6 ) or Radha
Mohan Das ' Vidyonmad Tarangini (I 825) . Obviously, the skills of both
metal and wood engraving were prevalent among a group of
indigenous artisans by the early nineteenth century. And there is no
evidence to suggest that this skill and vocation was directly acquired
and adapted from European print-makers.
In fact, wood-cut printing, in particular, centred around in­
digenous Bengali printing and publishing at Bat-tala. I nitially,
traditional artisan groups like ironsmiths, coppersmiths, gold- and
silversmiths (the Kansaris, Shankharis, Swarnakars and Karmakars) ,
finding employment in the new British-owned printing presses at
Serampore and Calcutta, had adapted their old skills of working in
metal towards preparing type-faces and engraved blocks. By the
I 82os and I 83os, these print- makers became a separate community,

working primarily with the wood-engraved block to suit the

requirements of small-sized pictures in the cheap illustrated Bengali
books of Bat-tala : books that ranged from religious narratives and
almanacs to lurid fiction and adventure stories. 27 From the I 83os, the
region around Bat-tala emerged as the hub of Bengali printing and
publishing, with several small presses mushrooming all over Shobha­
bazar, Dorjitola, Ahiritola, Kumartuli, Garanhata, Simulia and
Baghbazar. 28 The engravers and printers, who clustered around
these presses, closely modelled their wares in accordance with the
literature of these presses, and its requirements of cheap printing on
cheap paper. The execution of these prints remained relatively
rough-shod and unsophisticated when compared with contemporary
European engravings in Calcutta.
Stylistically, too, these Bat-tala prints remained · flat, decorative,
two-dimensional pictures, in massed tones of black and white. The
figures, like the figures in the rural pats were naively stylised and non­
naturalistic, with the emphasis on heavy, black, curvilinear lines, and
blunt hatchings to convey a sense of volume and density. With
26 Nikhil Sarkar, p. 1 5 ; Pranabranjan Ray, p. 8 7 .
27 Kamal Sarkar, ' Bangia Boier Chhabi, 1 8 1 6- 1 9 1 6 ', in Chittaranjan Bandopadhyay ed. , Dui
Shataker Bangia Mudran o Prakashan (Calcutta, 1 98 1 ) , p. 3 1 4, and Pranabranjan Ray, p. 8g.
28 The New Calcutta Directory ( 1 856) - its list of castes and professions of this area is cited in
Pradip Sinha,.Calcutta in Urban History (Calcutta, 1 978), Appendix V.
 Artisans, artists and popular picture production

Fig. 8. Bat-tala wood-engraving, ' The Musk Rats ' Music Party ' by Nrityalal Datta.
Illustration of the Bengali proverb, ' Bahire Konchar Potton, Bhitore Chhunchor
Kitton ', (The babu preens his external finery and his dhoti pleats, while musk rats
infest his empty house) .

various-sized motifs of people and obj ects flowing around the

flattened pictorial space, backgrounds and costumes, in particular,
would be decorated through cross-hatchings of little floral or
ornamental motifs. In themes, as in style, the Bat-tala prints
replicated the Kalighat images, repeating the same stock of satire,
tnocking the dandyish babu, his dissipated life-styles and his sub­
jugation by immoral women (Figures 8, g) . The intrusion of new
European influences in these prints was evident, not so much in style
 The making of a new ' Indian ' art

Fig. g. Bat-tala wood-engraving, ' Ghor Kali ', by Nrityalal Datta. In the midst of
Kaliyuga, the ' Indian Apocalypse ', this image of the lascivious wife riding high on
the shoulders of. the hen-pecked babu, while his ascetic old mother is dragged on a
chain, epitomises the height of social and moral disorder.

as in certain imagery drawn from the visual vocabulary of British

Calcutta. Thus, large Corinthian pillars and archways form the
architectural setting to a scene of Yashoda and the child Krishna,
churning butter ; European furniture appears not only in a picture of
a European couple but also in a parallel image of a ' Rasaraj and
Rasamanj ari '29 (Figure 1 o) ; scalloped curtains frame many interior
29 A continuation of the images of Nayaks and Nayikas in medieval Rajput painting, figures like
Rasaraj and Rasamargari had their reference in the eighteenth-century Bengali poet,
Bharatchandra's Rasamanjari : an exposition of Rasa-shastra, which drew on the erotic
Sanskrit text ofBhanudatta integrated with the romantic narrative ofRadha and Krishna.
Even as Western imagery crept in, it is this indigenous literary aesthetic which found
expression in Kalighat paintings and Bat-tala prints. Yet, in keeping with the general lilt of
 Artisans, artists and popular picture production

Fig. ro. Bat-tala wood-engraving, ' Rasaraj and Rasamanjari ' by Madhab Chandra
Das. The archetypal Nayak and Nayika seated like babus and bibis across a table, with
their literary references in the erotic text of Bhanudatta (See footnote 29).

scenes ; and even portraits of Nelson and Napoleon began to figure on

label designs for packs of bidis.
Printing in Bat-tala in the nineteenth century belonged essentially
to a world of small Bengali presses, and popular non-westernised
tastes for pictures. But, by virtue of the new medium of printing and
the immense potentials it opened up in a new arena of urban,
commercial art, these Bat-tala prints became an important pointer to
the future. Niore than ' Company ' or Kalighat paintings, they came
to signify some important changes in the social position and
commercial prospects of the artisans who produced them. The
engravers at Bat-tala had emerged from traditional artisan com­
munities, with the skills of cutting, carving, furrowing and chipping
in various metals. Some of them may even have been descendants of
the artisan castes of the sutradhars or shankharis to which most of the
Kalighat patuas belonged. 30 But, unlike the Kalighat patuas, the

representations in these popular pictures, the classical aesthetic was transformed and
transmuted, and its ideal types laden with the nuances of the contemporary babus and bibis
of Calcutta.
30 It is contended that many of these patuas were also settled in the same neighbourhood ofthe
Chitteswar temple of Chitpur, see Hana Knizkova, p. 1 5 1 .
 The making nj fl nnr' Indian ' art
'

engravers came to throw off many of their hereditary and caste

affiliations to become a new, flexible community of printers. The
skills of engraving and printing became more and . more open and
competitive, drawing in persons from various other communities
(occasionally even Brahmins) who wished to find a new vocation in
this trade. 31 The fact of open and strong competition in the trade
meant also a novel assertion of individuality by these Bat-tala
engravers. Several of these wood- and metal-engraved prints carried
the name of the particular engraver and the locality in which he was
based, to advertise the area and the press from which many more
such prints would be available, with some also containing a
declaration of copyright over the particular engraved block (as an
open warning against piracy ) . 32 All of this now became essential in
the closely competitive and booming market.
From the probable dates of the bulk of the Bat- tala prints under
survey, 33 most of these engravers seem to have flourished in the
decades of the I 8sos, I 86os, and I 8 7os, making their main con­
tribution in illustrations in religious literature and almanacs. A large
number of separate picture prints, inscribed with their names and
addresses were also in circulation, depicting Hindu deities, scenes
from the Ramayana and Mahabharata, Vaishnava processions, as
well as varied scenes of contemporary social life in Calcutta. A single
print-maker, such as Nrityalal Datta, would often span this whole
range of themes in the pictures he produced. Owning his own picture
press, the ' Datta press ' (located either in jodabagan or Gatanhata)
he must have been among the most prosperous of these engravers.
There were others like him, such as Manohar Karmakar (of
Panchanan Karmakar's family) who also established his own press at

31 The flexibility and fluidity of the new community is borne out by the varied caste surnames
of the Bat-tala engravers - Ray, Das, Ghosh, Datta, Basak, Acharya and even Bhatta­
charya, apart from the Karmakars and Swarnakars.
32 An example of such a warning against the piracy of engraved plates can be seen in a print

of goddess Durga titled ' Sri Sri Vindhyabasini ' , inscribed as follows : ' S ri Ramdhan
Swarnakarer eyi nibedan ; samprati pclet khodito rohilo ; ekhan ei pelet je karibe matro
haran, bhoy pap tahare ashibc ' (This is Sri Ramdhan Swarnakar's submission : this place
has been engraved by me, and if anyone dares to seize it, may he be cursed and punished).
33 The V & A and the I OLR collections of these prints came from certain sources, which help

to gauge their dates : (i) a London auction �ale in 1 974 of Dat-tala engravings, dated r 867 ;
(ii) the London international exhibition of I 87 I where a number of these were displayed
along with Kalighat paintings ; (iii) the collection gathered by J. L. Kipling, Principal of the
new Mayo School of Art at Lahore, from his tours of Calcutta in the I 88os.
 Artisans, artists and popuLar picture production 33

Serampore in I 8g8 ; and his son, Krishnachandra Karmakar

( I 807-50) who published a richly illustrated almanac from this
·
press. 34 One of the most versatile of these engravers was Ramdhan
Swarnakar ofSimulia, working on both metal- and wood-engravings.
Some of his pictures of the mother-goddess, ' Shri Shri Bindubasini '
(Vindhyabasini) and ' Shri Raj rajeshwari , 35 surround the deity with
'

images of winged angels, flag-bearers, statues of lions and unicorns,

and figures of armed sepoys and Europeans . According to Sukumar
Sen, these engravings of Ramdhan Swarnakar are a strikingly
innovative conceptualisation of the Devi, in concordance with the
new emblems of power and authority of the British Raj in India.36
What emerges from them is a picture of an engraver who was moving
beyond the confines of purely religious pictures and book illus trations
to explore new images and more sophisticated allegorical themes of a
contemporary context.
All these engravings of religious pictures continue with two­
dimensiona], linear and stylised compositions. However, as Ramdhan
Swarnakar dabbled with a new genre of work, portraiture, in a
portrait he painted of David Hare (his contemporary) , he tried his
hand at more naturalistic visual conventions. The portrait appears as
a curious amalgam of caricature and an attempt at realistic d rawing
(Figure I I ) . Working on portraits must also have drawn the engraver
towards a different stratum of patrons and clientele. 37 The taste for
portraits, confined largely to Calcutta's bourgeois westerniscd
society, called for different representational skills in the engraver.
Ramdhan Swarnakar's career, therefore, does register a small social
leap in the position of this artisan community of engravers and print­
makers.
The assertion of individual skill and contribution by these Bat-tala
engravers did not, however, raise them to the status of ' artists ', in
contemporary esteem. The inscribing of the original block-faces and
plates was motivated less by notions ofindividuality as by commercial
considerations and the pressures of a highly competitive trade,
although the two may well have been related. During the I 86os and
34 Kamal Sarkar, ' Bangia Boier Chhabi ' p. 3 1 6. 35 Collection : V & A.
36 Sukumar Sen, pp. 7-1 0 .
37 One of the major patrons o f Ramdhan Swarnakar was the M
: aharaja of Burdwan.
Ramdhan was commissioned to do illustrations fo r the religious text, Harimangalsangeet,
being written at the Maharaja's request ; and his engraved portrait of David Hare was also
originally in the collection of the Maharaja.
34 The making of a new ' Indian ' art

I
I
I
'

f )
I

Fig. I I . Ramdhan Swarnakar, Portrait of David Hare (wood-engraving, c. I 8 7os) .

1 8 7os, the Kalighat patuas and the Bat-tala engravers were locked in
close competition, the latter freely incorporating the popular images
of the pats and invading its market. But the new improving technology
with which the engraver had challenged the patua soon overtook the
Bat-tala engraver himself. His craft and trade rapidly declined in face
of the competition posed by lithography and oleography. The
popular art market of Calcutta in the 1 88os came to be Hooded by
hand-coloured lithographic pictures produced by the Calcutta Art
S tudio (r.u n by ex-students of the Calcutta School of Art) , and by
English chromolithographs, which made exact copies of the Art
S tudio pictures, in a superior technique at one-tenth their price. 38 I n
this competition of improving technologies, a contemporary account
recorded the plight of the old wood-cut engravers, noting the
existence of only one such engraver, Gopal Chandra Karmakar, a

38 T. N. Mukharji, The Art Manufactures of India (Calcutta, r 888), pp. 2g-3o.

 Artisans, artists and popular picture production 35

new kind of print-maker who had been trained in the Government

School of Art, Calcutta. 39
In the new hierarchies that had emerged among ' native ' draughts­
men, painters and print-makers, success and status even in the arena
of popular picture production came increasingly to converge around
the Government School of Art. S tudents trained at the School of Art,
with a fair amount of success as ' artists ' by the Academic standards
set by the School, began to move into indigenous enterprises in
printing and publishing, using their superior skill and training to
capture much the same picture market, to which the Kalighat patuas
or Bat-tala engravers had catered. The religious and mythological
pictures they produced (examples, Figures 2 7-29) provided one of
the first points of conj unction between the adapted conventions of
Western Academic art and Indian iconography, setting a new model
of urban commercial art.

THE ANONYMOUS OIL PAINTERS AND THE SHIFTING FORMS

OF RELIGIOUS ICONOGRAPHY

As print-making grew into an important common platform for Bat­

tala artisans and Art School products, there occurred a sweeping
transformation of visual tastes and aesthetic norms across the social
divide. This change centred around the ascendancy of oil painting,
and the increasing demand for a tactile, three-dimensional natu­
ralism in a picture. The use of oil and the cultivation of a realistic,
illusionist style had become synonymous with the identity of an
' artis t ' , with the Calcutta School of Art as the central forum for
training in this medium and style. Academic oil painting emerged as
the clearest line of distinction that cordoned off the world of ' high '
art. Yet here, too, as in the sphere of print-making, the gamut of
change broke across the dividing line and encompassed a large
number of anonymous ' bazaar ' painters who adapted inherited
formats of religious pictures to new visual tastes.
A number of large anonymous oils on religious and mythological
themes from various parts of Bengal have recently come to light.40 A

39 Ibid.
40 An exhibition at the Birla Academy of Art and Culture, Calcutta, in August 1 984 had on
display a large number of such anonymous mythological paintings of the nineteenth
century. Such paintings, so far, had seldom figured as an integral part of nineteenth-century
 The making of a new ' Indian ' art
common characteristic of all these paintings was an attempt a t
naturalism, evident i n the three-dimensional modelling of faces and
anatomies, and in the laying out of background landscapes. But
varying degrees of naturalism were combined always with a careful
eye to the iconographic details of complexions, attribu tes and
postures of different deities, and with an intricate designing of
costumes and ornaments. A new standard was clearly pressing itself
on the existing domain of ' bazaar ' art and the production of religious
pictures. The gods and their environment had to become more
convincingly ' life-like ', without discarding their claims to divinity ;
new, borrowed conventions of realism had to be incorporated within
the prevalent norms of decoration and iconography. The product
was a vitally new kind of iconography which, while it emerg�d from
the world of artisan-painters, also anticipated and paralleled similar
trends of Indian mythological painting among the elite artists of
Calcutta.
The dates of these paintings, the areas in which they were
produced, and their painters and clients have remained a matter of
speculation. There has been a tendency to label these pictures ' Dutch
Bengal School ' or ' French Bengal School ', on the grounds that
several of these paintings were initially collected from private family
holdings in Chinsura and Chandernagore. Some rather refined
specimens of such oil painting came from Chinsura, for example the
picture of ' Mahishasuramardini and Kalki-avatara ' (Figure I 2 ) , or
a stunningly dramatic scene of the disrobing of Draupadi. 41 These are
all marked by meticulous finish, detailed architectural studies, sleek
use of oil paint, and subtle colour schemes. But there is no evidence
that the style of such oil paintings was originally bred in Chinsura or
Chandernagore, or that the painters learnt this new technique
directly from Dutch or French artists in these centres. These types of
paintings were also produced in various other parts of the province,
particularly in the Chitpur and Garanhata localities of Calcutta.
Even when these pictures were produced in Chinsura or Chander­
nagore, they appear to be products of the nineteenth century, when

Indian art history. Scattered collections of these paintings are now in private holdings and
in the Indian .M useum ( I Y1) and Victoria Memorial (VM), Calcutta.
u ' Draupadir Vastraharan ' (oil, nineteenth century, Chinsura) - collection : Siddharta
Tagore. While the avatara paintings are designed essentially like icons, each with two single
figures blocked out by pillars and arches, this painting is composed on the model of
European ' history ' painting and royal durbar scenes in India.
 Artisans, artists and popular picture production 37

Fig. 1 2 . Mahishasuramardini and Kalki-avatara (oil, nineteenth century, Chin­

sura) .

neither of these towns remained any longer centres of strong Dutch

or French presence.
I t wasJaya Appasamy's view that most of these paintings belonged
to the late eighteenth century, to the period of initial contacts with
British rule . This was a period when the completely westernised
tastes for pictures and interior decor of the nineteenth-century
nouveaux riches were yet to emerge ; and the more ' traditional elite '
patronised such oil paintings of deities in a continued preference for
conventional religious pictures .42 However, even if these paintings
can be traced back to the late eighteenth century, they certainly do
not seem to have been confined to that period alone. A pronounced
taste for I ndian religious pictures, specially when cast within the
mould of photo-realism and a Western Academic style, prevailed
among the I ndian Maharajas, zamindars and the middle class
throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. A survey
42 Jaya Appasamy, ' Early Oil Painting in Bengal ' , Lalit Kala Contemporary, 32, April r g8 5 , pp.
5-6.
 The making of a new ' Indian ' art

Fig. 1 3. Gour and Nitai with a procession of Vaishnava devotees (gouache/water­

colour, c. nineteenth century, Chitpur) .

of different varieties of such pictures suggests that they were being

produced over a long period of time, probably spanning the whole of
the nineteenth century and beyond, adapting continuously to
changes in style and imagery and to new emerging techniques. For
instance, this combination of naturalistic figures and landscapes with
iconographic attributes and intricate ornamentation appeared not
only in large oils, but also in water-colour and tempera paintings of
a relatively early period, where the mix of styles remain crude and
undeveloped. Later, it also spilled over into loudly coloured chromo­
lithographs, as several small artisan presses entered the new trade of
printing realistic religious pictures for a mass market.
In many of the early pictures, the figures retain a distinctly folkish
and stylised quality, and the colours remain flat and opaque. One of
the best examples of this is a water-colour painting of' Gour and Nitai
with a procession of singing and dancing Vaishnava devotees ' from
Chitpur (Figure r 3 ) where the only naturalised element, the
background scenery of a blue clouded sky and brown earth, is itself
interspersed with decorative motifs of trees and flat colouring. Despite
 Artisans, artists and popular picture production 39

a trend towards naturalism, a large number of these paintings seem

very close in spirit to the contemporary stylised images in the
Kalighat paintings and the Bat-tala prints. Even where the new
medium of oil was adopted, the application of paint followed the
tempera model of thick opaque patches, and raw, bright tones. I n
some of the pictures the figures carry, distinctly, the linear and
tubular quality of the Kalighat images, with similar shading along
outlines of limbs and drapery folds. A very striking mix of decorative
iconography and naturalism can be seen in a painting of ' Mahisha­
suramardini ' , where a traditional ek-chala image of the icon accom­
modates softly rounded limbs and realistic facial features. 43 By and
large, in these early paintings, the main concession to naturalism was
made in the landscape scenarios oflush green forests, trees and rivers.
Interestingly, a Western style made one of its first major intrusions in
an area which was of primary importance in British . Painting : the
landscape.
A clearer stylistic transition - manifest mainly in the more refined
use of oil paint - is evident in some of the large oil compositions which
probably post-date the variety of pictures discussed so far. I n many
earlier paintings, flat colours appear coated with varnish to evoke the
glossy quality of an oil painting. I n time, oil paint began to be used
niore effectively in the realistic illusionist style, with subtler nuances
of tone and texture. However, the highly meticulous and modelled
use of oil paint did not preclude the continued use of stylised folkish
figures ( the figure of Draupadi in the ' Vastraharan ' painting has
much of the posture and the squat robustness of a figure in Kalighat
painting) . An interesting innovation in this mix of styles was the
detailed patterning of ornaments, through tiny pin-dots in thick gold
or white pigment, creating a tactile illusion of shining gold and silver
- and this treatment of ornaments persisted in many later varieties of
mythological painting, even as figures and backdrops were moulded
more and more by a realistic, Academic style.
A third broad phase in these anonymous oil paintings on the
Hindu pantheon can be identified by many close affinities in style
and images that appear between several of these pictures and the
kind of mythological paintings popularised by elite artists like Ravi
Varma, M. V. Dhurandhar, or Bamapada Banerjee at the turn of
the century (examples, Figures 32-34, 37, 38, 42-44) . The pro-

43 Oil on board, nineteenth century, Dharmapur - collection : N. R. Chakravarty.

 The making of a neLL· 'Indian ' art
duction of such oil paintings also seemed increasingly to coincide with
the churning out of popular coloured prints and book illustrations by
many art-school trained artists since the r 87os. Heavy shading,
heightened chiaruscuro, rough and textured brushwork, and dark,
misty landscapes appear in many of these compositions. Notwith­
standing their iconographic attributes and their patterned jewellery,
the figures of Kali, Radha-Krishna or Shiva-Parvati had now a
distinct stamp oflife study and photo-realism44 (example, Figure r 4) .
And the studies of female figures, in particular, fit into a stereotype of
plump anatomies, over-sized heads and large drooling eyes, com­
bined with gaudy costumes and ornament : a stereotype that clearly
marked the new westernised model of Indian iconography, abound­
ing in the lithographs of the Calcutta Art Studio, and in the
oleographs of Ravi Varma and Bamapada Banerjee.
Over the nineteenth and early twentieth century, this obscure
world of picture production was thus constantly responding
to prevalent, popular stereotypes in styles and imagery. The
painters who produced these pictures cannot be identified as a
particular localised artisan group, like the Kalighat patuas or Bat-tala
engravers, organised around a set style of painting or a new vocation
in print-making. Yet, the fact of complete anonymity automatically
places these painters in the same domain of ' bazaar ' art. Close
affinities in composition and design, and the unearthing of many of
these paintings from the Chitpur and Garanhata locality of the
native Black Town, suggest that a group of these painters must have
worked in the same milieu of the Bat- tala printing presses and book
trade. Just as groups of artisans adapted the vocation of wood and
metal engraving to cater to a new printing trade, so also others, with
skills in picture painting, began to draw on the new medium of oil
and respond to a growing demand for ' life-like ' representations.
Nothing is known about the source of contact of these painters with
European pictures, and with the Academic, realistic style of painting.
Thomas and William Daniell referred to Bengali artisans who helped
them in the ' staining ' (i.e. hand-colouring) of many of their aquatint
engravings of Calcutta. 45 Over the course of the early and mid­
nineteenth century, artisans working with European artists in
44 Examples of pictures with these stylistic characteristics : ' Kali standing on Shiva ' (oil, late
nineteenth century) - collection : VM ; ' Shiva and Parvati ' (oil, late nineteenth century) -
collection : National Gallery of Modern Art (NGMA, New Delhi) ; ' Kali in three
incarnations ' (oil, late nineteenth century) - collection : N. R. Chakravarty.
45 T. Sutton, The Daniells, Artists and Travellers (London, 1 954) , p. 2 I .
Fig. 1 4. Shiva and Parvati (oil, late nineteenth century, locality unknown) .
 The making of a new ' Indian ' art
European printing presses and studios must have become i ncreasingly
familiar with new mediums of painting and with the principles of
shading, perspective, architectural drawing, life-study, and ' pic­
turesque ' landscapes. Even if few such artisans were formally trained
by European masters, there must have occurred a looser process of
adaptation and imitation of new pictorial conventions i n keeping
with the changed tastes.
.
I t has been suggested that when the School of Art was first set up
in Calcutta in I 854, some of these artisan painters and printers may
have availed themselves of its facilities for training in elementary
drawing, painting and modelling. 46 The first locale of the art school
was Raja Pratap Chandra Singha's house at Garanhata, right in the
heart of the terrain of indigenous picture production. 47 And it seems
quite likely that the initial students of the school were drawn partly
from the painters and print-makers of this locality, who wished to
gain the new skills of realistic drawing and painting, i n order to
modernise and polish up the quality of their products within the
existing picture trade. I n time, the School of Art in Calcutta became
primarily the stronghold of the educated middle class. But, in the
I 86os, when middle-class boys like Annada Prasad Bagchi joined the

school, the whole profession of painting had a rather low social status,
and the bulk of the students of the school came from artisan castes,
like the patuas, kamars and kumors.48 I t is significant, however, that
these students from artisan backgrounds hardly ever moved on to
acquire the respectability and prominence of ' artists ' - the training
they received in perspective drawing, life study, landscape painting
and the use of oil paint was probably circulated back into their
production of religious and mythological pictures for the same
market. The hiatus between ' artis t ' and ' artisan ' remained, even in
cases where the art school may have provided a common pool of
training.
Outside the School of Art, there are stray instances of small
indigenous studios and art schools in operation, where local boys
would be trained by an I ndian teacher. For instance, in Chander­
nagore, which was certainly a centre of such mythological painting,
46 This point emerged in the course of a discussion about these oil paintings with Arun Ghosh,
an expert in the Restoration Department in VM, Calcutta.
47 Jogesh Chandra Bagal, History of the Government College of Art and Crafts, 1864-1964 (Calcutta,
r g66) , p. 2 .
48 A contemporary biography of Annada Prasad Bagchi, Annada ]ibani (Calcutta, 1 90 7 ) , pp.
3o --3 I ·
 Artisans, artists and popular picture production 43

Beni Madhab Pal, ' a painter by profession ', is known to have run his
own little art studio and school in the mid-nineteenth century.49 Beni
Madhab's son, Nlotilal Pal, has his name on record for a set of oil
paintings, including three mythological compositions, which he
exhibited and won awards for in the Calcutta Fine Arts Exhibition of
r 8 7g . 50 Such paintings by Motilal Pal, whatever the concessions to
I ndian iconography and decorative ornamentation, must have had
the marked stamp of a Western Academic style to have merited a
place, alongside the work of art-school artists, in a ' fine art '
exhibition .
Obviously, then, the tendencies towards westernisation and the
accommodation of new pictorial conventions spread well beyond the
School of Art in to the milieu of the ' bazaar ' trade. The kinds of
religious and mythological oil paintings described provide some of
the most vivid examples of such transitions in style within the
traditional art market. Unlike the mass-produced Kalighat paintings
or Bat-tala prints, the output of these oil paintings must have been
limited . The oil paint, the large canvases and the detailed work­
manship in these pictures involved much greater investments of time
and money. So these were likely to have been painted for rich
patrons, often on specific commissions. As the reputation of a
particular circle of painters in a particular locality became well
established, more such paintings on some popular deities and
religious episodes were probably produced in larger numbers and put
out on display to attract potential buyers.
The local elite, who patronised these painters, provide another
interesting point of interaction between the two converging spheres of
' high ' and the ' low ' art : their purchase of these paintings and their
attitudes towards them point to both a conjunction and a disj unction.
Side by side with decorating their palatial homes with European neo­
classical paintings and statues, cha ndeliers and Victorian furniture,
these rich patrons continued with their parallel taste for Indian
religious pictures, imposing on these new demands of naturalism and
new conceptions of figure-study and landscape. But even though the
forms of these paintings were ' modernised ' in keeping with the times,
they could never fit into the slot of ' high art ' in the perceptions of the
collector. Acquired primarily as religious pictures, as objects of faith

49 Harihar Seth, ' Chandanagarer Chitrakala o Geetbadya ' - Prabm·tak, Kartick, r gg r- 1 924.
5° Catalogue ofthe Exhibition ofFine A1·ts at the Government School of Art and the Government Art Gallery,
Calcutta (January, r879) .
44 The making of a new ' Indian ' art
and devotion rather than as ' works of art ', they were tucked away in
the inner rooms and household altars, seldom venturing into the
public halls, ballrooms and staircases, where the Western art
treasures held their sway. Even now, this old pattern of display
continues in the home of the Mullicks in the Marble Palac�, in
Calcutta.
I t was only when artists like Ravi Varma and other art-school
products in Bombay and Calcutta harnessed a Western style to the
visualisation of Hindu mythology that such religious paintings
acquired the status of ' works of art ' among patrons. Even here,
distinctions prevailed between degrees of refinement in the natu­
ralism of figures, in the conception of landscapes and architectural
settings, and in the evocation of the ' right ' mood and drama in the
narrative. However, the new printing technologies - lithography,
chromolithography and oleography - became the great leveller,
ironing out the various unevennesses of style, training and com­
petence among different strata of artists and painters. When the
Calcutta Art Studio began to produce l i thographs on Hindu
mythology in the r 8 7os and 1 88os and, later, when Ravi Varma and
Bamapada Banerjee began to circulate oleographs of their paintings,
these print pictures subsumed the much wider market for religious
pictures. These pictures now competed with the anonymous oil
paintings of Chitpur and Garanhata and the Bat-tala engravings,
partially displacing them, partially imposing on them new standards
of realism. Simultaneously, these also encouraged a turn-over of
gaudy chromolithos of Hindu deities by artisan presses that cropped
up in an attempt to keep pace with the changing methods of print­
making. I t was at this level that westernisation, changing styles and
new processes of colour printing absorbed both ' gentleman ' artists
and artisan-painters of Calcutta into a common milieu of shifting
tastes, where copy-book landscapes, glittering palaces and ' real-life '
gods and goddesses set the new standards of the day. Many of the
gradations between Western-style pictures and traditional icono­
graphies began to dissolve within this new social space of prints. At
the same time, new hierarchies emerged as art-school trained,
' gentleman ' artists, armed with superior stylistic and technical
acumen, entered this sphere of mass picture production.
 CHAPTER 2

The art-school artists in Calcutta : professions,

practice and patronage in the late nineteen th cen tury

The new group of ' gentlemen ' artists that evolved in Calcutta over
the mid and late nineteenth century consciously insulated themselves
from the ' bazaar ' painters and print-makers. The institutions around
which they emerged best demarcated their separated social and
professional identity. The Government School of Art, Calcutta and
the ' fine arts ' exhibitions of the city provided the· two most important
parameters by which the status of the new artists was defined, their
careers promoted and their futures in the profession secured. The
paucity of information on these first Western-style artists of Calcutta
is, in itself, a reflection of the uncertain and paradoxical nature of the
position they occupied. None of these artists' names was to survive in
the history of modern I ndian art ; none was to stand out for any
marked individuality and innovation in their work. In a period of
general mediocrity and standardised adaptation to Western Aca­
demic norms, all these artists remain insignificant by the standards of
conventional histories of art. A bare list of names can be strung
together from the surviving records of the Government School of Art
and the ' fine art ' exhibitions, with some leads into the kinds of
training, publicity and patronage that were available to them . And
these names of artists are occasionally fleshed out by contemporary
biographies or features. 1
Such obscurity, however, helps to underline a fundamental
dichotomy in the situation of these artists. On the one hand, they
were always being drawn towards a model of European ' great art '
and artists, and aspiring towards the same values. On the other hand,
they found themselves relegated to second-tier jobs as drawing
masters, draughtsmen, engravers or lithographers - and practical
commercial considerations began absorbing many of them within an
1 An important source is also the dictionary of Bengali painters and sculptors compiled by
Kamal Sarkar, Bharater Bhaskar o Chitm-shilpi (Calcutta, 1 g84).

45
 The making of a new ' Indian ' art
indigenous, less prestigious but more immediately lucrative market
for popular I ndian pictures. These men were ' artists ' in terms of the
individual status, the respectable careers, and professional success
they were acquiring. But the Romantic or Avant-garde notions of the
' artist ', with its reified self-image, remained outside their bounds.
Like the artisan painters and print-makers, they functioned primarily
in the context of the patronage, market and new commercial ·

demands for their skills. Yet, they were clearly differentiated from the
artisans by training, social standing and their associations with the
European art-world of the city.

' '
THE WORLD OF HIGH ART IN CALCUTTA: THE CIRCUIT O F
' '
FINE ART EXHIBITIONS

There had come to prevail in British Calcu tta an exclusive domain of

' high art ' , confined to a charmed circle of European patrons and
artists, centred around ' fine art ' exhibitions and private commissions
and collections. Exhibitions played a crucial role in propagating the
new model of ' fine arts ' through primarily the works of visiting
European artists in I ndia and copies of European Old Masters. The
first ' fine art ' exhibition organised in Calcutta in February 1 83 1 by
a group ofBritish artists and art enthusiasts who had formed a society
called the Brush Club had consisted purely of European art. 2
Alongside portraits and landscape views painted by European artists
in India - William Hodges, Tilly Kettle, George Chinnery, John
Zoffany and George Beechey - what added greater status to the
display were the works of English Royal Academicians, like Sir
Joshua Reynolds, Sir Henry Bourne, Benjamin West, and George
Moorland, landscapes by Antonio Canaletto and copies of seven­
teenth-century ' masters ' such as Guido Reni, Rubens and Van
Dyck. Such paintings were meant to represent the peak of achieve­
ment in ' fine arts ' .
I ndians were conspicuous by their absence from the list of both the
members of the Brush Club and the artists who participated in the
show of I 83 I , and the following one of I 83 2 . But the names of a few
wealthy Bengalis appeared on the list of donors of some of the exhibits
of pictures. This exclusive, Europeanised art-world of the city had
begun to accommodate a select society of Indians as patrons and
collectors, spreading among them the same tastes for decorating
gran� halls with portraits, landscapes, genre scenes or neo-classical
2 Kamal Sarkar, ' Kolka tar Pratham Chitra-pradarshini ' in Desk ( IO July r g82 ).
 47

compositiOns by European artists. However, the access of these

patrons to European pictures was limited, as yet, to a second tier :
mainly to the works of small-time, visiting European artists and
portrait painters. The choice pieces of work all came from British
collections, many of them local . More important, even in their
position as donors, the hierarchy between the Europeans and Bengalis
was clearly set in the organisation of the exhibitions. In a later
exhibition at the Town Hall during r 854-55, despite their con­
tribution of a large and valu�ble body of art-exhibits, not a single
Bengali was included in the Committee set up to run the exhibition .3
Such unevenness in status was more clearly apparent with Indian
artists, once they began participating in such exhibitions of the city.
The large Government-sponsored exhibition held in the rooms of the
New Imperial Museum in December r 8 74 was marked out by the
substantial participation of Indian artists and art students, almost all
of whom were either students or teachers of the Calcutta or the
Bombay Schools of Art. 4 The works they displayed carried usually a
distinct stamp of class-room work, as evident in the full figure,
portrait and head studies of models, architectural drawings, speci­
mens of lithography and wood engraving, clay models of human and
animal figures, or plaster casts of hands, feet, flowers and foliage. The
colonial proj ect of ethno-typing and documentation of different
native ' trades and castes ' left its imprint even in such student work on
live models ; and a similar range of life studies of purohits, darogas,
dhakis, kartalwalas, chaprasis and bawarchis were on display in this
exhibition. In a situation where the concept of anatomy and life study
was yet to take proper root in the art school, these persons who posed
as models were studied as ethnic ' native ' types, much as in
' Company ' paintings.
The names of three Calcutta artists - Annada Prasad Bagchi,
Harish Chandra Khan and Girish Chandra Chatterji - merited
special attention in this exhibition, along with overall praise of the
work done in the Calcutta School of Art under Principal H. H.
Locke. In their self-styled mission of refining ' native ' aesthetic tastes,
the British art administrators found their greatest gratification in the
coming together of the art schools and the prestigious ' fine arts '
exhibitions. Particularly in Calcutta in r 8 74, ' the great advance
shown by natives in contributing their work to this exhibition ' was

3 Strong grievances on this count were voiced in The Hindoo Patriot (2 1 June 1 855).
4 Catalogue of the Exhibition of Fine Arts at the Indian Museum, Calcutta ( r 874) ; Report on the Fine
Art Exhibition - The Indian Daily News ( 1 4 December 1 874) .
 The making qf a new ' Tndirm ' art

looked upon as the main mark of success of the School of Art, and it
was hoped that this success would help ' engraft art culture upon the
national education of Bengal '. 5 Outside the art schools, two I ndian
artists were notably successful in this exhibition - Ramaswami
Naidu, a court painter of Travancore and a contemporary of Raj a
Ravi Varma ; and P . B . Cama, an amateur artist of Bombay who .
won prizes for a set of landscape-studies, helping to remedy what the
British considered the major deficiency in the work of the I ndians :
the absence of landscape painting.
However, even as the British acknowledged the coming of age of
the Indian artist and art student, the line of demarcation between
the work of Europeans and Indians still remained clear and strong.
To begin with, the bulk of the I ndian contributions were blocked out '

as student and trainee work, as against the European exhibits.

Moreover, the awards won by Ramaswami Naidu, P. B. Cama, or
Annada Prasad Bagchi in this exhibition were those reserved for
' native art ' alone, being offered specially by the I ndian royalty and
aristocracy to patronise ' native talent ' . The Maharajah of Vizi­
anagram, Raja Romanath Tagore and 1\!Iaharaja Jatindra Mohun
Tagore were emerging as the influential art patrons of the day,
extending their favours to the few Indian artists who were qualifying
by the same standards of European art.6
An exhibition ofjanuary 1 879, organised this time in the premises
of the Government School of Art and the new, adjoining art gallery,
saw a greater proliferation of I ndian contributions. 7 This exhibition
also revealed certain new, important directions in the work of
Calcutta's art students and artists. The first of these lay in portrait­
painting in oil, and a considerable number of portraits of the
contemporary Bengali gentry and aristocracy were up on display.
While I ndian artists began gradually to take on some of the work
slotted out for European portrait-painters in the city, they also
performed the more mundane function of copying and duplicating
original portraits, painted by European artists. 8 By and large, the
faithful copying of European paintings remained a major occupation
of I ndian art students. The exhibition contained several samples,

G The Indian Daily News ( I 4 December I H 7 4) . 6 Catalogue . . . ( I 8 7 4) .

7 Catalogue of the Exhibition ofFine Arts at the Government School of Art and the Government Art Gallery,
Calcutta ( I 879) ; Report on the Fine Art Exhibition - The Indian Daily News ( 2 January
I 8 7g).
8 Some such portrait copies from the originals by T. Roods or Hudson, in the collection of
Maharaja Jatindra Mohun Tagore's ' Tagore Castle ' and Prince Dwarakanath Tagore's
' Belgatchia Villa ', were on display in the I 879 exhibition.
\
The art-school artists 49

particularly, of copies of European Old Masters of the kind that filled

the new Government Art Gallery9 and the private collections of the
Bengali zamindars.10 Through such accomplished skills at copying
Old Masters, student artists also came to fulfil the demand for a local
and an easily accessible supply of European art for wealthy Indian
homes. In a more independent diversification of skills, there were
artists like Motilal Pal, outside the realm of the School of Art, who
were branching out into painting scenes from the Mahabharata and
' Bengali domestic life ' . The inclusion of such paintings in a ' fine art '
exhibition of this kind meant that they certainly enjoyed a status as
' works of art ' , though they tended to be priced much lower than the
portraits and life studies in oil. 11 These pictures pointed to another
potentially popular direction of work for Calcutta artists over the
subsequent decades. They underlined an important dimension in
middle-class tastes in art, within the westernised milieu, which
opened up a range of new commercial outlets for these new Indian
artists.
Such ' fine art ' exhibitions of the same kind and scale continued to
be organised in Calcu tta over the I 88os and I 8gos, repeating the
same range of oil portraits, water-colour landscapes of India, ethnic
figure studies from life, and copies of European Old Masters.12 They
brought to light a growing body of Bengali Western-style artists,
some of whom were privately trained amateurs but most of whom
emerged from the Government School of Art. They also revealed the
beginning of indigenous organisations like the Calcutta Art Society
which held its first exhibition in I 8go. At the same time, they focused
on the increasing social influence and importance of some wealthy
Bengali patrons and art collectors.

T H E S C O P E A N D NAT U R E O F E LI T E PATRONA G E : A S U RVEY

OF SOME PRIVATE ZAMINDARI C O L L ECTIONS OF PAINTING

AND SCULPTURE I N L A T E N I N E T E E N T H -C E N T U R Y BENGAL

A taste for \J\1estern art had become a major signifier of wealth and
status among members of the new Bengali aristocracy. It was an
integral part of their new self-image and life-styles, and of the
9 BGP/E, Ylay 1 904, Serial no. B 39-42 . 1° Catalogue . . . ( 1 879 ) .

11 Motilal Pal's paintings were priced between Rs. 1 o and 20 each. These were cheap even by
contemporary prices of oil paintings by I ndian artists, as cited in T. N. Ylukharji, The Art
Mamifactures of India and Catalogue . . . ( 1 879) .
12
See, for example, Catalogue of the Exhibition of Fine Arts, Calcutta International Exhibition
(December-January 1 883 -84), or ' Th e Calcutta Fine Art Exhibition : First Notice ' - The
Englishman (22 January 1 8go) .
Fig. I5· The Marble Palace : the outer fac;ade with the marble statuary - photograph from A. Claude Campbell,
Glimpses ofBengal, Vol. I (Calcutta, I 907). An example of a wealthy zamindari mansion in Calcutta, with European-style
architecture, decor and art-collection.
'
\ The art-school artists sr

flamboyant fashions in architecture and interior decor that charac­

terised their palatial residences in the city. In grand halls, laden with
gilded Baroque decoration, replete with Victorian furniture, Belgian
glass mirrors and chandeliers, carpets and velvet drapery, the pride
of place was reserved for collections of European oil paintings and
bronze and marble sculpture. Over the late nineteenth century,
Dwarakanath Tagore's ' Belgatchia Villa ' , the ' Tagore Castle ' of the
Pathuriaghata Tagores, the ' Marble Palace ' of Raja Rajendra
Mullick at Chorebagan, Raja Manmathanath l\!Iitra's house on
Shampukur Road , and the palaces of the Burdwan Maharajas
flaun ted the largest of such private art collections and Western-style
decor (Figure I s ) . These collections have been dispersed, with the
decline in family fortunes, leaving behind few original catalogues or
inventories. In the few instances where catalogues do exist, the
absence of dates often makes it very difficult to ascertain the period in
which the collections were acquired. 13 I t is certain, however, that
Maharaj a J atindra Mohun Tagore and the Ma0-araja of Burdwan
were among the greatest local art patrons in late nineteenth century
Bengal, with two of the most extensive private art collections.
The case of J atindra Mohun Tagore's collection at the ' Tagore
Castle ' indicates the kinds of contacts and channels through which
such ensembles of ' great art ' were put together. 14 The collection had
its beginnings with Jatindra Mohun's grandfather, Gopi Mohun
Tagore, in the early nineteenth century, and owed much to the help
and guidance of the visiting European artist, George Chinnery.
Chinnery imbued in his patron ' the taste of collecting masterpieces ' ,
selling him many European paintings which were in his own
collection and also helping him to import from Europe copies of Old
Masters. Later, the artist, W. H. Jobbins (Superintendent of the

13 Of the three available full-printed catalogues of such private gentry art collections, only one
can be definitely dated to my period - viz., Catalogue of the Pictures and Sculptures in the Collection
of the Atfaharaja Tagore, drawn up by Prodyot Coomar Tagore in August 1 905. The Catalogue
of the Marble Palace Art Gallery, compiled by Hirendra Mullick in 1 976 is said to have been
reconstructed from an earlier, fragmented catalogue of the paintings and sculptures that had
been prepared by his ancestor, Nagendra Mullick during the late nineteenth century. The
Catalogue of the Art Collection of the Palaces of the Burdwan Maharajas (the Mahtab family) ,
including detailed diagrams of the arrangement of pictures in the various halls, is with the
Burdwan University Museum. This catalogue has been asr.ribecl to Percy Brown (Principal,
Government School of Art, Calcutta, 1 909-27 ) . But the catalogue contains some hand­
written comments by E. B. Havell (Percy Brown's predecessor at the School of Art), which
suggests that Havell, before he left Calcutta in 1 906, must have also surveyed this Burdwan
art collection and helped compile this catalogue.
14 Catalogue of. .. the collection of the Maharaja Tagore ( r 905) - Introduction.
 The making of a new ' Indian ' art
Calcutta School of Art, r 88 7-96 ) provided J a tindra Moh un Tagore
with similar advice and assistance in .acquiring European paintings
from abroad and from contemporary exhibitions in I ndia. While
exhibitions and local British holdings provided an immediately
accessible store of Western art, there operated, in parallel, a flow of
works of art from abroad. There were certain European ateliers and
workshops of the time, like that of Signors L. Pompignoli and 0.
Carlandi of Florence, which specialised in copies of antique scu l ptu re
and Renaissance paintings, catering to the taste for ' classical ' a r t
that spread from nineteenth-century Europe to its outpost in colonial
India. This trade in copies was also supplemented by regular
shipments from England of engravings of nineteenth-century English
paintings : mainly, royal portraits, landscapes, battle scenes, genre
studies and neo-classical history paintings. The firm of Messrs. D.
Rozario and Co. in Calcutta advertised in r 85 2 the arrival of a fresh
shipment of such ' fine engravings ' of works of Landseer, Romney,
Lawrence, Horace Vernet, and a host of other lesser-known painters
and engravers of the nineteenth century. 15 Alongside, Calcutta
generated its own channels of circulation and recirculation of
European art, through sudden falls in fortunes or shifts in tastes and
the sales they occasioned. Thus, the sale of the collection of
Dwarakanath Tagore's ' Belgatchia Villa ' (when the estate was sold
and acquired by the Sinha family) added substantially to the
collection of the ' Tagore Castle ' ; the European oil paintings disposed
of by the Jorasanko Tagores went straight into the neighbouring
' Marble Palace ' ; and, later, E . B. Havell's dispersal of the European
paintings in the Government Art Gallery in 1 904 brought a golden
opportunity for buying for many of the zamindari houses.
While discussing the taste in the arts of these wealthy patrons of
Bengal, one significant polarity must be noted. In sharp contrast to
the westernisation of their visual tastes, the interests in literature,
theatre or music remained closely oriented to local and classical
Indian traditions. 16 I n the Tagore family, for instance, Gopi Mohun
combined a rigid adherence to Hindu rites and a maintenance of
. several traditional pandits and ghataks with a patronage of con­
temporary Bengali singers and lyricists like Lakshmi Kanta and Kali
Mirza. Maharaj a Jatindra Mohun Tagore, himself the author of

15 Advertisement by Messrs. D. Rozario & Co.'s Library in Vividharta Sangraha, Vol. r

(Shakabda, 1 774/ 1 85 2 ) .
16 Lokenath Ghose, The Modern History of the Indian Chiefs, Rajas, .{,amindars & c., Part 2 : ' The
Native Aristocracy and Gentry ' (Calcutta, r 88 r ) .
 The art-school artists 53
several Bengali dramas and farces, and a translator of Sanskrit plays,
was best known for his promotion of Bengali theatre and drama, and
his innovations with old Hind usthani ragas in a new orchestra he
organised . 17 Many more such examples of the cultivation and
patronage of indigenous learning, literature and music can be found
in the ranks of these great families of nineteenth-century Bengal.
I t is in this context that the almost completely vVestern bias in these
families' tastes for painting, sculpture and objets d'art appears all the
more striking. The concept of decorating walls with framed paintings
and rooms with busts and statuary was, itself, a novel one in I ndia. In
pre-British India, painting had taken the form, primarily, of mural
decorations on cave and temple walls, religious narratives on palm
leaves and scrolls, or miniature illustrations in manuscripts, books
and portfolio sets. Sculpture flourished mainly as a composite part of
temple architecture and, when it did exist individually; it was
primarily as ·temple icons and ritual objects of worship. Painting and
sculpture as individual rarified ' works of art ' , to be paraded as such
in private homes, museums and art galleries, came to exist in the
country almost purely under the impact of the European presence.
So, inevitably, the whole concept of painting and sculpture as ' high
art ' came to be defined in terms of Western art - vVestern art, as it
had evolved since the I talian Renaissance. The tastes of the Indian
elite followed much the same pattern as those of art collectors and
connoisseurs in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Europe, nar­
rowed, however, by the very limited access and exposure they had to
the best of European art in I ndia. Taste in India was inevitably
moulded by the kind of second-grade European art, engravings and
copies of Old Masters that filtered through to the Empire. In
exhibitions and in the Art Gallery set up as an adjunct to the Calcutta
School of Art, this art was expected to play its public role of ' elevating
native tastes ' and initiating students into ' the right way of seeing ' . In
wealthy Bengali homes, the same art fulfilled a more private need of
projecting the status, style and culture of the owner, complementing
the magnificence of the structures that housed it.
A study of these private art collections reveals a broadly stan­
dardised pattern in the kinds of \Nestern art that were acquired and
in the hierarchies allotted to these. Life-size oil portraits, mainly of
family members, figured as the surest symbols of wealth and status.

17 A. Claude Campbell, Glimpses of Bengal, Vol. I (Calcutta, 1 907) - Maharaja Sir Jatindra
Mohun Tagore.
54 The mak£ng nf a nne.· ' Indian ' arl

Families would employ a single or a select few European artists as

their portrait painters, as was the case with the Pathuriaghata
Tagore family and European portrait painters like Sunkel, B.
Hudson, T. Roods, James Archer (R.A. ) and, later, G. P. Jacombe
Hood (A.R.A. ) . 1 8 With the Mahtab family ofBurdwan, over the late
nineteenth century, the full-figure family portraits were the work of
either Marshall Claxton (R.A. ) , the photographic firm of Johnston
and Hoffman, or the visiting Danish artist, H. V. Pederson.19
Landscapes, still-lives, ' durbar ' compositions and various other
Indian scenes by European artists also featured in large nu�bers.
Some of the famous scenic oils by Thomas Daniell and George
Chinnery had come into the possession of ' Tagore Castle ' , 20 while
the Shampukur Mitra househc:>ld had in its collection a large set of
engravings of ' durbar ' scenes at Murshidabad, Mysore, Hyderabad
and Travancore by F. C. Lewis, made in the r 84os.21
The highest value, however, was attached to items of European
' classical ' art : the neo-classical paintings of English Royal Academy
artists like John Opie, Charles Eastlake or Lawrence Alma-Tadema ;
the biblical ·compositions of the French artist, Horace Vernet ; and,
most of all, the duplicates of Raphaels, Titians, Rubens or Guido
Renis and the array of Venuses, Cupids, Psyches, Apollos and
Minervas in marble and bronze. There was a rarified ·aura of
classicism and grandeur in both the theme and scale of such works
which added to their status as ' high art ' . For the patron and
collector, they symbolised a more elevated dimension to their
aesthetic tastes. The collections at the ' Tagore Castle ' , the ' Marble
Palace ' and the Burdwan Maharaja's palaces could boast of the
largest assemblage of such ' masterpieces ' . There seemed to have
been a particular taste in the Burdwan family for Pre-Raphaelite and
High Victorian painting, as reflected in the copies it possessed of
Dante Gabriel Rossetti's ' Dante's dream on the death of Beatrice '
and the entire set of G. F. vVatts' allegorical compositions, ' Hope ' ,
18 Catalogue of. . . the Collection of the Maharaja Tagore ( 1 905) . One of Jacombe-Hood's later
portraits of Pranab Nath Tagore (oil, 1 92 7 ) is still in the family collection.
19 The portraits of Mahtab Chand Bahadur by Marshall Claxton (oil, r 855) and that ofBijoy

Chand Mahtab by an artist of the firm ofJohnston and Hoffman and a painting by H. V.
Pederson, ' Delhi Durbar' (oil, 1 902-3) are still on display in Lhe Old Library, Burdwan
University (Raj bari complex ) .
2 ° Catalogue of. .. the Collection of the Maharaja Tagore ( r 905) .
2 1 For example, ' 'Phe Installation in the Musnad of his Highness, the Nawab Nazim of
Murshidabad on 27 May 1 847 ' or ' The Durbar ofhis Highness, the Maharaja ofMysore,
1 848-49 ' - collection : Mihir Mitra.
 The art-school artists 55

' Faith ' , ' Love and Life ' and ' Love and Death '. 22 And there were
certain common top favourites, such as Raphael's ' Holy Family ' and
' Madonna della Sedia ', Guido Reni's portrait of ' Beatrice Cenci ',
Joshua Reynold's ' Laughing Girl ' , or statues of ' Venus de Medici '
and ' Apollo Belvedere ', which existed in multiple copies in all these
collections.
Such grandiose private collections, revelling in replicas of Euro­
pean ' great art ' had little room for local artists, except in their role
as copyist. In their eagerness to purchase paintings from abroad and
from exhibitions in the city, ' these Native noblemen ' were said to be
doing a great service to the development of art in their country. A
newspaper report commented : ' This cannot but cause refined
pleasure to many and eventually prove an outlet for Native talent,
which otherwise could never . . . establish itself in the public esteem ' .23
But such an ' outlet ' seemed hard to come by. Patronage was
generous in providing for special prizes, earmarked for Indian artists,
in the ' fine art ' exhibitions ; but it was far less forthcoming in the
purchase of these exhibits or even in the commissioning of portraits
from local oil painters.
The names of I ndian portrait painters were few and far between in
the galleries of oil portraits adorning these houses. Often, as in the
case of many of the portraits of the Tagore family, I ndian artists like
Jaladhi Chandra Mukherjee or, later, Poreshnath Sen were called
on only to copy or repaint older portraits painted by European
artists24 (Figure 1 6 ) . J atindra Mohun Tagore's collection was
exceptional in including a fair number of portraits painted by
Calcutta artists of the time, of family members and some con­
temporary Bengali notables. 25 Another function of I ndian painters
and modellers, in this milieu, was to provide the patron with cheap
copies of European classical sculpture and oil paintings. Thus,
Jadunath Pal, an early student and later a teacher of modelling at the
Calcutta School of Art, was asked by one of his local patrons, Justice
Ashu tosh Chowdhury, to model a set of Venuses copied from
European prints, for their house at Krishnanagar. 26 I n another case

22 Collection : Old Library, Burdwan University.

23 The Englishman (goth Januar y r 8go) .

24 A number of portrait ' copies ' painted by Poreshnath Sen around r go r -2 are in the
Rabindra Bharati University Museum (RB M ) , Calcutta.
25 Among these were portraits ofRaja Rajendralal Mitra by Annada Prasad Bagchi, of Gopal
Chandra Chakravarty (the singer, ' Noolu Gopal ') by Jaladhi Chandra Mukherjee, ofRai
Bahadur Dinanath Ghosh and Keshab Chandra Ganguly by Pramathalal Mitra.
26 Pramatha Chowdhury, Atma-katha (Calcutta, 1 947), p. 25.
 The making of a new ' Indian ' art

Fig. 1 6. Poreshnath Sen, Portrait of Prodyot Kumar Tagore, a copy of a work by a

European artist (oil, c. 1 905 ).

of misplaced fancy, a marble relief plaque of ' Diana Hunting Stags ' ,
adorning, of all places, the thakur-dalan of the ' Marble Palace ' was
ordered from a Jaipur craftsman, Shyam Sundar, who modelled it
from an oil painting by Frank A. Wills in the family's collection. 27
27 Catalogue of the Marble Palace (1 976), p. 7·
 The art-school artists 57
The names of the copyists happen to be on record in these few cases,
but there must have been hosts of other such copies made for private
collections where no mention is made of the Indian painter or
modeller.
Beyond their limited functions as portrait painters and copyists,
Bengali artists remained largely excluded from the favours of these
patrons. Despite their acknowledged competence in the Western
Academic style of painting in the art school and in exhibitions, their
work could not really compete with Western works of art (which were
in constant supply in Calcutta) in finding their way into the private
collections, or even into the Calcutta Art Gallery.28 In their attempts
to establish themselves in the profession, Indian artists clearly lagged
behind their Western counterparts. While the example of European
artists acted as a constant pull on their skills and aspirations, the
practical limits in patronage and opportunities trapped and hindered
them. This dichotomy in their position - this gap between aspirations
and possibilities - was, to a large extent, inherent in the very structure
of the training out of which they emerged.

' '
THE TRAINING OF THE ARTIST - MOTIVES O F BRITISH ART

E D U CA T I O N IN I N D I A AND THE WORKING O F THE

G O V E R N M E N T S C H O O L O F A R T , C A L C U T T A , C. 1 864- 1 894
The Government School of Art, Calcutta was caught within the dual,
often contrary priorities of British art-education schemes in India ­
between its self-avowed mission of inculcating the ' right ' taste for art
in Indians, and its practical concerns with providing them with some
useful and employable skills. I n the I 8sos, the issue of evolving in

28
Again, Jatindra Mohun Tagore provides an exception to the rule in opening up his
collection to the work ofsome local artists, like Girish Chandra Chatterjee, Harish Chandra
Khan, Bamapada Banerjee andJamini Prakash Gangooly. The other large art collection of
the time which included a surprisingly large number of works by Indian painters was that
of the Burdwan Maharajas. But the trend here was distinctly different. For the works which
were collected were not those of artists, trained in the art school or in a Western style of oil
painting, but largely those of the more ' traditional ' painters of Murshidabad, Patna,
Lucknow or Delhi, continuing with a hybrid style of miniature painting in gouache,
tempera or water-colours. The Burdwan collection also had an interesting group of
miniature paintings, classified as ' Modern Moghul ' and ' Modern Bengal ', p ain ted by
Muhammad Hakim Khan and Rameshwar Prasad Varma in the early twentieth century.
Both of them were posed as ' traditional ' artists, whose lineages could be traced back to old
atelier.3 of painters of Delhi, Lucknow and Patna ; at the same time, both had assumed a
modern identity, as they were drawn into the swing of Abanindranath Tagore's nationalist
art movement.
sB The making of a new ' Indian ' art
India a systematised and institutionalised structure of art education
had been a matter of both imperial paternalist commitments and the
new Victorian approach to the arts. The period which saw the setting
up of the first schools of art in I ndia coincided with the organisation
·
of the Great Exhibition of r 85 r ( ' The I ndustry of All Nations ') in
London ; the launching of a reformist trend in industrial design by
Owen Jones and Henry Cole ; the flourishing of the Arts and Crafts
movement of William Morris ; and the mushrooming of new Schools
ofDesign all over England.29 Together, these had laid out a clear-cut
case for the need and importance of training in the arts, specifying the
kinds of artistic skills that were to be cultivated. Given the crisis in
English industrial design and the enthused interests in the revival of
the ' lesser arts ' of the Morris circle, design and industrial art had
become the twin priorities of the new movement for art instruction in
England. There was a clear differentiation being made between
' Academies of Fine Arts ' and ' Schools of Design ' , with the priority
placed on the development of the latter. The aim was not to cultivate
' art for its own sake ' , but ' to cultivate superior skills of ornamental
design and to bring this skill to bear immediate! y on the . . . com­
mercially viable manufactures of the country ' . 30
The scheme of art instruction in I ndia showed much of the same
priorities, with the attention squarely focused on the industrial and
ornamental arts - ' the lesser arts ' as opposed to the ' higher arts ' .
The differentiation between ' fine ' and ' industrial arts ' acquired,
however, new colonial overtones in the I ndian context. It produced
an ideological framework in which Britain's growing appreciation of
Indian art-ware could be contained within the dominance ofWestern
aesthetic norms and the westernised art establishment of the Empire.
For excellence in the ' fine arts ' was set apart as a monopoly of the
West ; and I ndian art, however appreciated, was relegated to the
sphere of the ' lesser arts ' . I ndian crafts were seen to offer a wealth of
design, skill and dexterity and stand as a lesson for the degenerate
industrialised tastes of the West. At the same time, I ndian craftsmen
were found to possess a unique capacity to be trained and tu tored in
new, improved forms. The discovery of the splendours of I ndian
29 This Victorian background has been discussed, at length, in Partha Mitter, lvfuch 1\1aligned
Monsters (Oxford r g7 7 ) , Ch. V ; and Mahrukh Tarapor, Art and Empire : The Discovery ofIndia
in Art and Literature, I85o-1947 (unpublished Ph.D dissertation, Harvard, 1 9 7 7 ) , Chs. r , 3·
30 R . N. Wornum, ' The Government School of Design ' ; correspondence relating to a debate
on ' Is it Possible to Teach Design ' ; W. C. Taylor, ' On the Cultivation of Tastes in the
Operative Classes ' - in The Art Journal (London, r 84g).
 The art-school artists 59

decorative arts in the Great Exhibition of I 85 I , the fascination for

Indian design among Britain's new school of industrial designers, and
the championship of the dying craftsmen, the victim of British
commercialism, by the Arts and Crafts ldealists31 - all this fostered a
growing commitment to the preservation and development of the
traditional art industries of I ndia under British tutelage.
Alexander Hunter, Principal of the first School of Art in Madras,
while surveying the potentials of art schools all over the country,
made enthused references to the ' Indian aptitude for acquiring art,
quite equal to that of students in Europe ' , and to the great moral
duty of the British ' to try and lead their art into some of the best and
purest channels '. 32 But in the first decades of British art instruction in
I ndia, the training of the so-called ' real artists ' was a negligible
concern of both official and private endeavours. For all the talk about
elevating the ' thoughts and aspirations of the natives ', the priorities
were placed on a system of training that was purely technical, craft­
based and employment-oriented. What became increasingly im­
portant in the Schools of Art was less the revival of the traditional
hereditary craftsmen, and more the training of a new stratum of ·

skilled, semi-clerical professionals, who could easily be absorbed with­

in the expanding British services. Alexander Hunter, in talking of the
inherent I ndian ' ap titude for acquiring art ' was concerned mainly
with the I ndian skills as a copyist : the most lucrative capital for
training and employment. 33 I n purporting to guide native skills into
' the best and purest channels of study ', the students were to be drilled
into Western Academic standards of representational accuracy,
precision and technical finesse, with the best employment prospects
in British I ndia. I t was believed that the most distinctive feature of
this scheme of art education in I ndia was that it was concerned ' not
so much with teaching as with testing the results of teaching ' .34
Accordingly, the entire curriculum of the School of I ndustrial Art in
Calcutta was geared to the training of ' native drawing mas­
ters . . . skilled draughtsmen, architects, modellers, wood-engravers,
lithographers and designers for manufacturers ' 35 The synonymity of .

art with ' industrial ' or ' applied art ' was firmly established in the
3 1 Partha Mitter, Much A1aligned lvfonsters, pp. 22 1 -3 1 ff.

32 Alexander Hunter, Correspondence on the SubJect of the Extension of Art Education in Different Parts
of India (Madras 1 867), p. 42. 3 3 ibid., p. 8.

34 A. M . Nash, Second Quinquennial Review on the Progress of Education in India, I 887-88- I 8g 1-g2.
35 Memorandum on art and industrial education in Bengal, submitted by H . H . Locke,
Principal of the Calcutta School of Art - BGP /E, August 1 870, No. 45· pp. 57-58.
6o The mflk-in� o_f a n.;<-..� ' Indian · art

realm of British policies in I ndia, and the Schools of Art were meant,
primarily, to provide a kind of vocational training to those who
lacked the opportunity or capability of going through a literary or
scientific education.
The Calcutta School of Art, set up in 1 854, was among the first four
major Schools of Art to be founded in the main metropolises of the
British empire. I ts counterparts were the School of Industrial Arts in
Madras (established in 1 854) , the Sir Jamseg i Jeejibhoy School of
Art, Bombay (established in 1 85 7 ) and the Mayo School of Arts of
Lahore (established in 1 8 78 ) . I n Calcutta, as in Madras, Bombay or
Lahore, a need for training in mechanical and vocational skills
dominated the early phase of art education. I nstitutionalised
technical instruction had made its tentative beginnings in the city in
r 839 with the foundation of the Mechanics Institute by Dr Frederick
Corbyn (editor of India Review) , backed by joint I ndo-European
cooperation ; this private enterprise was expanded into a School of
Art in August r 854, with the patrons organising themselves into a
Society for the Promotion of I ndustrial Art. 36
Problems surrounding funds, methods of training, the want of
qualified instructors and a competent head racked the first decade of
the functioning of the school. All this, combined with the sudden
drastic reduction in Government grants following the Sepoy Mutiny
of 1 85 7 , paved the way for the direct intrusion of England in the
organisation of the school, leading to i ts conversion into a full-fledged
Government institu tion in r 864-37 The correspondence around the
selection and appointment of a suitable Principal from England show
the extent to which the new English art authorities like Richard
Redgrave (Assistant Superintendent of the new South Kensington
School in London, and a leading figure in the reformist movement in
industrial design and art education) were involved with the running
of art schools in I ndia. 38 On Redgrave's recommendations, H. H.
Locke, ' an accomplished teacher from the Kensington School of
. Design ' became Principal of the Government School of Art, Calcutta, ,
in r 864, to carry out a much-awaited reorganisation of the school
(Figure 2 5 ) .
While ' skilful and attentive management ' was introduced with
Locke, most ofhis reorganising efforts went towards an extension and
sub-division of the curriculum along existing lines. Drawing, paint-

36 J . C . B agal , pp. r-2. 37 z.b z.d , pp. 2-5.

.

38 Correspondence between H. T. Blanford ( Honorary Secretary of the School of I ndustrial

Art, Calcutta) and Richard Redgrave - BGP/E, April r 864, Nos. 4-6.
 The art-school artists
ing, modelling, lithography and wood-engraving continued to form
the basic course outline, with the courses of instruction in each
broken down to a more detailed stage-by-stage programme. An
important innovation in the curriculum was design, which included,
on the one hand, elementary lessons in the theories of line, colour,
form and composition and, on the other, technical training in the
application of these theories in the ornamentation of textiles, pottery,
mosaics, wood and metal work or even mural paintings. 39 Attempts
were being made to give the institution in Calcutta some semblance
of a School of Design - the top priority of art education in England
- with the emphasis focused on the traditional skills for ornamental
art in I ndia. An important instance of I ndian ornamental design
being used as models of study is found in the preparation of
illustrations by the students for Rajendralal Mitra's book, The
Antiquities of Orissa (Figure I 7a,b) . Detailed drawings and plaster
casts of the architectural decor of Orissa temples were made within
the school and retained in the I ndian Museum for the use of
students. 40
But there remained a clear dichotomy in policy. Even as a new
attention was placed on the Indian heritage of ornamental arts, the
standards of artistic perfection in the school remained Western and
Academic. Pride in the school's teaching rested on the degree to which
its student work could ' stand comparison with the work of students
of the same standi ng in an art-school in England ' .41 More important,
_
the practical, employment-oriented bias remained strongest in the
organisation of the curriculum. I n practice, the course divisions
outlined above were reorganised and realigned into certain package­
courses, catering to the direct training of students for certain specific
occupations. Beginning with a general course in drawing to be
offered as a part of general literary education, students graduated to
specific courses for wood-engravers, for designers, for mechanical and
engineering draughtsmen, or for general draughtsmen ( the most
popular course of all ) . 42
Yet, by the end of the nineteenth century, the school in Calcutta
was said to ' answer more nearly than do the other schools to . . . the
name, School of Art, that is usual in England ' . 43 The distinction that
was being made between a ' School of Art ' , concerned primarily with
39 Curriculum of the School of Industrial Art, Calcutta - BGP/E, August r 8 70, No. 45, p. 58.
40 Letter from Rajendralal Mitra to the School of Art, Calcutta, 26 March r 87o - BGP/E,
March r 87o, Nos. 76- 77, pp. 5 r -5 2 . 41 ] . C. Bagal, p. g .
42 Curriculum o f the School of Industrial Art, Calcutta.
43 Nash, Second Quinquennial Review.
 The making of a new ' Indian ' art

I
�l �
��
N
J�

I
(

Fig. I 7 ( a ) . Illustration in Raj a Rajendralal Mitra, The Antiquities of Orissa, Vol. I

(Calcutta, I 87 5 ) . Fa<;ade of the Lingaraj temple of Bhubaneswar - li thograph by
Kalidas Pal.
 The art-school artists

Fig. I 7 (b). Illustration in Raja Rajendralal Mitra, The Antiquities of Orissa, Vol. I
(Calcutta, I 8 75). Two sculpted columns - lithograph by Annada Prasad Bagchi.
 The making of a new ' Indian � art
' fine arts ' , and a ' School of Arts ' , concerned with industrial and
applied arts, lay at the centre of art-education policies in I ndia,
determining the separate patterns of development of the four main
schools. I ncreasingly, the institutions at Madras and Lahore caqle to
consolidate their identity as forums for the revival and improvement
of indigenous art-industries, with special emphasis on training in the
applied and decorative arts, while the schools at Bombay and
Calcutta laid claims towards a more distinctive training in the ' fine
arts ' .44 The Calcutta school appeared to have developed along a
distinctly different line, compared even to the J. J. School of Art,
Bombay. I ts 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 the Viceroy, Lord Northbrook in 1 876,45 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 the young might become accustomed to the
observation of what is beautiful in the form and colour of all
objects ' .46
What was presented as the epitome of ' great art ' to Calcutta's art
students was clearly a second-grade selection, even by contemporary
European criteria. I t consisted of much the same range of European
art that figured in contemporary private collections and exhibitions
- mainly the work ofvisiting British artists, some Royal Academicians
and some ' minor masters ' of Italy. Typically, the prize items in the
collection, again, were copies of Raphael, Titian, Domenichino or
Guercino, a painting such as ' The Marriage of the Virgin ' attributed
directly to Rubens (but in all probability a copy) , and a version of
one of Joshua Reynolds ' classical paintings, ' The Infant Hercules
Strangling Serpents ' .47 I n r 876, when the Gallery was founded,
many of these paintings were sent for temporary exhibition from the
private collections of the Maharaj a of Burdwan, Maharaja J atindra
Mohun Tagore of Pathuriaghata and Raja Satyendranath Ghoshal
of Paikpara ; and some had been specially selected and purchased
44 R. Nathan, Fourth Quinquennial Review, 1 897/98- 1 90 1 /2.
45 Minute by the Lt. Governor of Bengal announcing the establishment of the Art Gallery in
connection with the School of Art on 15 February 1 8 76 - BGP/E, February 1 8 76, No. 6o.
46 ibid. , p. 1 49·
4 7 E. B. Havell's hand-list of the European paintings in the Calcutta Art Gallery - BG P/E,
May 1 904, Nos. B 39-42.
 The art-school artists
from abroad by Lord Northbrook. Plans were floated for the
acquisition of many more works - like copies of Italian ' masters '
from Signor L. Pompignoli of Florence, copies of other ' European­
style ' paintings from local zamindars, plaster-casts of European
antique statuary and architectu ral ornament, and electrotypes of
ancient Greek coinage from the British Museum.48
This motley assemblage of European art was certainly a matter of
euphoria among the founders of the Art Gallery. ' I t would be hard
to imagine ' , wrote the Lt. Governor, ' anything better calculated to
improve the minds of native youth than the sight of such a
collection. '49 The aim of this art gallery was partly to cultivate ' a
taste for art ' in the general public, and mainly to supplement the
lecture room of the School of Art - to serve as a direct visual forum of
instruction for those students who had qualified themselves in the
rudimentaries of drawing and designing and showed some aptitude
in painting. The imparting of a correct Academic style that could
classify as ' art ' was its main purpose - ' not that they ( the students)
might learn to produce feeble imitations of European art, but rather
that they might study European methods of imitation and apply
them to the representation of natural scenery, architecture, ethnical
varieties and costumes of their own country ' .50 As in the case of
' Company ' paintings, the new native art sponsored by the British
empire had to have its ' I ndian ' content defined and specified by the
colonial masters, even as its form was improved and modernised by
their training.
Simultaneous with such indoctrination in Western ' fine arts ' , the
development of technical and craft education remained an issue of
recurring importance in the Calcutta School of Art. In 1 886-8 7,
proposals submitted for the partial reorganisation of the school were
concerned largely with the ex tension of the facilities for technical
education. 51 By ' technical education ', what was being propagated
was not merely training in new professional and vocational skills but
also in traditional skills for handicrafts. A strong case was made for
the equal honour and dignity of the latter, and the great need for the
revival of expiring art indus tries. Despite official opinion about the
relative absence of a flourishing handicraft tradition in Bengal, the

48 :\llinute . . . on the establishment of the Art Gallery, pp. 1 49-50. 49 ibid., p. 1 50

.

50 ibid.
al Proposals submitted by the Government of Bengal fo r the partial reorganisation of the
School of Art, the Art Gallery and the Indian .Yluseum - BGP /E, April 1 887. Nos. B 2 1 -22.
66 The making of a new ' Indian ' art
new scheme pointed to the few surviving art industries that could be
effectively integrated within the school's curriculum - such as the
arts of terracotta architectural decoration and figure modelling in
clay, still carried on skilful l y at Krishnanagar, the manufacture of
glazed clay tiles, or the wood-carving and inlaid-work carried on by
the ' bazaar ' craftsmen of Calcutta. I t recommended the employment
of working craftsmen in the school to hold classes in these areas. 5 2
Another aspect of the I886-87 proposals - regarding the transfer of
the art school and the gallery from its existing premises in
Bowbazar to the I ndian Museum premises in Chowringhee - was
linked to the more ambitious scheme of developing in Calcutta a
' Great Art Centre ' , combining the School of Art, the Art Gallery and
the I ndian Museum in a consolidated and comprehensive role of art
education. It was felt that the bringing together of the collection of
paintings in the Art Gallery and the valuable illustrations of ancient
I ndian art, architecture and ornamental art-ware in the I ndian
Museum would enable students to have free access to a variety of art
and art obj ects. 53 A definite interest in the study of specimens of
I ndian art and design was strongly reflected in both these schemes.
The interest was reiterated by 0. Ghilardi (an I talian painter,
appointed Assistant Principal of the school in I886), u nder whose
initiative a class of ' fresco-painting, entirely on the principle of
ancient I ndian decorative art ' was introduced into the curriculum. 54
This was probably akin to the Decorative Painting class of John
Griffiths in the ]. J . School of Art or the class in Decorative Fresco
Painting introduced in the Madras school around I8g7-g8. Another
innovation of Ghilardi was the use of plaster-casts of the sculpture
and decoration of the Bhubaneshwar temples, prepared for Raj endra­
lal Mitra's proj ect, as models for study in the architectural drawing
class. 55
But, all through, there was a clear polarisation of interests between
Western ' fine arts ' and I ndian ' decorative arts ', between the aim of
producing a few Western-style artists and the necessity of technical or
craft-oriented training for the majority of students. The Calcutta
School of Art by I887 was said to have achieved a high standard in
each of the subj ects taught : water-colour and oil painting, drawing,
modelling, lithography, wood-engraving, wood-carving and metal

52 ibid., pp. 6-8. 53 ibid., p. 4·

54 Bengal Education Proceedings, August r 887, Nos. B 2 7-33.

55 J. C B agal, pp. r4-r5.
.
 The arl-Jdwol ar tists

work. 56 The educational purpose of the Art Gallery seemed to be

fulfilling itself in producing a few students who could aspire to the
status of ' artists ' , who were charging as much as Rs. 300 for a life­
sized oil portrait and anything between Rs. 25 and I oo for smaller
pictures representing Indian life . 57 Their work was also finding its
way into art exhibitions held in the city, which became an important
forum for recognising the I ndian talent for ' fine arts ' .
At the same time, however, the success of the school remained
firmly grounded in its moorings in technical education. And, in
practice, even Indian design and craftsmanship remained of minimal
importance in the overall thrust of the training and the commissions
it attracted. I n contrast to the institutions at Madras, Bombay or
Lahore, the Calcutta school rarely entertained commissions for the
supply of designs to indigenous craftsmen or for the supply of craft
specimens to the industrial art exhibitions of the Empire. Nor, despite
the class in fresco painting, are there instances of students being
involved in a project for the study and copying of the Ajanta frescoes,
as in Bombay, or of them being employed in the painting and
decoration of public buildings, as in Lahore. Reporting on the
achievement of the Calcutta School of Art in the Lahore Conference
of I 894, the Superintendent, W. H. J obbins recorded, primarily, the
numerous commissions for illustrative work, utilising the new
professional skills of lithography, wood-engraving, drawing and
modelling. 58 The booming commercial prospects of the training in
wood-engraving and lithography came to be geared both to
Government demands and the demands of a wider, indigenous
market. Side by side, the Calcutta school, like its Madras and
Bombay counterparts, continued to fix its priorities on producing
drawing-teachers and skilled draughtsmen to fill the expanding
public services of colonial administration. These two fields provided
the main employment outlet for out-going students during I 8g2-g4. 59
By the end of the nineteenth century, the School of Art had become
central in engendering a new notion of art as a ' respectable ' vocation
and career - a notion which encompassed both an elevated sense of
' high art ' ( the ' artist's arts ' ) and practical considerations of
livelihood and employment ( as embodied in the ' applied arts ' ) .
Together, this dual emphasis came to condition the attitudes and

56 Bengal Education Proceedings, April r 887, Nos. B 2 r -22, p. 25.

57 T. N. Mukharji, Art Manufactures of India, pp. r s, 2o-2 r .
58 Papers Relating to the . . . Schools of Art, pp. 86-87. 59 ibid. , p. g r .
68 The making of a new ' Indian ' art
aspirations in art of the Bengali middle class, . who were the main
draw of the school. In their perceptions, the career of an artist had to
be made more ' respectable ' by aligning it as closely as possible with
Western art and art institutions of the city and salvaging it from the
milieu of ' bazaar ' art. Becoming a successful artist in I ndia in the late
nineteenth century concerned both the cultivation of a ' higher '
aesthetic taste and the acquisition of proper training, important
commissions and new employment opportunities. ' Art ' , indicating
painting and sculpture, and the ' applied arts ' , indicating the
technical skills of draughtsmanship, engraving, etching or lith­
ography were not considered two separate spheres, but two essential
aspects of the same profession.

' ' '

CALCUTTA S NEW ARTISTS : THE MAIN TRENDS IN

COMMISSIONS, CAREERS AND P R O FESSIONS

The establishment of the School of I ndustrial Arts i n r 854, and its

early problems with funds and support, elicited strong responses from
the Bengali bhadralok community. The school, it was felt, was
indispensable in meeting a vital ' deficiency of taste ' that prevailed
amidst them, and in helping them attain ' a pure staridard of taste
in . . . the productions of the chisel or the pencil '. Assailed by a sense of
artistic backwardness vis-a-vis the West, the bhadralok thought it
shameful that their advancement i n other spheres of knowledge and
professional life was not matched by a parallel progress in aesthetic
education and in the ' faculty of taste ' .60 The infatuation with
European Classical and Renaissance art - with the freshly discovered
' masterpieces ' of Phidias and Michelangelo, Raphael and Guido
Reni6 1 - was matched by an equal contempt and distaste for the type
of ' bazaar ' pictures of Hindu divinities which surrounded them :
pictures which they saw as ' devoid at once of imaginative richness
and chastity of conception, and . . . daubed with the hideousness of
savage imagery ' . 62 European art now determined the very notions of
' beauty ' , ' purity ' and ' chastity ' of taste. The standards of represen­
tational and realistic accuracy, embedded in the Western tradition,
served as its most persuasive proponent ; it established its unques-
60
The Hindoo Patriot (2 r June r 855) .
61
An eloquent statement on this can be found in Krista Doss Paul's (Krishna Das Pal) Hare
anniversary lecture, Young Bengal Vindicated (Calcutta, r 8s6), pp. 22-23.
62
The Hindoo Patriot (2 r June r 855) .
 The art-school artists 6g
tioned hold as a ' superior ' form of art, as against the under­
development of indigenous pictorial modes.
While the School of Art brought the promise of aesthetic education
and refinement, it also held out prospects of a new ' honourable and
independent profession in the arts ' . The Hindoo Patriot, reflecting on
the crisis and lacuna of employment faced by the educated middle
class ofBengal, argued for the dignity and usefulness of training in the
industrial arts and the alternative gainful livelihood this would open
up.63 An appeal for private donations to save the infant School of Art,
in a contemporary Bengali journal, emphasised the same point about
a new ' respectable ' middle-class profession : an alternative to the
lowly paid, ' degrading ' employment as clerks in government
offices.64 The school, it was stressed, would both provide the wealthy
with all the pictures, prints and sculptures they desired and provide
boys from needy bhadralok families with alternative careers as painters,
modellers or engravers. The example of a successful career which it
held out was that of Sir Joshua Reynolds, founder-president of the
Royal Academy. His success was extolled in terms of the social
prestige he enjoyed with rich patrons, the number of commissions he
got for portraits, and the vast amounts of money he earned for each.
Clearly, the economics of the profession mattered as much as the
prospects of aesthetic refinement.
As a marked indicator of the considerable demand for such art
education in Calcutta, already around 200 students had come to the
school in r 854, in the hope of better opportunities of a livelihood. 65 A
training and profession in the arts held still a distinctly secondary
status to higher university education and professions like teaching,
law, journalism or medicine. But, at the same time, the position of the
artist was being clearly sifted out of the milieu of ' bazaar ' picture
production. For the early batch of students of the Calcutta School of
Art, a main mark of a successful livelihood seemed to have been their
employment as teachers within the school. The school under H. H.
Locke seemed particularly open to the absorption of its successful
students into the teaching staff. I t had its main need for ' native '
teachers to build bridges of communication and allow for more
i n tensive supervision over the bulk of the students, who were not
63
ibid., (4 May r 854) .
64 ' Shilpabidyotsahini Sabhar Anukule Deshahitaishi Mahashaydiger Samipe Abedan ' (An
appeal to the country's well-wishers for funds on behalf of the Society for the Encouragement
of Art and Industry) in Vividhartha Sangraha, Vol. 3 (Shakabda, 1 7 76/ r 854·) pp. 263-264.
65 ibid., p. 264.
JU [he making of a new ' Indian ' art
conversant with English. And students worked their way up from jobs
as teachers of drawing, modelling or wood-engraving to positions as
head masters. Among those who came to hold teaching posts in the
school at this time were Kalidas Pal (in the department of engraving) ,
Gopal Chandra Pal and Jadunath Pal (in the department of
modelling) , 66 Shyama Charan Srimani (in the department ·of
mechanical drawing) and, most important of them all, the oil
painter, Annada Prasad Bagchi, who became teacher of drawing,
painting and lithography and went on to be appointed head master
in 1 88o. 67
Alongside jobs as teachers in the School of Art, a wider range of
patronage, commissions and employment opportunities opened up
for the larger body of students, often while they were still at the
school. Promising student� like Kalidas Pal were occasionally
sponsored through awards like the Peel Scholarship, to help them
continue their training in the School of Art.68 Although the school at
Calcutta had no extended scheme for artisan training and revival of
traditional handicrafts, there operated a small free training scheme
for the clay-modellers ofKrishnanagar, for theirs was considered one
of the few surviving traditional crafts of the region that was worth
preserving. Jadunath Pal, who came from such a traditional family of
clay-modellers of Ghurni in Krishnanagar, was a beneficiary of this
scheme. 69 For Jadunath Pal and other clay-modellers like him in the
School of Art, another important source of support came from the
expanding circuit of industrial art exhibitions organised in different
parts of I ndia and abroad : in Melbourne, Amsterdam, Glasgow,
London and Paris. The skills of life-like clay modelling were most
highly in demand from the students of the Calcutta School of Art
(many of whom came from traditional clay-modelling families of
Krishnanagar) , as against other specimens of traditional craft-work
which the schools at Madras, Bombay and Lahore could offer. For
display in these exhibitions, what were required. were ethnological
clay models of life-size figures representing different I ndian tribes,
castes, costumes and occupations, or sets of agricultl,lral and rural
scenes. 70 Existing traditions of craftsmanship, like clay-modelling,

66 Catalogue . . ( I 874, I .8 79) ; Kamal Sarkar, Bharater Bhaskar o Chitrashilpi, pp. 34, 52, I 68-6g;
.

' Vividha Prasanga : Mritshilpi jadunath Pal ' in Bharatvarsha, Chaitra, I 3 23/ I 9 I 7.
67 Annada Jibani, pp. 40-4 I , 50-5 I . 6 8 J. C. Bagal, p. 4·
69 ' Mritshilpi Jadunath Pal '.
7° For examples of the kind of clay models from India on display in these international
exhibitions, see - Official Record ofthe Melbourne International Exhibition ( r 88o-8 r ) ; Catalogue of
the Calcutta International Exhibition ( I 883-84) .
 The art-school artists
once absorbed irvo the British structure of art education and drawn
into new avenues of Government patronage and demand, were made
to produce images to fit the structure of colonial ethnography and
anthropology. Such models and casts formed an important visual aid
to colonial anthropology in India.
For students of the School of Art under H. H. Locke, other
prestigious commissions came in the way of orders for illustrating
various expensive British publications.-. Along with a set of diagrams
on the human anatomy ordered by Dr Gayer, Professor of Calcutta
Medical College, and illustrations of snakes, from original specimens
kept in the I ndian Museum, for Sir Joseph Fayrer's book, The
Thanatophidia of India : Being a Description of the Venomous Snakes of the
Indian Peninsula (London, I 8 7 2 ) , the largest single proj ect for
illustrations came with Dr Rajendralal Mitra's two-volume study on
The Antiquities of Orissa ( r 875/8o) , in the preparations for which a
student-teacher body led by Annada Prasad Bagchi went on a study
tour of Orissa, to make detailed drawings and plaster casts of the
sculpture and architectural decor of the temples. 7 1 The final detaned
drawings and lithographs of the sculptures and architectural or­
namentation, even before they appeared in the book, were items of
display and recipients of a special prize in the exhibition of r 874 as
the best specimens of drawing and graphic art by I ndian students72
(Figure r 7a,b ) . Throughout the r 8 7os and r 88os, many more
illustrations were commissioned by the Government from the
students for various scientific records and catalogues such as the
Annals of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Calcutta or the Records of the Geological
Survey of India. 73 Obviously, the demands in all these illustrations was
less for ' artistic ' work than for precision in copying and skilled
draughtsmanship. But this in itself defined the main area of
competence of the Indian art students of this period and co-existed
with their new status as ' artists '. The role of the copyist acquired a
new social respectability, and new degrees of refinement and polish,
through official training and patronage.
However, for all these up-coming artists, the most coveted skill of
all was proficiency in oil painting and the art of realistic portraiture.
A career as portrait painter carried a somewhat more exclusive status

71 Annada ]ibani, p. g8-gg.

72 Catalogue . . . ( 1 8 74) . Individual signatures of several
students, including Annada Prasad
Bagchi, appear on these pen and ink drawings which are now in the reserve collection of the
Indian Section at the V & A.
73 Papers Relating to the . . . Schools of Art, pp. 86-87.
72 T he making of a new ' Indian ' art
as ' artist ' , in comparison to those of draughtsmen, engraver or
modeller. Large, life-size oil portraits, painted with the proper
realistic finesse and the right poise and expression, could most closely
equate and measure up to British painting in I ndia ; and along with
life studies of heads and figures, such portraits were choice items of
display in the ' fine arts ' exhibitions. Among the early studen ts of the
School of Art, Gangadhar Dey and Pramathanath Mitra seemed to
have been the first to have mastered the new techniques of realistic oil
painting and . to have made a mark in painting portraits. 74 With
direct commissions for portraits still difficult to come by, both these
painters had to occupy themselves with small-time work, like
' touching-up ' and restoring oil paintings, making copies of original
portraits by European artists, or teaching oil painting privately to
local students. Gangadhar . Dey and Pramathanath Mitra gave
private tuition in oil painting to two students who went on to acquire
much greater fame than themselves : the former was the first private
tutor of J. P. Gangooly, and the latter of Bamapada Banerj ee. The
exhibitions and the private art collections, particularly of Maharaja
Jatindra Mohun Tagore, draw attention to the names of a few other
small-time portrait painters, such as Phanibhushan Sen, Dinanath
Das or Girish Chandra Chatterjee, who worked both on actual
sittings and copies of European portraits. Mentioned as one of the
best students of the ' Fine Arts ' Division of the Calcutta School of Art
in an exhibition report of I goo, 75 Poreshnath Sen was another such
potential portrait painter, whose efforts seemed to have sunk mainly
into making copies of portraits of the members of the Pathuriaghata
Tagore family from originals painted by European artists (Figure
I 6) .
Portrait painting also appears to have been a focal point of activity
of a number of wealthy, privately trained amateurs of Calcutta.
From the Pathuriaghata branch of the Tagore family, we have the
examples of Soutindro Mohun Tagore ( I 86s-g8) , said to have been
the first Indian painter to have studied at the Royal Academy, 76 and
Jaladhi Chandra Mukherjee ; from the Mullick family of the ' Marble
Palace ', those of Debendra Mullick ( I 835-94) , his son Nagendra
74 See, ' Report on the Exhibition of Fine Arts at the Sixth Annual Meeting of the Hindoo
Mela ' - The National Paper (2 r February r 87 2 ) .
75 A preview report o n the exhibition a t the Government School of Art, Calcutta - The Indian
Daily News (22 January r goo) .
76 Portraits painted by him of Gopi Mohun Tagore and Sourindro Mohun Tagore (oils, not
dated) - Collection : RBM.
 The art-school artists 73

( r 8s3- r g r 8 ) and nephew, Dinendra Mullick ( r 8gs- r g68) ;77 from

Jorasanko and its extended branches, the examples of Abanin­
dranath's grandfather and father, Girindranath and Gunendranath
Tagore, his cousin, Hitendranath Tagore, and nephew, Jamini
Prakash Gangooly, with whom the young Abanindranath shared an
English art tutor, Charles Palmer. The endeavours of these ' gentle­
men ' artists remained mostly non-commercial, confined mainly to
portraits of the members of their own household which usually
remained in the family collection.
The painting of portraits also became the main life-line of success,
status and livelihood for the few Bengali artists who enjoyed relative
individual renown in the late nineteenth century. The first name that
suggests itself is that of Annada Prasad Bagchi ( r 84g- r go5) . His
initial story shows an uphill struggle against various odds to become
an artist, that was probably true of many other middle-class boys of
the time. 7 8 A disinterest in studies and school-work ; reluctance of the
family to allow him to pursue his alternative aptitude for drawing
and painting, at a time when painting was considered still a low­
grade profession of unlettered patuas ; attempts at other forms of
vocational training that called for some skills of the hand ; a stint at
a clerical job of drafting letters in English, and then at copper-plate
engraving at a private workshop in Jorasanko ; and finally a lucky
break in his admission as a student into the School of Art in r 865 .
Even after entering the school, financial pressures and uncertainties
about his future career led him to continue working part-time at the
copper-engraving workshop. I t was eventually his mastery over oil
painting and his special training in the medium under Locke which
singled him out among other students, secured for him commissions
for illustrations, and paved out a potential career as ' artist ' .
Employment as a teacher i n the School of Art gave him a secure and
prestigious career. Equally important for his status, was the wider
reputation he built up as a proficient portrait painter, in oils - a
reputation that led the Viceroy, Lord Northbrook to commission
from him portraits ofRaja Romanath Tagore, Dr Raj e ndralal Mitra
and Keshab Chandra Sen. The portraits he displayed at the
exhibition of r 879 were also among the most highly priced paintings
in the display. 79 Altogether, Annada Prasad Bagchi, it seems, came

77 Narendranath Laha, Subarnabanik Katha o Kirti (Calcutta, 1 942) , Vol. 3, pp. 23-26.

78 Annada Jibani, pp. r g-24.

79 The prices of his portraits ranged between Rs. r oo and Rs. 250.
74 The making of a new ' Indian ' art
closest to the model of the individual successful artist that had been
impressed upon middle-class Bengali society in I 854. Visiting the
School of Art in the I 8 7os, the Lt. Governor of Bengal, Sir George
Campbell apparently said of him that he may well become ' Bengal's
Sir Joshua Reynolds ' ! 8 0
A similar struggle leading ultimately to a successful breakthrough
in portrait painting marked the career of another important artist of
the period, Sashi Hesh ( I 86g- ?) , who had the added distinction of
going to I taly for further training. 81 Born in a poor family in
Mymensingh, he was forced by financial hardship to quit school and
take u p a job as Inspecting Master of village schools. A scholarship
from the Mymensingh District Board brought him to the Govern­
ment School of Art, Calcutta in the I 88os, where his exceptional
merit attracted the special attentions of Vice Principal 0. Ghilardi,
and Principal W. H. Jobbins. At the same time, the patronage of the
Indian elite began to open up for him : his first important patron was
the Calcutta barrister, Manmohan Ghosh who, through his own
connections, led the artist back to Mymensingh, introduced him to
the favours of its wealthy families, and secured for him commissions
for portraits of the entire families of Maharaja Suryankanta Acharya
Choudhury of M ymensingh.
This entire line of patronage and support, extending from the
I ndian aristocracy and elite to the art-school authorities and their
connections within the European bureaucracy, gave Sashi Hesh the
ultimate breakthrough - a chance to travel to Italy in I 8g8 and enrol
himself in the Royal Academy at Rome. A biography of the artist
emphasises his obsession with going to study in I taly, the home of
the great Renaissance Masters. While this near-impossible dream
alienated him from his fellow students, it certainly echoes an ambition
shared by all successful students in contemporary English or French
art academies and underlines the strong Euro-centric orientation to
the teaching of ' fine arts ' in I ndia. 82 Before Sashi Hesh, another

80 Annada Jib ani, pp. 40-4 I , 45-46.

81
Srinivas Bandopadhyay, ' Sri Sashi Kumar Hesh ', Pradip, Magh I 3o6/ I goo, pp. 54-59 ;
Kamal Sarkar, Shilpi Saptak (Calcutta, I977).
82 Within a few years, strong opinions were to be voiced against this prevailing view that
promising students should be sent to Europe for further training in the art academies.
Havell, Superintendent of the Calcutta School of Art, I 8g6-I go6, a powerful critic of the
Western Academic modes of teaching, offered his counter suggestion that all potential
patrons should, instead, aid Indian art students to finish their courses in the School of Art
and work independently in the traditional art centres in India. See E. B. Havell's letter to
 The art-school artists 75

student of the Calcutta School of Art, Rohini Kanta Nag (whose

career was cut short by his premature death in r 8gs, at the age of 2 7 )
had also studied at the Royal Academy a t Rome. 83 Sashi Hesh, after
nearly two years at the Royal Academies at Rome and Munich, came
to London in November r 8gg, on the invitation of the National
Indian Association. Like Ravi Varma in Bombay in the r 8gos, Sashi
Hesh in London, as the other renowned Indian artist of the time,
attracted the attention of early nationalist leaders like W. C.
Banerjee, Romesh Chandra Dutt and Dadabhai Naoroji, some of
whose portraits he was to pain t . Back in Calcutta, early in r goo, one
of his first commissions was an invitation to Baroda to paint the
portraits of the Gaekwad's family. His initiation into the Brahmo
faith, the year ofhis return, was the context for the painting of his two
most important portraits : one of Maharshi Debendranath Tagore, 8 4
and another of Pandit Shivnath Shastri. 85 A gallery of important
personages, Indian and British - Dwijendranath Tagore, Dinshaw
Wacha, Sir G. C. M . Birdwood, Sir Stuart Hogg, Allan Octavian
Hume, and Sir W. W. Hunter - were among the artist's other
models.86
A more mellowed· success story of portrait painting is that of
Bamapada Banerjee· ( r Bs r - 1 93 2 ) . 8 7 Born into an orthodox Brahmin
family of Hooghly, his initial education was in a nearby ' Training
School ', where, probably, an elementary course in reading and
writing English was combined with some technical training in
draughtsmanship, carpentry or simple engineering. His story then
took much the same course as those of A. P. Bagchi and Sashi Hesh
- a fall-out from the ' Training School ' ; the discovery of his talents in
drawing and painting by the editor and publisher, Shambhu
Chandra Mukherjee and the local landlord ; under their encour­
agement and insistence, his enrolment in the Government School of
Art, Calcutta, under H . H . Locke. Bamapada Banerjee, however,
found the course at the school quite inadequate, especially where
training in oil painting was concerned . Though the case of Annada
Prasad Bagchi proved otherwise, this is perhaps an indication of the

the editor, ' I ndian Art Students and European Education ' - The Indian Daily News (25
January I goo) . 83 News and Notes - The Bengalee, 8 March I 8go.

84 Collection : RBM, Calcutta. 8 5 Collection : VM, Calcutta.

86 These portraits are in the Marble Palace, Calcutta.
87 Main source of information on Bamapada Banerjee - Gyanendra Mohan Das, ' Prabasi
Bangalir Ka tha Prabasi, Ashar I 3 I 4/ 1 907, pp. I 67-70 ; Kamal Sarkar, Bharater Bhaskar o
',

Chitrashilpi, pp. I 35-36.

 The making of a new ; indian ' art

Fig. 1 8. Bamapada Banerjee, Portrait of Bankim Chandra Chatterjee (oil, 1 8go) .

still underdeveloped nature of the ' fine arts ' curriculum in the school
(in the early I 8 7os) , and the exclusion of most students from
specialised training in oil painting. After leaving the School, he went
on to acquire private training in oil painting, first from Pramanath
Mitra; then from a visiting German artist, Becker. It was under the
latter's careful guidance that he won an award for ' the best figure
composition in oil by a native of l ndia ' in the I 879 exhibition.88
Moving with his family to Allahabad in I 88 I , the artist launched
into a full fledged career in portrait painting, travelling extensively
88 Catalogue . . . ( r 8 7g) .
 The art-school artists 77

around the United Provinces, Punj ab and Rajasthan to paint

portraits. A large number of the artist's models and patrons came
from the Bengali professional elite who had moved to the North ( the
prabasi community, with whom the artist had the most natural social
connections) . Back in Calcutta in 1 883, the career continued in full
swing, with commissions for portraits from Maharaj a Jatindra
Mohun Tagore, Narendranath Sen (editor of The Indian Mirror) , the
barrister, Manmohan Ghosh, the Maharajas of Darbhanga and
Murshidabad, Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar and Bankim Chandra
Chatterjee (Figure 1 8) .
These careers in portrait painting - certainly the most thriving of
art professions in late-nineteenth-century Calcutta - suggest a vital
potential source of patronage for these aspiring artists among the
wealthy local elite. But this potential, as we have seen, remained
largely unfulfilled. The survey of patterns of private patronage and
art collecting in Calcutta served mainly to highlight the exclusiveness
of the world of Western art and the relative absence of opportunities
and openings in it for the I ndian artist. This world remained
polarised (and often deli bera tely so) from the wider changes and
ramifications in visual tastes that were penetrating all layers of urban
society, generating a demand for new kinds of pictures. I t was to the
latter sphere of tastes and demands that the new I ndian artists began
increasingly to orient their skills. I n fact, the careers of these same
artists - Annada Prasad Bagchi and Bamapada Banerjee - were also
to have a rather different dimension to their success stories. I n the
midst of their careers as art-school teachers and portrait painters,
they branched out towards parallel options in commercial art-work
and popular picture production. There was something of a paradox
here. The status of ' artist ' for I ndians had meant a certain
exclusiveness and a distancing from the milieu of the ' bazaar '
picture-trade: Yet, the pressures of livelihood and the new com­
mercial potentials of their skills led a number of them to bridge the
gap between the ' high ' and ' low ' art of the city and enter the more
popular circuit of painting and print-making.
 CHAPTER 3

Indigenous commercial enterprise and the popular art .

market in Calcutta : the emergence of a new Indian
iconography

The new Bengali artists, the successful product of Western training

and art-school backgrounds, had·come to occupy a position that was
as uncertain as it was ambivalent. S triving to locate themselves
within a spectrum of careers and opportunities - as portraitists, oil
painters, draughtsmen, engravers and drawing masters - they found
themselves caught in a wedge between an insulated world of ' high
art ' and the prospects of independent commercial enterprise. Veering
away fro m Government and elite patronage, they tapped, instead,
the wider popular market that prevailed for their skills. Their
independent proj ects and ventures centred primarily around the new
techniques of print-making : metal engraving, lithography, chromo­
lithography and oleography. For prints, feeding on the improving
techniques of reproduction had become the most important vehtcle
of a mass visual culture. The special training and sophistication of
techniques in the art schools gave the new print-makers a definite
edge over the artisan-presses and the Bat- tala engravers. At the same
time, the very medium and its potentials of mass production
encouraged them to enter a similar milieu of art-work - to respond to
popular tastes for religious pictures and illustrated books and
journals.
A . shift from engraving to lithography was a major sign of the
growing refinement of printing technologies in Bengal. The entry of
Indians in the sphere of lithography, so far dominated purely by
Europeans, was an important landmark - it helped to mark out and
separate a new group of more prestigious print-makers from those
who worked for the Bat-tala book trade. The Kalighat patuas are said
to have taken recourse to lithography to bring out simplified litho­
prints of line drawings to cope with the massive demand and the
competition posed by mass-produced prints. But little else is known
about these patua lithographers or the presses through which they
 Indigenous commercial enterprise and a new iconograpfry 79

issued their prints. The first-known indigenous enterprise in lith­

ography in Bengal was the setting up of the Royal Lithographic Press
around r 85 7 by Dinanath Das, Nobinchandra Ghose, Hiralal Ghosh
and Tinkari Majumdar, all of whom had been trained in the School
of Industrial Arts. A reference to this lithographic press as the first
' art studio ' of its kind in Bengal1 implies · that the new technique of
lithography had the status of ' art ', and that no hard and fast division
separated the ' fine arts ' of painting from the ' applied arts ' of print­
making or photography. In fact, it appears that the artists of the
Royal Lithographic Press handled orders for painting, side by side
with work in ' lithog�aphy, engraving and decoration '. One of the
only surviving specimens of the work of this press, a portrait of Raja
Ram Mohun Roy (Figure r g) has all the naturalistic refinement of
the photographic style with shading and tonal gradations ; and the
price2 seemed to automatically place it in a different category of ' art '
vis-a-vis the contemporary Bat- tala prints (normally priced one paisa
plain, and two paisa coloured) .
About two decades after the founding of the Royal Lithographic
Press, another independent venture in commercial art, the Calcutta
Art S tudio, was set up on Bowbazar Street by some ex-students of the
Calcutta School of Art. The earliest known specimen of its litho­
graphic work (a picture of Goddess ' Saraswati ') appeared on the
cover of the journal Bharati in July-August, r 877.3 Certainly, by
r 879, the studio seemed to be operating at full force, advertising to
undertake a wide range of work : ' Portrait painting, Landscape
painting, oil painting, water painting, all kinds of decoration and
lithographic works . . . Hindoo Mythological and Historical pictures,
and also Stage Scenes and Prosceniums '.4 In another advertisement,
a few years later, the work of the studio was stated also to include
book illustration, and the production of English and Bengali
alphabet-sheets and copy-books with ornamental Bengali letteri ng. 5
Of all this work, however, the ' Hindu Nlytho-pictures ', which the
Studio produced and sold from iis premises, came to be its most

1 Sarachandra Deb, ' Kolikatar Itihas ' - Shilpa-pushpanjali, Vol. 2, I 292/ r 885.
2 The prints of this portrait were being sold by the publishing company, R. M. Bose and Co.
for 8 annas a copy for subscrib�rs and I 2 annas for non-subscribers - advertisement in
Hindoo Patriot, 6 May I 858.
3 Kamal Sarkar, ' Calcutta Art Studio-r Chitrakala ' - unpublished paper, presented at the
inauguration of an exhibition of Calcutta Art Studio lithographs on the centenary of the
founding of the Studio, 8 November I 978. 4 Bengalee, 8 November I 879.

5 Bengalee, 5 August r882.

8o The making of a new ' Indian ' art

Fig. 1 9. Nabin Chandra Ghose, Portrait of ' Raja Ram Mohun Roy, the Great
Hindoo Reformer ' (lithograph, 1 858). A sample of a lithograph from the Royal
Lithographic Press.
 Indigenous commercial enterprise and a new iconography 8r

distinctive and lucrative produots, and the most novel kind of I ndian
art on the popular market (Figures 2 7-29) .
The story of the Calcutta Art Studio through the I 8 7os and I 88os
is an important pointer to two significant trends of the time - firstly,
a strong option of Indian artists in favour of such independent
enterprise ; secondly, an inclination towards the most popular and
widely marketable kinds of art-work. The ex-students of the School of
Art - Annada Prasad Bagchi, Nobokumar Biswas, Phanibhushan
Sen, Krishna Chandra Pal and Jogendranath Mukherjee - who
established the studio were acknowledged by Principal H. H. Locke
to have been ' amongst the best students ' , 6 marked out by their
proficiency in portraiture, life study and oil painting. Their diversi­
fication into commercial art-work for a mass market was a notably
new trend. Most remarkable was the case of Annada Prasad Bagchi,
who was a very successful portrait painter and teacher in the School
of Art when he left in April r 876 in pursuit of an independent
livelihood as an oil painter and lithographer, and set-up the Calcutta
Art Studio. In a few years, Bagchi was lured back to the School of Art
to the post of head master and to a salary raised on demand to
Rs. 200 a month. 7 The Calcu tta Art Studio passed on to the
proprietorship of the other four artists in I 88o, with all shares
eventually bought by Nobokumar Biswas.
The shift in the kinds of work done in the studio and in the clientele
to which it catered is also a comment on the choice before most
Indian artists of the time. Initially it had been announced that the
artists had opened this Studio ' for the convenience of the Gentry and
the Nobility of Calcutta and other well known places in I ndia ' . 8 A
successful art-school background and participation in exhibitions
had given all these artists a sound reputation with wealthy art
patrons of the city. One of the main jobs they offered to do in the new
studio was to paint portraits in oil and water-colours, from life or from
photographs. At this stage, the studio was also functioning partially
as a photography concern, taking on commissions for photographs of
weddings, ceremonies, house-parties and, occasionally, even outdoor
shikar sessions. But, based in Bowbazar, which since the I 86os-7os
had become predominantly a Bengali middle-class residential area,
and faced with the competition of Bourne and Shepherd and other

6 Felicitations from H. H. Locke - Bengalee, 8 November 1 879.

7 Annada Jibani, pp. 5 1 -5 2 . 8 Bengalee, 8 November r 879.
 The making of a new ' Indian ' art
European photographic firms around Park Street and Chowringhee,
the studio did not find an adequate clientele for photography. 9 Nor,
presumably, were there enough orders for portraits, landscapes and
oil painting to keep it going on this work alone. So it was lithography
and the production of art-work that had a wide local market which
became its main life-line. Contrary to its announcement of I 879, the
Calcutta Art Studio began to work, not ' for the convenience of the
Gentry and the Nobility ' , but for the mass market that already
existed for cheap prints and m ythological pictures.
There were other tn stances of ex-students of the School of Art
directly entering this sphere of printing and commercial art, as with
Kalidas Pal, an early student and teacher of wood and copper-plate
engraving in the school. His breaking out of the School of Art was
linked up with both nationalist and independent enterprise, one
converging on the other. For he first went on to teach lithography
and engraving for a few years in the National School in Calcutta (a
school set up by the nationalist and Hindu Mela activist, Nabagopal
Mitra) before setting up his own lithography and engraving press at
Chitpore Road, called the Artist's Press . 10 We know of the existence
of another small copper-plate engraving workshop in Jorasanko in
the I 86os, run by a certain Nilmani Mukherj ee , where Annada
Prasad Bagchi had worked as an apprentice before he came to the
School of Art.11 But the Artist's Press, set up in the same locality,
seemed to have aspired to a different status in keeping with its name
and the qualifications and experience of Kalidas Pal . The setting up
of the press coincided with the formation of the Indus trial and Fine
Arts Committee in I 88 2 , involving Kalidas Pal, two of his students
from the Calcutta School of Art, Biharilal Ray and Sarachandra
Deb, and the then head master of the school, Annada Prasad Bagchi.
This in turn became the forum for producing Calcu tta's first art
journal, Shilpa-pushpanjali, in I 885. One of the chief attractions of the
new journal was its full-page lithographed illustrations : portraits of
British and I ndian celebrities, cityscapes of Calcutta and scenes from
the Ramayana and the Mahabharata (Figures 2 5 , 3 I ) . The products
of the Calcutta Art S tudio and the Artist's Press were seen to provide
a new, more sophisticated tier of prints and religious pictures within
the existing picture market.

9 Information from Bishwanath Biswas, grandson of the founder, Nobokumar Biswas, present
owner of the off-set press.
10 Referred to in Shilpa-pushpanjali, 1 292-3 / 1885-86, which was published from this Artist's
Press. 11 Annada-Jibani, pp. 23-24.
 Indigenous commercial enterprise and a new iconography 83
Following the example and success of these ventures, there were
many other small presses which were set up all over the Black Town,
around the same locality as the Bat-tala trade, to handle much the
same demand for prints, illustrations, designs and religious pictures.
I t is here that the barriers between ' artist ' and ' artisan ' , between art­
school-bred styles and techniques and indigenous picture production
often dissolved. Presumably, most of these little presses were not the
enterprise of art-school artists, but emerged out of the milieu of the
indigenous printing trade, which had begun to fast adapt to new
techniques of lithography and chromolithography, and to the
Western principles oflight and shade, volume and life study. S tarting
from the other end of the spectrum, these presses also had similar
claims to be ' Art Studios ', and circulated a roughly similar fare of
' realistic ' pictures on Hindu religious and mythological themes,
where the definition of' realism ' , like the achievement of it, remained
rather loose. We have examples in the lithographs produced by the
Kansaripara Art Studio, the Chorebagan Art Studio (which later
came to call itself the Hindu Art Academy on the basis of i ts
reputation of producing Hindu mythological pictures) , and the
Chitra-Shilpi Company at Bowbazar.

T H E B O O M I N G M A R K E T F O R P I C T U R E -P R I N T S A N D B O O K

I L L USTRATI O N S

By and large, what sustained this new crop of printing presses and art
studios was the demand for coloured picture-prints and illustrations
in books and journals. The field of book and magazine illustration, in
particular, reveals the names of a number of lithographers and
engravers, many of whom came from outside the School of Art. Here
again, new styles and techniques and men with a greater professional
standing in the field impinged on the same world as the Bat-tala book
trade, harbouring a general change in the visual tastes and
preferences of Bengal's reading public. I n one of the first illustrated
Bengali journals, Rajendralal Mitra's Vividhartha Sangraha, begun in
r 85 2 , the printing and art-work were fully a European en terprise ­
the finely hatched, intricate and realistic illustrations, here, stand in
sharp contrast to the rough-shod engravings of the contemporary
Bat- tala prints. However, in the r 8sos itself, there appeared one of
the first Bengali books with lithographed illustrations/2 where the
12
Bashpiya Kat o Bharatbarshiya Railway (Steam Engine and the Indian Railway) (Calcutta,
I 855)- referred to in Kamal Sarkar, ' Bangia Baier Chhabi, I 8 I 6- I 9 I 6 '.
 The making of a new ' Indian ' art
pictures and maps were the work of a local lithographer, Gopal­
chandra Chakravarty.
Girindrakumar Datta ( 1 84 I - I go8) was an unusual example, at
the time, of a professional illus trator and lithographer who came
from the wealthy Hatkhola Datta family of Calcutta, and combined
·
ar.t istic inclinations with a literary flair. There are no indications of
his being a student of the School of Art, and the source ofhis training
in lithography remains uncertain. He emerged on the scene with his
illustrations for Tekchand Thakur's famous satire, Alaler Ghare Dulal
(in the second edition of 1 8 70) . Caricature became his main genre of
work, as evident in the drawings and prints he made for the first
Bengali satire magazine, Basantak, published during 1 874-75 by the
artist's elder brother, Prananath Datta, one of the great Bengali
entrepreneurs in printing and publishing. 1 3 Basantak was modelled on
Punch, with a wide ran pe of caricatures directed against the British
Raj, the squabbles within Indian gentry politics, the ways of
westernised Indians, the etiquettes and conventions they were aping,
and the general degeneration of religion and morality in con­
temporary society (Figure 2 0 ) . These caricatures were to anticipate
the later humorous and satirical sketches ofGaganendranath Tagore.
In the 1 87os, however, the line of distinction between a satire
magazine like Basantak and many of the humorous Bat-tala publi­
cations is not too clear, although the satire in the former was more
subtle, sophisticated and overtly political. I n contrast to the Bat-tala
book illustrations, and in still sharper contrast to the satirical images
ofKalighat, the Basantak pictures showed a clear attempt at a realistic
depiction of faces, figures and backgrounds. But the realism was
crude and undeveloped ; the quality of printing was still quite
shod<2ly ; and the Bengali and English captions to the cartoons marred
by unformed lettering and spelling errors. Prananath Datta's printing
press, from which Basantak was published, was located at Garanhata,
the centre of the Bat- tala book and picture trade. And the illustrator's
name was registered as Girindrakumar Datta of Nimtola ( the place
of Girindrakumar and Prananath's ancestral home ) , in much the
same fashion as the Bat- tala engravers stated their names along with
the locality in which they worked . 14
Nonetheless, Girindrakumar Datta, by virtue of his social back­
ground, clearly had a greater standing as an ' artist ' . Among his
13 Manmathanath Ghosh, ' Basantak ' - Manasi o Marmabani, Ashvin I 333/ I 926.
14 Basantak, Vol. I , 1 28o-8 1 j i 874, Vol. 2, 1 28 1-82 / 1 875·
 Indigenous commercial enterprise and a new iconography 85

--J-----�-----·----

Fig. 20. Girindrakumar Datta, Caricature of the European drive against nudity and
obscenity in Indian society (lithograph) - Basantak, 1 875·

patrons was the household of Maharaj a Jatindra Mohun Tagore.

The Maharaja, in keeping with his interest in Bengali drama and
theatre, commissioned from him a set of illustrations for Michael
,
Madhusudan Datta s play Tilottama Sambhava. There are also
references to and descriptions of other water-colour illustrations
painted by Girindrakumar for Michael Madhusudan's epic poetry.15
The artist's main career, however, seemed to have been linked with
the illustrations he made for Basantak. And, side by side with his
15 Manmathanath Ghosh, PP- I 5 I -53-
86 The making of a new ' Indian ' art
profession in illustration and lithography, he began teaching printing
and ' applied arts ' in a private school he set up in I 8 76, called The
Albert Temple of Science and School of Technical Arts. The
distinguished family background, the patronage of Maharaj a J a tin-
·

dra Mohun Tagore, and the links with the high literary circle of
Michael Madhusudan Datta elevated Girindrakumar's status in the
art world - yet, at the same time, Basantak and The Albert Temple of
Science and the School of Technical Arts grounded his success
squarely on the commercial art market of the city.
Even as the market for lithography boomed, the earlier pre­
existing genre of wood engraving continued to have a hold over the
illustration of Bengali books and journals, especially the cheaper and
less sophisticated publications. There were flourishing illustrators
and entrepreneurs in this field, right through the late nineteenth and
early twentieth century. For example, there was Trailokyanath Deb
( I 84 7-I 928) , who set up his own engraving studio at College Square,
and supplied illustrations for a number of Bengali books and
jo urnals/6 and Priyagopal Das ( I 870- I 928) , who made a lucrative
career in engraved illustrations and portraits. His illustrations
appeared in a number of Bengali journals and children's magazines
of the late nineteenth century, such as Sakha o Sakhi and Mukul
( Figure 2 I ) ; and it was he who made engravings of Dakshinaranj an
l\llitra Maj umdar's own illustrations for his famous book of fairy
tales, Thakurdadar ]huli.17
None of these illustrators are known to be products of the
Government School of Art, Calcutta. They were either trained
privately by European printers or, more likely, they joined as young
apprentices in the many engraving and lithography presses mush­
rooming in the city. The pictures they produced and the publications
in which these appeared formed an important middle tier in the
current scenario of printing and publishing, standing mid-way
between the expensive vVestern publications, many of them printed
abroad, and the Bat-tala turn-over of cheap religious texts, almanacs,
pamphlets and popular fiction.
From the I 87os and I 88os, many who had been trained in the
School of Art were also moving into the same circuit of providing
illustrations for books and journals. One of the most concerted of such

16
Kamal Sarkar, ' Bangia Boier Chhabi ' .
17
Dakshinaranjan Mitra :Vlajumdar, Thakurdadar Jhuli ( Cal c utta , r go8) .
 Indigenous commercial enterprise and a new iconography 87

' � -<}� TfSJr;

� .?;�� �"!-'
I ��
'0 "'

·�
C J m:t7l IS
¥ -dl ••
" 'i!� .....
•

Fig. 21. Priyagopal Das, Title-page illustration (wood-engraving) - Mukul, r 8g5.

enterprises was the setting up of the Artist's Press and the publication
of Shilpa-pushpanjali ( I 885-86) . The Artist's Press also designed and
p rinted a number of other illustrated books, carrying a similar range
of mythological pictures for which Shilpa-pushpanjali had been much
appreciated - among these were Biharilal Sarkar's Dasha Mahavidya
( I 88 5 ) and his editions of the Ramayana ( I 8g I ) , and the Mahabharata
( I go2) published by the Maharaj a of Burdwan .18
18
Kamal Sarkar, ' Bangia Boier Chhabi '.
88 The making of a new ' Indian ' art

.
.: (' . .....�(
,.,

Fig. 2 2 . Krishnahari Das, ' The Kalki Avatara ', illustration in Raja Sourindro
Mohun Tagore, The Seven Principal 1\1usical Notes of the Hindus (Calcutta, 1 8g2 ) .

Even in their careers and prospects as book illustrators, the

patronage of the wealthy families of Bengal formed an important
support for many of these artists. The Tagores of Pathuriaghata and
Jorasanko provided a substantial source of demand for lithographed
illustrations. All of Raja Sourindro Mohun Tagore's books on
classical Hindu music and mythology carried illustrations by
Krishnahari Das, an ex-student of the School of Art under Principal
Locke19 (Figure 2 2 ) . While working on Sourindro Mohun Tagore's
books, he was also commissioned to illustrate some publications of the
19 See, for example, the illustrations in Six Principal Ragas with a Brief View of Hindu Music
(Calcutta, I 8 7 7 ) , The Eight Principal Rasas of the Hindus (Calcutta, I 88o) or The Seven Principal
Musical Notes of the Hindus (Calcutta, I 8g2) .
 Indigenous commercial enterprise and a new iconography 8g
Geological Survey of India and Sir George King's multi-volume
work, Annals of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Calcutta ( I 88 7 ) . 2° For
Kri�hnahari Das, the illustrations for Raja Sourindro Mohun
Tagore's books must have carried the same weight, prestige and
publicity as these other commissions. But, while the one involved
mainly the art-school derived skills of accurate and painstaking
draughtsmanship and refined printing, the visualisation of Hindu
Avatars, Ragas and Raginis meant working out a new set of I ndian
iconographic imagery. In these, the artist's training in life study,
shading and anatomy drawing combined with his careful adherence
to traditional costumes and iconographic prescripts. These expensive
publications in English were clearly intended for an exclusive
readership ; but the illustrations matched the tune of the more
popular, commercial varieties of I ndian art that had captured the
market.
Overall, to be commissioned to produce ill�strations for the
Tagore family's books and magazines was considered prestigious and
often the artists concerned were linked by closer social and personal
connections with the family. This was true of both Harinarayan Bose
and Harishchandra Haldar. The former, an ex-student of the School
of Art, was appointed teacher at the school in I 8g I and later became
head master in I go6, following the retirement of Annada Prasad
Bagchi. On the basis ofhis close acquaintance and friendship with the
Tagores of Jorasanko, Harinarayan Bose became a private tutor of
drawing, painting and lithography to his contemporary, Gaganen­
dranath Tagore. Among his book illustrations, his best-known works
were the lithographs he made for Satyendranath Tagore's history
and travelogue of Bombay, Bombai-chitra ( I 888) . The portraits of the
Adil Shahi kings of Bijapur, based as they were on eighteenth­
century Deccani miniatures, stuck to a miniature format and retained
the elaborate designing of ornan1ents and costumes. The archi­
tectural a�d landscape studies, said to have been done from
photographs, were more pronouncedly ' photographic ', in their
sharp accuracy of proportion, perspective and details, and in their
heavy tonal gradations.
Harishchandra Haldar had also been a student of painting and
lithography at the School of Art in the I 8 7os, and his social
connections with the Tagores seemed even more intimate. 21 Before he
20
Papers relating to the . . . Schools of Art, pp. 86-87.
21
He is among the seven early Calcutta artists discussed in Kamal Sarkar, Shilpi Saptak.
go The making of a new ' Indian ' art

Fig. 23. Harishchandra Haldar, Illustration to Bankim Chandra Chatterjee's

' Bande-Mataram ' Balak, I 885.
-

made his mark in book illustrations, he was commissioned to do the

stage decorations and props for the plays that were staged at
Jorasanko. In time, he became closely involved with the new
children's magazine, Balak, edited by Gyanadanandini Debi. His
lithographed illustrations in the journal were all cast within an
attempt at a realistic style, with ' life-like ' depictions of faces, figures
and landscapes, and a predominance of shading and toning. Some
were illustrations of Rabindranath's children's verse, some depicted
narrative episodes from serialised novels, such as Rabindranath's
Rajarshi, others were sketches of Bengal's riverine landscape to
accompany articles like ' Barisaler patra ' . One of Harishchandra
Haldar's most important illustrations in this magazine was the one
which accompanied the. lyrics and musical notation of Bankim
Chandra Chatterj ee's ' Bande-Mataram '22 (Figure 2 3 ) . I t was one of
the first identifiably ' nationalist ' pictures produced as a visual
appendage to the new nationalist anthem. In a shabby line drawing,
that smacks of Victorian baroque design, a mass of swirling branches,
interspersed with flowers, fruits and cherubs, converge around a
22 Pratibhasundari Debi's series on the words and notations of songs, ' Gaan Abhyas ' - Balak,
Jaishtha r 2g2/ r 88s).
 Indigenous commercial enterprise and a new iconography gr

1, 4('t1f tttr.J.
.,_... .. -ttf>� •f1f f"fCI
� .. .. t

tf•· 9ftv,
·�ti 'ff\1� � �t'll �

"fl �lf�) �cttt'fj rstf�'

i �tift'lf��tt� ��'-f'f� � �t'lJ� 6lfCI I
c.;rf�t� Clff�t\5
��f� t;f�c�
�� �t'a{i·�� ;��n �� -!l • ., tf <1' ,,

Fig. 24. Abanindranath Tagore, Illustration to Dwij endranath Tagore's ' Swapna­
prayan ' - Sadhana, 1 st issue, r 8g r -g2.
 Ihe making of a new ' Indian ' art
centre figure of a mother and child : an awkward symbol of the
Indian motherland. In the same journal also appeared the artis-t's
illustrations to Bankim Chandra's militant nationalist novel, Ananda-
maM.
·

The turn of the century also saw the emergence of Abanindrana�h

Tagore in his early role as an illustrator, working within the same
range of styles and techniques. His illustrations for his first book,
Shakuntala, were lithographed by Debendranath Dhar at his art
studio and press called the Indian Art Cottage. 23 His sketches also
appeared in the journal, Sadhana, illustrating Dwij endranath Ta­
gore's poem, ' Swapnaprayan ' and Rabindranath's poems, ' Badhu '
and ' Bimbabati ' ( Figure 24) .24 These drawings were all lithographed
for the journal by Ishwari Prasad Varma, a painter belonging to an
old lineage of painters from Delhi and Patna, who was later to be
recruited by Principal E. B. Havell to teach ' Indian painting ' in the
Calcutta School of Art. The illustrations followed the standard
pattern of the time : a crude naturalism of faces and figures, a rough
sketchy quality to the drawing, an emphasis on shading and tonal
modelling, and a strong hint of Victorian imagery in the motifs of a
crescent moon, floating clouds and a winged angel (personifying
night and nocturnal dreams) , descending on the sleeping figure of a
man. The very names of Abanindranath Tagore and Ishwari Prasad
Varma anticipate the rise of the new movement to recreate an
' Indian-style ' of painting, that came to dominate the art scene in
Calcutta in the first decade of the twentieth century. But, clearly, in
the 1 8gos, both Ishwari Prasad Varma and Abanindranath were
functioning within the existing circuit of lithography and book
illustration that had taken over the art market. Ishwari Prasad,
diversifying fro m the traditional family skills of painting, had picked
up the new, more marketable skills oflithography and print-making.
And Abanindranath's pictures in Sadhana also fit into the general
mould of such literary and other illustrations that had become the
standard type of a new, widely marketed urban art.
23 . Abanindranath Tagore, Shakuntala (Calcutta, r 8g5).
24 Sadhana, first issue, Agrahayan-Poush, r 2g8j r 8g r-g2.
 Indigenous commercial enterprise and a new iconography 93

' '
THE INTRUSION AND RAMIFI CATI O N S O F A REALISTIC

ST Y L E : T H E E V O L U T I O N O F A N E W I N DI A N I C O N O G R A P H Y

This whole output of illustrations and picture prints made for a

changed genre of popular, commercial art in Calcutta in the late
nineteenth century. The cen tral feature of the transformation was
embodied in the arrival of a new ' realism ' that dramatically
overhauled the existing scope and format of popular pictures. The
coming of photography had significantly expanded the demand and
scope for representation in a picture. Large Academic oil paintings,
with their magical potentials of tactile illusionism, held their sway in
the exclusive arena of ' art ' ; simultaneously, on a wider scale, the
proliferation of photographs, Western engravings and book illus­
trations generated a spreading taste for real-life illusions and
naturalised representation in a picture. While oil as paint matter lent
itself to the simulation of substances, to a sense of touch, the
phot_ographic structuring of light and shade in other reproductive
mediums could also produce similar sensations. Realism, flowing
from such material possibilities of paint and technique became ' a
way of appropriating the world, [of] saturating the consciousness with
i t ' , of establishing ' at the same time the material presence of the
subj ect and the metaphysical status of the obj ective world ' . 25 Yet,
' realism ', in the complex and complete sense of an art movement that
culminated in nineteenth-century Europe in an artist like Gustave
Courbet, does not have any parallel in I ndia. Over the late nineteenth
century, the term in I ndia came to signify primarily a kind of
' enabling technique ', a way of adapting Western means and an
' improved ' mode of representation to I ndian effects . I t involved
mainly an adaptation to certain Academic conventions of European
painting : an adaptation ranging all the way from portraits to
narrative allegories. 26 And, as I will argue, this ' realism ' was to be
internalised and accommodated within the pictorial potentials of
I ndian literature and mythology. I t produced, in the process, a new
iconography for Indian visual arts : a form and typology that were
quite markedly ' I ndian ' , notwithstanding their Western antece­
dents, and peculiar to the adj ustments and interactions that pressed
upon the I ndian art scene of the time.
In Calcutta, the production of portraits, landscape views, city­
scapes and architectural studies offered the best scope for ' realism '
25 Geeta Kapur, ' Ravi Varma : Representational Dilemmas of a Nineteenth-Century Indian
Painter ' , Journal of Arts and Ideas, Nos. r 7- r 8, r ggo, p. 6o. 26 ibid. , p. 6 r .
94 The making of a new ' Indian ' art

Fig. 25. Portrait ofH. H. Locke, Principal of the Calcutta School ofArt (li thograph)
-Shilpa-pushpanjali, r 886.

- for the flaunting of superior techniques of representation and

reproduction. This range of pictures stood as obvious substitutes for
photographs. It is here that the demands for photographic realism
were at their strongest, and the \tVestern conventions of life-study,
shading and perspective most effectively brought into play. vVhile
wood and metal engravings created a sense of density and volume
through fine hatchings, the use of the lithostone contributed to softer
and subtler tonal values and greater photographic effects oflight and
shade. This was used to its most sophisticated effects in portraits. In
Shilpa-pushpanjali, the full-page lithograph portraits, ranging from
British royalty and officials, to contemporary Bengali celebrities, to
 Indigenous commercial enterprise and a new iconography 95

fig. 26. Portrait of Dwarakanath Tagore (lithograph, c. r 878 by the Calcutta Art
Studio ) .

historical personalities like Shivaji and Aurangzeb, were the most

realistic and the most akin to photographs ( Figure 25) . The portrait
prints circulated by the Calcutta Art Studio since 1 8 78-79 also fitted
the same standards, exploiting effectively the grainy texture of the
lithostone, and catering to the smallest details of facial expression,
costumes and surrounding accessories. In the portrait of Dwara­
kanath Tagore, for example (Figure 2 6 ) , we find a replication of the
pomp and poise of oil portraits, along with all the sumptuous details
of an embroidered shawl and an ornately carved hookah.
These lithographed portraits, we find, carried the strongest stamp
of art-school training and the VVestern Academic style - in the new
milieu of commercial art and mass picture production, they probably
g6 The making of a new ' Indian ' art
stood as the most sophisticated products of I ndian artists and
printers. However, the market was fast expanding for a variety of
.
other kinds of pictures and illustrations in books and journals :
cartoons, cover and page designs and illustrations to poems and
stories. Moving directly into the same market of the Bat- tala printi'ng
and publishing trade, these kinds of pictures were more widely in
demand and found a large circulation amidst various strata of the
Bengali reading public. Here, the same line can be drawn through
Girindrakumar Datta's satirical sketches in Basantak, the wood­
engraved illustrations in children's journals like Sakha o Sakhi or
Mukul, and the more high-brow literary illustrations of Barish­
chandra Haldar or Abanindranath Tagore (Figures 20-24) . In all of
these, the attempts at naturalistic representation remained crude and
unformed. Yet, in the prominent use of shading, in the evocation of
volume and perspective, and in the identifiably ' life-like ' appear­
ances of people and scenes, these illustrations had made a clean break
from the conventions of the Kalighat and Bat- tala pictures - and lay
at the centre of the pervasive change that had occurred in popular
visual tastes by the late nineteenth century, in favour of ' realistic '
pictures. The influence on these of European Academic painting and
book illustrations was also evident in the allegorical images of poetic
muses and winged angels, in the Victorian appearances of women
with open tresses and billowing drapery, in the cherub-like faces,
sailor scarves and frilly frocks of children, and in the typically English
pastoral scenes of flower-filled meadows.
Religious and mythological pictures, of the type popularised by the
Calcutta Art S tudio and Shilpa-pushpanjali constituted the most
important category of popular, commercial art. I t is in this sphere of
pictures that we can trace the most significant circularity of tastes and
styles, running through the whole gamut of mass picture production
of the late nineteenth cen tury. The Bat-tala engravings of the I 86os
and I 87os, with their crude daubs of colour and stylised images, stood
at the low end of the spectrum, representing the more traditional
iconography ; while, by the I 8gos, the oleographs of Raj a Ravi
Varma's mythological pictures marked its high point, being projected
as the most distinctive ' Indian ' art of the times. New gradations and
hierarchies were continuously being created, in terms of the relative
realistic finesse of faces, figures and background settings. Though the
main appeal of these religious and mythological pictures lay in their
handling of traditional I ndian themes, their new status relied largely
on the extent to which they appropriated the conventions ofWestern
Fig. 2 7 . Savitri and Satyavan (chromolithograph, c. 1 878-8o by the Calcutta Art Studio) .
Fig. 28. Nala-Damayanti (chromolithograph, c. 1 878-8o by the Calcutta Art Studio).
 Indigenous commercial enterprise and a new iconography 99

Fig. 2 9 . Saraswati ( chromolithograph, c. 1 87 7-78 by the Calcutta Art Studio) .

Academic Realism and could compare with the history and neo­
classical paintings of Europe. The appearance on the market of the
' Hindu Mytho-pictures ' of the Calcutta Art Studio at the end of the
1 8 7os augured the most significant break ( Figures 2 7 , 28, 29) .
roo The making of a new ' Indian ' art
Carrying with them the pronounced stamp of art-school training and
a ' realistic ' style, these pictures equid be immediately graded above
all the existing varieties of religious pictures produced at Kalighat or
Bat-tala. And they marked a new pervasive trend of' realistic ' I ndian
iconography that found its culmination in the oleographs of Ravi
Varma and Bamapada Banerjee.
The involvement of established ' artists ' like Annada Prasad
Bagchi, Phanibhushan Sen and Nobokumar Biswas in the venture
automatically boosted the social standing of the ' Mytho-pictures '.
But, of greater importance, here were certain clear identifiers of
improved printing techniques and a realistic Western style. These
introduced within the mythological narrative a novel material
presence and the sense of a live dramatic enactment. The pictures still
contained many crudities of composition, colouring and figure
drawing. The realism was often most naive in the conceptualisation
of figures - in striking contrast to the naturalistic finesse of the
portraits, the figures in these mythological compositions tended to
have dumpy anatomies, oversized heads and large expressionless eyes
(contrast Figures 26 and 2 7 ) . But the new style made the most
obvious difference in the distinctly three-dimensional quality and the
sense of volume and perspective it lent to each composition. The flat
pictorial space was given depth and dimension, allowing the eye to
focus first on the front-stage figures and then look beyond into an
imaginary receedi ng distance. The dense use of light and shade
helped evoke the roundness of bodies, and the tactile feel of flesh,
muscle and silk. As the forms became more realistic, the ep.isodes from
mythology were also located now in more tangible and atmospheric
settings of palaces and landscapes. While the palace backdrops
grafted on the appearance and decor of contemporary rich homes,
landscapes emulated a stereotyped Western model of distan t moun­
tains, thick forests, rippling lakes and deep coloured skies.
The naturalism of figures and landscapes apart, the affinities with
European history and allegorical paintings would crop up in various
other directions. For example, the narrative unfolding of a scene
moved, at times, to a dramatic pitch through heightened chiaruscuro
and theatrical postures and expressions. This can be seen in the
picture of Savitri and the dead Satyavan, where a single shaft of light
runs through a dark forest, highlighting a huge, overpowering figure
of Yama (the god of death) with his golden mace (Figure 2 7 ) . The
dark night backdrop, filled with shadowy contours of struggling
ghosts and spirits, suggests an influence of the mystical engravings of
 Indigenous commercial enterprise and a new iconography I oI

Blake or of biblical scenes of ' The Las t Judgement ' . The posturing
and modelling of figures would also show some telling influences of
European imagery. I n the picture of ' Nala-Damayanti ', the figure of
the sleeping Damayanti, half draped in a saffron robe, could well
have been modelled on a Venus (Figure 2 8 ) . Other vivid examples
can be seen in the figures of forest maidens in a scene of ' Sita being
rescued from Sri Lanka ' ; in the ' Oriental Cupid ' ( N : iadana) in a
scene of the breaking of Shiva's meditation by Parvati ; or in the
strange apparitions of Lakshmi, Saraswati and Kartick floating
down from the sky like angels in a picture of ' The Homecoming of
Goddess Durga ' .
Another important novelty of these Calcutta Art Studio litho­
graphs was the introduction of colour, not in superimposed blobs of
red or green, but in a greater variety, as an integral part of the
compositions. I nitially, black and white shaded drawings would be
printed from hand-operated machines at Tiretty Bazaar, and then
carefully painted in with water-colours by artists in the studio.
However, within two to three years, the studio acquired a lithography
machine in its own premises, from which prints began to be taken
directly in colour. 27 The use of colour was usually at its .most
naturalistic in the landscape settings, with a soft blending of greys,
blues, greens and browns. But, only too often, the colouring took on
loud, fantasised overtones, indulging in the shocking blue complex­
ions of Rama or Krishna, the crimson of sunset skies, the pinks and
purples of silken costumes or the glittering gold of ornaments.
Colour in these pictures was clearly stepping beyond the para­
meters of the real and temporal into a world of mythic exuberance.
This underlines the reverse side of the process of change, whereby
realism itself suffered many dilutions as it was accommodated within
existing iconographic conventions. vVhat seemed as alien Western
influences in I ndian pictures were indigenised and made to serve
different ends within the framework of popular iconography. These
Calcutta Art S tudio pictures came to stand half way between ' art '
and icons, falling more within the realm of the latter. They used and
appropriated certain cognisable features of the \tV estern Academic
style to lend the gods a greater material credence and to create its
own stereotypes of mythic fantasy. So there emerged, in these
pictures, a fixed idealised prototype for female divinities (fair, plump,
drooly-eyed women, in pseudo-medieval Raj put costumes, flaunting

27 Information from Bishwanath Biswas of the Calcutta Art Studio.

1 0 '2 The making of a new ' Indian ' art

Fig. go. Radha and Krishna ( chromolithograph by the Kansaripara Art Studio) .

gold from head to foot) , just as there also evolved a set type of celestial
setting for divine episodes (landscapes with flaming skies and lakes
filled with swans and lotuses) (Figure 29) . And these gaudily coloured
prints set the model for an entire new genre of chromolithographs on
Hindu religion and mythology produced by the numerous small
presses of the surrounding locality - the Kansaripara Art S tudio, the
Hindu Art Academy at Chorebagan, the Chitra-Shilpi Company at
Bowbazar Street, or the Imperial Art Cottage at Pathuriaghata. 2 8
28
Such prints exist in private collections, like that of R. P. Gupta in Calcutta, and in the
V & A. Some lithostones and prints of the Imperial Art Cottage were discovered in the
graphics department of Rabindra Bharati University, Calcutta.
 Indigenous commercial enterprise and a new iconography r 03

The kind of' Mytho-pictures ' mass produced by these small presses
tended to be cruder than the Calcutta Art Studio prints. Such
pictures had their only claims to ' realism ' in the solidity and
· roundness that were imparted to figures through hard and heavy
shading ; they provide vivid examples of the highly fan tasised
dimensions colour, costume and landscape would take on in
mythological scenes ( Figure 30) . They were obviously the products of
hands that did not have the same training i n life-study and art-school
work and of presses that lacked the same improving facilities of
printing. Many of the pictures produced by the Hindu Art Academy
or the Chitra Shilpi Company, for example, continued to be hand
painted throughout this period . Yet, there are a number of instances
where a Calcutta Art Studio lithograph can be barely differentiated
from this other mass of religious litho-prints. The intrusion of
' gentlemen ' artists and their superior stylistic acumen in the arena of
mass art generated a parallel trend towards homogenisation. I n the
profusion of loud colours, in the cheap tinsel glitter of ornaments and
costumes, in the flamboyance of palace interiors and landscape
scenarios, these pictures became the standardised ingredient of
popular tastes. The line separating the work of the established artists
of the Calcutta Art Studio from that of the lesser artists of
Kansaripara and Chorebagan became very tenuous.
I n the I 88os, these Calcutta Art Studio pictures found their most
important successor in the illustrations of the Ramayana and the
Mahabharata that appeared in Shilpa-pushpanJali ( Figure 3 I ) , where
the artists came, again, from a known background of art-school
training and teaching. There was, once more, a definite hiatus
between the refinement of the journal's portrait-prints and the
rough-shod naturalism of these mythological pictures (compare
Figures 25 and 3 I ) . In the latter, the concerns with accurate life study
and a meticulous finish took second-place to the intrinsic appeal of
the mythological narrative and the grandeur of costumes and setting.
And even as the standards of composition and figure-drawing grossly
slipped, a broad front of' realism ' was maintained by an emphasis on
shading, toning and three-dimensional modelling of anatomies. This
same uneasy link-up between a half-baked naturalism and I ndian
iconography was also true of the illustrations made by Krishnahari
Das for Raj a Sourindro Mohun Tagore's books on Hindu musical
notations and the Hindu pantheon. Yet, notwithstanding their
crudities and weaknesses of drawing, these pictures of Krishnahari
1 04 The making of a new ' Indian ' art

Fig. 3I. 'Janmashthami ' : Vasudeva escaping with the child, Krishna (lithograph)
Shilpa-pushpanjali, I 886.
-

Das were considered worthy of accompanying the prest1g10us

publications of Raja Sourindro Mohun Tagore. And the illustrations
in Shilpa-pushpanjali were raved about by enthusiastic readers and
considered comparable to ' European pictures ' . 29
By the last decade of the nineteenth century there were further
shifts and progressions in the taste for new kinds of I ndian pictures.
29 Extracts of contemporary newspaper reviews of the journal - Shilpa-pushpanjali, 1 st year,
I 293/ I 886, pp. 29 I -92.
 Indigenous commercial enterprise and a new iconography 1 05

Fig. 32. Ravi Varma, ' Hamsa Damayanti ' (Damayanti and the swan) , (oil, r 8gg) .

vVhat acted as a catalyst, this time, was the arrival of the oleographs
of Raja Ravi Varma's ' epic ' pain tings, issued from the artist's own
press near Bombay. A member of the royal household and aristocracy
of Travancore, and a self-taught painter of Western-style oils, Raja
Ravi Varma ( r 848- r go6) came to achieve unique eminence as the
foremost ' Indian artis t ' of the time. 3° From a successful career in
portrait painting, he moved to new heights of success as he branched
3° For a study of the artist's career and paintings, see - Balakrishna Nayar, Raja Ravi Varma
(Trivandrum, 1953) ; E. M . J. Veniyoor, Raja Ravi Varma, Trivandrum, r g 8 r ) ; T.
Guha-Thakurta, ' Westernisation and Tradition in South Indian Painting : the Case of Raja
Ravi Varma ', Studies in History, July-December, r g 86.
r o6 The making of a new ' Indian ' art

out into the genre of mythological compositions. I t was his ap­

plication of the Academic realistic conventions ofEuropean ' history '
painting to themes from .Hindu mythology which established his
main claims to fame. While it gave an unprecedented boost to the
patronage he received from the British and I ndian rich, 31 it also
seemed to have inexorably led him into the popular art market. The
artist has been convinced of the potential mass appeal of his pauranic
paintings by the brief viewing some of these pictures had before a
large public in Western India en route to the royal palace of
Baroda. 32 He was equally convinced of the need to ' improve '
popular taste by providing an alternative to the ' atrocious ' and
' debased ' varieties of cheap religious pictures that floated around the
market. 33 Such a combination of commercial and altruistic motives
culminated in 1 8g2 in the setting up of an oleography press, with
local German collaboration, in the outskirts of Bombay. Thus began
the mass production and a country-wide circulation of glossy colour
prints of Ravi Varma's pauranic pictures. Ravi Varma, the most
prestigious name in the emerging circles of Anglo-I ndian art, was
also transformed into the most popular symbol of mass art.
I n the range of mythological episodes they visualised, in the ' life­
like ' quality of the figures and their setting, in the dramatisation of
the narrative, and in the distinct touches of European history and
neo-classical paintings, the Ravi Varma oleographs completely
captured the market. Realism made its mark here with great flourish
and finish ; but, by the same process, the figures and scenes from myth
acquired dimensions that were heroic, larger than life and more
potently idealised. This was particularly true of the prototypes of
celestial and romantic heroines created by Ravi Varma, as in his
famous pictures of ' Shakuntala ' or ' Hamsa Damayanti ' (Figure
3 2 ) . Damayanti, for example, carries a contemporary cognisable
identity to which the viewers would have had immediate access. An
aristocratic, resplendently attired South I ndian lady, she stands in a
typical stately mansion with marble columns and stairs. At the same
time, her surface presence acquires a new dense underlayer of
meanings through the literary affiliations of the painting, and its
place within the contemporary revival of the Sanskrit kavya traditions.
31 Ravi Varma's mythological paintings, along with his portraits, came to fill the royal palaces
of Trivandrum, Mysore, Baroda, Udaipur and many other smaller princely states of
Western India. 32 Veniyoor, pp. 29-30.

33 Reminiscences of the artist's son, Rama Varma, as recorded in Balakrishna Nayar, pp.
1 2 2-23.
 Indigenous commercial enterprise and a new iconography r 07

Fig. 3 3 · Ravi Varma, ' Kamsa Maya ' (Kamsa and the divine illusion) (oil, c. 1888) .
A highly dramatised scene from the story of the birth of Krishna, where a divine
warning appears before the wicked uncle, Kamsa, who was plotting to kill the child
Krishna. The figure of Krishna's father Vasudeva (on the right) is clearly derived
from images of Christ in Renaissance and post-Renaissance European painting.
I 08 The making of a new ' Indian ' art

The presence of the mythical swan and Damayanti's stance and

expression transform her into an ideal of the romantic Nayika,
transporting her from her immediate environment to the world of the
epiCS.
A similar metamorphosis occurs in the figure of the love-lorn
Shakuntala, the heroine of Kalidasa's epic, Abhijnana Shakuntala, as
she appears in Ravi Varma's paintings, wrapped in romantic
thoughts and dreams, or glancing back at Dushyanta under the
pretext of picking a thorn from her foot. These very expressions and
gestures draw the viewer into the unfolding of the literary narrative,
inviting them to in terpret standard copy-book sceneries of trees and
mountains as the hermitage ofKanva-muni, and to place such scenes
within an imagined sequence of images and events. Such pictures
recreated in more intimate detail the splendour of costumes, the
atmospheric landscapes and the palatial settings, giving greater
weight to the stereotypes set by the Calcutta Art S tudio pictures.
Legends also took o n a more compulsive narrative force, as paintings
began to equate the thrill and drama of stage performances, with the
same theatrical gestures and expressions of figures and the use of
special lighting (example, Figure 33) . Plucked out of an onrunning
spectacle of episodes, these scenes appeared like frozen tableaux,
almost like stills from a moving film, arrested by a set of frozen gazes
and gestures. 34 The occasional obvious resemblances with Western
biblical paintings35 (Figure 34) did not detract from the appeal of
these pictures as I ndian sacred scenes. Rather, such affinities
probably even enhanced the status of these pictures with the more
westernised strata of the Indian middle classes.
Ravi Varma appeared to fit ideally the colonial prescriptions for a
new improved I ndian 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 r 8 76,36 and to the famous
speech of Lord Napier, Governor of Madras, of I 87 I on ' The Fine
Arts of I ndia ' , where he called on the new I ndian artists, trained in
the European style of painting, to enrich their ' superior ' skills with a
true stuffing of India : Indian people and costumes, I ndian land-
34 On the use of theatrical modes and props in Ravi Varma's paintings, see Geeta Kapur, pp.
66-67 .
35 See, for example, the Christ-like figure o f Vasudeva i n the painting, ' Kamsa Maya ' and in
several other paintings of the Krishna legend, or the composition of the painting, ' Krishna
Drishta ' (Figure 34) which is modelled completely on the scenes of the Adoration of the
Magi. 36 See pp. 64-65.
 Indigenous commercial enterprise and a new iconography r og

Fig. 34· Ravi Varma, ' Krishna Drish ta ' (The viewing of the infant Krishna) (oil,
r 888). A composition modelled closely on European biblical scenes of the Adoration
of the Magi.
I I0 The makin; of a nc-;L· ' Indian ' a, L

scapes, and age-old epic stories of the Ramayana and the Mahab­
harata. 37 At the same time, these paintings grew to be items of
nationalist pride, drawing the attention of Bengal's leading writers
and critics, and finding their way into exclusive journals like Sadhana,
Prabasi, Bharati and The Modern Review. Ravi Varma ' s proj ect
bolstered the central premises of both European Orientalism an.d
Indian nationalism. I n its selection of specific cameos from the
'
Ra1nayana, Mahabharata and Kalidasa's epics, it invoked and
reinforced a well-certified notion of I ndia'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 most lofty and lyrical values embedded in I ndian
literature and mythology. And, most important, Ravi Varma's
mythic personages, especially his heroines like Shakuntala or
Damayanti, came consciously to represent a Pan-Indian type ­
individualised, often regionally placeable, yet standing forth as
certain ideal national prototypes. 38 So, while they set out to purge
and reform popular tastes, Ravi Varma's mythological paintings
provided the I ndian 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 proj ected as the
epitome of a new ' artistic ' and ' Indian ' sensibility. 39 The ap­
preciation of the Ravi Varma pictures was balanced by a strong
critique of the Calcutta Art Studio variety of mythological pictures in
Bengal. I n striking contrast to these ' unfortunate ' pictures, Ravi
Varma's paintings were said to embody the right blend of lyrical
emotions and ideals with a sense of beauty of form and colour.40
It is around the reception ofRavi Varma's paintings in Bengal that
ideas were first raised and projected about how genuine ' Indian­
ness ' relied not merely on the content, but also on the form, spirit and
emotion of a painting. This coincided with the emergence of a new
wave of nationalist and self-awareness in I ndian art. A special
intellectual and aesthetic climate, concerned with a new definition of
' Indian-ness ', hoisted itself above the existing sphere of practice and
profession, patronage and market in the arts. However, the nature of
37 The speech is quoted in full in V. Nagam Aiya, The Travancore State Manual (Trivandrum,
1906), Vol. 3, pp. 268-7 1 .
38 The artist himself referred to his search for typical Pan-Indian faces and costumes for his
mythological figures, during his travels in northern and western India with the royal
entourage of Travancore.
39 Balendranath Tagore, ' Ravi Varma ' and ' Hindu Debdebir Chitra ' in Clzitra o Kavya
40
(Calcutta, 1 894), pp. 97-1 1 3 . ibid., pp. 97-99.
 Indigenous commerciaL enterprzse and a new iconography r r r

the artistic profession in late-nineteenth-century Calcutta, and the

structure of market and commercial opportunities, had already been
. producing a wide range of pictures that were certainly I ndian in
themes and content, and in the tastes and clientele to which they
catered . This art lacked any studied self-consciousness of being
' I ndian ' . It emerged out of the broad spectrum of Western training
in new styles and techniques, the familiarity with European painting,
sculpture and prints, and the general preponderance of photo­
graphic, realistic values in the visual tastes of the time. And it grew to
be a highly popular and widely circulated brand of Indian art,
cutting across the divide between ' artists ' and ' artisans ', and
between elite and popular tastes in pictures.
With Bengal's ' discovery ' of Ravi Varma's mythological paint­
ings, new aesthetic and nationalist connotations surrounded the
painting of themes from I ndian literature, religion and myths. Closer
to the ground, the Ravi Varma phenomenon coincided in Bengal
with a general option towards indigenous religious and literary
themes among established Western-style artists. There were all those
with art-school backgrounds who made their mark as illustrators in
the Bengali reading circles. There were also instances of artists like
Jamini Prakash Gangooly ( I 876- 1 953) , who came from the extended
Tagore family and received private training in oil painting from an
English artist, Charles Palmer. As a skilled oil painter, Jamini
Gangooly combined the painting of atmospheric riverscapes and
romantic scenes of peasant life with illustrations of the classical
Sanskrit play, Banabhatta's Kadambari, which he dramatised on the
model of European history paintings.41 (Figures 35, 36) . These
Kadambari paintings were displayed in an exhibition of Indian art
during the Calcutta session of the I ndian National Congress in 1 900 ;
and the same year, they appeared in the journal, Pradip, where they
were discussed and appreciated at length by Rabindranath Tagore.42
The Ravi Varma example had its closest parallel in Calcutta in the
case of Bamapada Banerjee. With an established reputation in
portrait painting in Northern India and Calcutta, he diversified into
painting themes from Hindu religion and mythology in oil, with the
specific intent of mass-marketing these pictures through oleograph
prints. The popular art market was obviously more lucrative than the
41 These Kadambari paintings of J. P. Gangooly were in the collection of Maharaja Jatindra
Mohun Tagore. On the work and career of the artist, see - ' Chitrakar J aminiprakash
Gangopadhyay , Bharati, Kartick 1 3 1 9/ 1 9 1 2 ; ::Vlanmathanath Chakravarty, ' Chitrashala ,
' '

Sahitya, Phalgun 1 32 1 / 1 9 1 5 .
42 Rabindranath Tagore, ' Kadambari Chitra ' Pradip, Magh 1 306/ 1 900.
-
Fig. 35· j . P. Gangooly, ' Wet Banks of the Ganges ' (oil, n.d . ) . An example of the type of misty riverscapes in
which the artist specialised.
Fig. 36. J . P. Gangooly, ' The Talking Parrot, Vaishampayan ', illustration of a scene from Banabhatta's
Kadambari (oil, c. r 8g8-gg) .
 Thr- muAitt!!, of a new · Jndian ' arL

AURJUN AND URVASEE

Fig. 3 7 · Bamapada Banerjee, Arjuna and Urvashi (oleograph, r 8go) .

patronage of a select elite. The glossy colour print, at one level, held
greater potentials than an oil painting, for it could both replicate its
tactile illusionist style and permeate its aura among a vast public.43
In 1 8go, even before the Ravi Varma pictures appeared on the
market, the first of Bamapada Banerj ee's mythological paintings,
' Arj una and Urvashi ' and ' Abhimanyu taking leave ofUttara ', were
sent to Germany to be oleographed44 (Figures 37, 38) . Parallel to the

43 In fact, these oleographs were also called oilettes and used oil-based paint as a printing
medium.
44 Gyanendra Mohan Das, ' Prabasi Bangalir Katha ' ; Kamal Sarkar, Blzarater Bhaskar o
Chitrashilpi, pp. 1 35-36.
 Indigenous commercial enterprise and a new iconography I I 5

Fig. 38. Bamapada Banerjee, Abhimanyu and Uttara (oil, c. 1 8go) .

Ravi Varma prints, these oleographs poured into the Calcutta market
through the r goos, vying for attention in the same journals.
Barring minor fluctuations in levels of sophistication and finish,
these pictures fit into the same mould of the Calcutta Art Studio
lithographs and the Ravi Varma paintings. As in the Art Studio
lithos, the drawing of figures is often distinctly disproportionate, with
stiff postures and flat expressions. The grandeur of costumes and the
flamboyance of colours held cen tral place in these pictures, offset by
copybook landscapes and plush palace interiors. Most of them could
not match up to the Ravi Varma pictures, in the poise of individual
figures or in the dramatisation of actions and episodes. However, they
I I 6 The making of a new ' Indian ' art

came to centre around much the same stereotype of the limpid-eyed,

coquettish female figure, of which the image of U rvashi is a typical
example. In such cloying sentimental images, the woman appeared
in a dual role of temptress and goddess. While the fleshing out of her
body in the new illusionist techniques enhanced her erotic appeal, ·

her sexuality was continuously legitimised and contained by her

identity as wife, mother or devi within the mythological narrative.
Repeated through the whole gamut of paintings of Ravi Varma,
Bamapada Banerjee and the like, these goddesses and mythic heroines
became the most potent ingredient of the new Indian iconography.
This Ravi Varma/Bamapada Banerj ee model of Indian painting
continued to flourish in Calcutta through the subsequent years,
spanning various overlapping layers of ' high ' and ' popular ' art.
With the turn of the century, Calcutta was seized by a new wave of
nationalist aesthetics and a new movement of' Indian-style ' painting.
In hindsight, these developments were seen to involve a momentous
turning-point in the history of modern Indian art. But the break
appears much less clear and sharp at the turn of the century. The new
group was still to be sifted out of the varied strands of training and
influences, professional successes and commercial outlets, artistic
identities and status discussed so far. The lines that would demarcate
the contours of the new art movement and differentiate it from all
other work of Indian artists around it were yet to be clearly defined.
And the divisions that were projected between ' Western-style ' and
' Indian-style ' , between ' real ' artists and professional, commercial
artists, remained tentative throughout the following decades.
The sense of divide was more ideological than actual ; and the way
in which this divide was constructed and propagated became central
in the formulation of a new category of ' Indian ' art and a new
language of aesthetic discourse. The shift and the self-definition of the
nationalist art movement was most explicit in the realm of thought
and a�titudes. The next section moves away from the direct sphere of
the practice of the arts to study the broader ideological and discursive
apparatus that defined and altered the terms of that practice. The
transformations in tastes, training and techniques were situated
within a range of new ideas and concerns about Indian art and
aesthetics that had been evolving in Bengal since the end of the
nineteenth century. And the specific nature of the nationalist
intervention in Indian art is placed within this complex history of
interaction between changing ideologies and styles, between thought
and practice.
 CHAPTER 4

Tradition and nationalism in Indian art :

art-histories and aesthetic discourse in Bengal in
the late nineteenth century

The late nineteenth century saw a groundswell of changing ideas

about art and tradition and a mounting aesthetic self-awareness
among the Bengali middle class. The cultivation of a new ' artistic '
taste became vital to the creation and consolidation of a hegemonic
middle-class culture : it was essential to its sense of exclusiveness, to its
proj ect of self-improvement and modernisation, and its aspirations
for leadership. The need to recover and rebuild a taste for ' art ' in
society evolved out of the already well-developed literary culture of
Bengal. Changing tastes and opinions about art came to ride on a
swelling tide of magazine literature, which reproduced prints of
paintings and carried a large range of articles, debates and critical
notes concerning the past, present and future of I ndian art. I n the
early twentieth century, a new motivated trend of nationalism would
sharply polemicise the vocabulary of ' tradition ' and ' Indian art '
among a select group of artists and critics, who claimed a monopoly
over their preservation. But the study of the history and nature of
I ndian art, and a sense of pride in this heritage, had its beginnings in
some pioneering work of the nineteenth century ; and the first waves
of nationalism generated its own searching preoccupations with
artistic achievement and progress. This chapter surveys some of these
early shifts in taste and emerging concerns about Indian art and
aesthetics, that preceded the orchestration of a new intent and
ideology within art discourse in Bengal in the early twentieth
century.

I I7
I I 8 The making of a new ' Indian ' art

THE NINETEENTH- CENTURY PIONEERS: THE

CONTRIBUTIONS TO 0RIENTALIST RESEARCH AND A

' '
R E C O N ST R U C T I O N O F A CLASSICAL PAST

Modern scholarship o n Indian art, as on most aspects of I ndia's

ancient ' classical ' past, was born and bred under the aegis of
Orientalism. One of the first I ndian writings that entered this field
was produced under the initiative and direction ofBritish interests for
a Western readership. Essay on the Architecture of the Hindus by Ram
Raz (Rama Raja) , published for the Royal Asiatic Society of Great
Britain and Ireland in I 834, attempted to communicate to the West,
for the first time, the substance of Sanskrit aesthetics. While the
British were relying on a ' Hindu ' ( a young local j udge of Bangalore)
to use his linguistic skills to uncode the aesthetic canons of Hindu
architecture, Ram Raz himself had to depend heavily on traditional
Brahmins and the local practising clan of builders of the Cammata
tribe in deciphering the difficult text and its technical vocabulary. 1
Ram Raz's was one of the first examples of a careful text-based
analysis of Indian art, attempting to explain the science of South
I ndian temple architecture on the basis of some fragmented
architectural treatises, the most extensive and ' perfect ' of these being
the Manasara. 2 I t affirmed the emphasis placed by Orientalist scholars
like Sir William Jones on the sanctity of the ' text ' , as containing the
key to the revelation of knowledge. I t also marked a new spirit of
scientific enquiry in British Orientalism which tried to search out a
systematised body of ideas out of what was seen as a mysterious,
amorphous entity of ' tradition ' in I ndia. At the same time, Ram
Raz's book underlines the main problem involved in studying Indian
art through such aesthetic treatises. He pointed to the dichotomy that
existed between the closely guarded world of high knowledge of the
Brahmin authorities, and the working world of ' the lower orders ' of
artisans and craftsmen, where a practical knowledge of methods and
canons was · passed from generation to generation. Caught in a
deadlock of communication between the two groups, the original
aesthetic theories and manuscripts were lost and vastly distorted over
time.3
1 Ram Raz, Essays on the Architecture of the Hindus (London, 1 834), Preface, pp. iii-ix.
2 The Manasara has, since, proved to be a major discovery of classical scholars and
aestheticians, and has been fully translated and utilised in the study of Indian architecture.
See P. K. Acharya, A Summary of the Manasara (London, 1 9 1 8) and A Dictionary of Hindu
Architecture (London, 1 9 2 7 ) . 3 Ram Raz, p. xii.
 Art-histories and aesthetic discourse I I 9

Notwithstanding these problems. Essay on the Architecture of the

Hindus had an enthusiastic reception in the West.4 I t had entered the
main Cl.).rrent of Orientalist interests in India, for it set out to prove
the antiquity and the early advanced development of I ndian
civilisation. 5 In the context of the European classical references that
were being applied to the study of Indian art, his book also took up
the theme of a comparison of I ndian architecture with Graeco­
Roman, explaining at length the marked individuality of the ' orders '
and proportions ofHindu pillars as compared to Grecian and Roman
columns.6
The same search for' progress ' and ' antiquity ' in Indian civi­
lisation features prominently in the work of the Bengali scholar,
Rajendralal Mitra, in the latter half of the century. A major
contributor in the field of classical lndological scholarship, 7 his entry
into a broader sphere of writing on Indian history, art and culture
coincided with the beginning of British archaeological and archi­
tectural studies in India. 8 His lavish two-volume books, The Antiquities
of Orissa, published during r 8 7 s-8o emerged out of an art project,
floated by the Royal Society of Arts, London for obtaining casts of old
I ndian sculpture : a proj ect which Rajendralal Mitra undertook to
expand into a book, under the sponsorship of the Archaeological
Survey. 9
The Antiquities of Orissa, can be classified, at one level, as an art­
historical study of the Hindu temple architecture and sculpture of
Orissa/0 describing, at length, the evolution of iconography and the
' trammels of orders and styles ' in the architectural ornament and
sculpture. It also carried a rich corpus of illustration of temple
structures, carved pillars, railings and decorative panels : all the work
of contemporary student artists at the Calcutta School of Art ( Figures
1 7 a, b) . But the main thrust of the work was, to use Havell's later
diatribe, more ' archaeological ' than ' artistic ' . I t had been Fergus­
son's belief that architecture in I ndia provided the most vital evidence
of the country's history, culture, religions and ethnography, in the

4 Partha Mitter, p. r 84. 5 Ram Raz, p. xiii. 6 ibid., pp. 4o-4 r .

7 His translations and analysis of ancient Sanskrit texts were published serially as a part of the
Bibliotheca Indica since r 854.
8 In r 865, the Archaeological Survey of India, under Alexander Cunningham, had begun a
systematic investigation into old monuments and architectural remains ; simultaneously
James Fergusson had launched his pioneering researches on Indian architecture, culmi­
nating in his History of Indian and Eastern Architecture in r 876,
10
9 The Antiquities of Orissa, Vol. I (Calcutta r 875), p. iii. ibid., p 39·
1 20 The making of a new ' Indian ' art

absence of written histories. Rajendralal Mitra had, accordingly, a

special interest in reconstructing the �ocial, cultural and religious
history of the period and region to which these ancient structures
belonged . 11 At the same time, in keeping with the requirements of an
archaeological study, the book gave a detailed survey of all the
surviving ancient architectural remains all over O rissa : at Puri,
Konarak, Bhubaneswar, Khandagiri and Udayagiri . 12
The emphasis here was clearly on ' antiquity ' as a self-professing
value and the essence of I ndian civilisation. The choice of Orissa itself
carried the point. Cordoned off by the sea on one side and hills and
wilds on the other, Orissa had been substantially protected from the
inroads of Muhammadans ; it had been protected, too, from the
ravages of war and the intrusion of commerce to make room for what
tpe author considered a pristinely ' traditional ', ' Indian ' civilisation.
The ancient monuments of Orissa, he postulated, ' are, therefore,
more authentic than what are to be met with in most other parts of
India, and as such, have a peculiar interest and significance for the
antiquarian ' .13 The concept and definition of the ' authentic ' is vital
- it was the pre-Muhammadan heritage of Buddhist and Hindu
architecture which was being classified as authentically Indian,
offering greatest scope to the Orientalist and antiquaria n. This line of
emphasis also produced the author's other large archaeological
study, with a similar lavish spread of maps and photographic
illustrations : Buddha Gaya, the Heritage of Sakya Muni ( r 878) . The
archaeologist emerged finally in the full colours of a historian of
ancient Indian civilisation in a two-volume compendium on the
ancient and medieval history of the ' Indo-Aryans ' . 14 The race theory
that permeated contemporary Orien talist scholarship on India found
a strong Indian protagonist in Rajendralal Mitra, who took on
himself the task of expounding the ' Aryan ' pedigree of ancient
Indian civilisation. The emphasis was on, firstly, a ' societist '
approach, which pieced together the social history of the rites,

11
The Antiquities of Orissa, Vol. I , Chs. 4 and 5·
1 2 The Antiquities of Orissa, Vol. I I (Calcutta I 88o).
1 3 The Antiquities of Orissa, Vol. I, p. 2. It is interesting to contrast Rajendralal Mitra's
antiquarian interest in Orissa with his Bengali chauvinistic contempt for contemporary
Oriya culture and language. This underlines the way the Orientalist insulated his ' past '
from the present, and points to the authority and arrogance of his stand vis-d-vis his object
of study.
14 Indo-Aryans : · Contributions Towards the Elucidation of their Ancient and Medieval History, Vols. I
and I I (London/Calcutta r 88 r ) .
 Art-histories and aesthetic discourse I2I

ceremonies, religion, food and dress of the ' Indo-Aryans ' ; and,
secondly, a ' textual ' approach, which investigated the religious texts,
literature, language and dialects of the Aryans.
Yet, even as he worked closely within the framework of Orientalist
studies, there was a simmering cultural nationalism in Raj endralal
Mitra's treatment of his subject. The strongest expression of it came
in the challenge he posed to Fergusson's classification and analysis of
I ndian architectural styles, particularly to his notion of the Gre�k
origins of ancient Hindu and Buddhist architecture. In a long and
heated controversy, which drew on Rajendralal Mitra all the
imperialist and racist venom of Fergusson, 1 5 he argued that the sheer
coincidental fact that no ' authentic ' stone building could be found in
I ndia of an age anterior to Asoka's rule could not be held as proof that
I ndo-Aryans learnt the art of stone architecture from the G reeks.16
Given the distinctly ' original style ' of the proportion and or­
namentation of the Asokan pillars ( the oldest known architectural
remains in India, then ) , and their complete independence of Greek
columns, he was convinced that the I ndo-Aryans must have had their
own style of architecture for centuries before it could culminate in the
level of perfection of the Asokan period. 1 7 These assertions of
Rajendralal Mitra point to some of the earliest reactions against the
notions of the Hellenistic influence on I ndian art and anticipate the
-later more virulent debate over Gandhara initiated by Havell and
Coomaraswamy.
The quest for a national self-identity in I ndia was focusing on a
mythic glorious past of an ' Aryan ' civilisation. Rajendralal Mitra's
history of the Indo-Aryans contained strong undertones of this
contemporary nationalist quest. Thus, writing about ' An Imperial
Coronation in Ancient I ndia ' ( the ceremony of the Rajasuya sacrifice) ,
the author could not refrain from drawing a comparison with the
I mperial British assemblage to be held that year ( I 88 I ) in Delhi.

The one (of ancient India borrowed all its sanctity from religion ; the other
(of modern India) depends for its glory on political and material greatness.
The one was purely national ; the other brings into the field a dominant
foreign power.18

1 0 James Fergusson, Archaeology in India, With Special Reference to the Works of Babu Rajendralal
Mitra, ( London 1 884), Introduction, pp. 3-7, g-1 0.
1 6 Rajendralal Mitra, Indo-Aryans, Vol. I , p.v. 1 7 ibid., pp. 4-6, I r , passim.
18 ibid., Vol. I I , pp. r-2 .
1 22 The making of a new ' Indian ' art
Aryan I ndia was emerging as the key theme of historical and artistic
attention, with its underpinnings of national pride. It was also the
subject of one of the first Bengali books to be written during this time
by Shyama Charan Srimani on the ' fine art ' heritage of the country.19
The book shared many of the premises of Orientalist studies : its
fundamental concerns were with two concepts that shaped the
author's entire approach to tradition, that of ' fine arts ' and that of
' Aryan '. While art in ancient I ndia was equated totally wi th an
' Aryan ' civilisation, it was accorded the status of a classical, ' fine art '
tradition of architecture, sculpture and painting. With the largest
section devoted to architecture, this book contained a long exposition
on the types, measures and proportions of ancient I ndian temples, on
the basis of old normative texts, accompanied by illustrations of
cornices, columns, plinths and pedestals. The emphasis was on the
intricacy and abundance of ornamentation in architecture and
sculpture ; what was lacking, in comparison, was a study of
iconography. However, the tendency to categorise I ndian art as
purely ' decorative ' or ' monstrous ' was certainly reversed . In
assessing the sculpture and painting of ancient I ndia, Srimani found
their main greatness to lie in the evocation of ' likenesses ' , in the soft
and tactile modelling of anatomies and in the expressiveness of
faces. 2° For these prevailed, then, as the main criteria of artistic
achievement. There was no attempt, as yet, to define a separate
' spiritual ' aesthetic tradition for I ndia ; nonetheless, the point was
made clear that I ndia had a ' fine arts ' heritage that was distinctly
individual and original, and that, in their mastery of construction
and decoration, Hindu and Buddhist temple architecture surpassed
the styles of both the Egyptian and Greek. 2 1
A more direct outburst of nationalism came at the end, as the book
concluded with an appeal to I ndians to come to the service of the
' motherland ' , by recovering her past traditions of art. 22 We find,
here, an interesting elision of images of ' nation ' and ' tradition ' with
those of the ' feminine ' and ' sacred '. As would occur repeatedly,
ideas of tradition and the motherland were evoked in the image of
the chaste Hindu woman, centring around the metaphor of a sacred
innermost private space that had to be preserved from violation. Art,
19 Shyama Charan Srimani, Suksha Shilper Utpatti o Arya Jatir Shilpa Chaturif Fine Arts of Ancient
India, With a Short Sketch of the Origin of Art (Calcutta, 1 984). This book, along with the
writings of Balendranath Tagore and Sukumar Ray are discussed in Shobhan Shome and
Anil Acharya, ed., Bangia Shilpa Samalochonar Dhara (Calcutta, 1 986) .
21 22
20 ibid., pp. 53, 55, passim. ibid., pp. 5 1 -52. ibid., p. 76.
 Art-histories and aesthetic discourse 1 23

like a woman's body, was seen as ' the ultimate site of virtue, stability,
the last refuge of freedom ' . 23 Srimani's imagery was brimming with
a zealous sense of protectiveness over a heritage which only I ndians
could e xpect to know or understand . To the ' motherland ' was
attributed the sanctity of Hindu womanhood or the Hindu temple,
whose privacy and purity was under threat from the obtrusion of
E uropeans. Despite all their efforts, European Orientalists were seen
to be still hovering on the outer peripheries of the hallowed domain ;
the full wealth and secrets of the interior would reveal themselves
only to Indians.
If Srimani's commitment to the study of I ndian art was avowedly
nationalistic, the nature and intent of his book also signalled a
breakthrough. Written in Bengali to reach a wide local readership,
this cheap, slim publication was intended to be more accessible than
the lavishly illustrated, expensive books that held the field in the
subj ect. 24 I ts arrival on the scene looks forward to. a spreading
aesthetic self-awareness among the Bengali middle class - to a spate
of writing that took up art, I ndian art in particular, as the main
theme for comment and argument. A study of past tradition ran
parallel to a growing concern with the present state of the ' fine arts '
in the country, and discussions about what could be posited as the
right and best kind of ' art ' . This dual concern with the past and
present of Indian art was reflected in Srimani, hin1self, who had his
main career as a teacher of geometrical drawing at the Government
School of Art. The patriotic sentiments, which seemed to have been
a strong motivating force behind his writing of the book, also led him
to relinquish his job at the School of Art and join Nabagopal Mitra's
National School. With a general thrust towards vocational edu­
cation, the curriculum in art in the National School was overtly
technical, and tied to subjects like modelling, geometrical drawing,
architectural drawing, engineering and surveying. 25 This underlines
the polarity between Srimani's scholarly interests in the ancient,
classical traditions of I ndian art, and the scope of his contemporary
preoccupations in the teaching of art. However, Srimani had evolved

23 Tanika Sarkar, ' Nationalist Iconography : I mages of Women in 1 9th Century Bengali
Literature ' - Economic and Political Weekry, 2 1 November 1 987.
24 The author stated these points specifically in the preface ( Bhumika ) of the book.
' '

25 Set up in 1872 in association with the wider activities of the Hindu Mela and the National
Assembly, this school was designed specially ' for the cultivation of Arts, Music, and for
Physical Training '. Referred to in jogesh Chandra Bagal, Hindu Melar Itibritta (Calcutta,
1g68) , PP· Bg-85.
I 24 The making of a new ' Indian ' art

out of his study a concept of ' art ' that implicitly reacted against the
sterile conventions of imitation and Academic Realism that were
trotted out by the British art schools in I ndia. His livelihood required
him to teach geometrical and mechanical drawing ; but ' art ', in his
view, belonged to an altogether different realm of imagination and
sensibility. 26

S H A D ES O F A N E W A R T I S T I C A W A R E N E S S I N B E N G A L : A
' '
FOCUS ON THE PRESENT P R O S P E C TS O F A R T I N I N D I A

Over the next two decades, a range ofBengali writing came to express
a similar tension and duality in the aesthetic opinions of the educated
middle classes. Their new artistic awareness, while it looked to
I ndia's past as a source of pride and autonomy, remained tied to the
colonial concept and standard of ' fine arts ', rooted in the training of
the art schools. The hiatus between past and presen t expressed itself
in a strong sense of artistic under-development, and a driving desire
for self-improvement and progress through proper instruction. The
concern with the degenerate state of art in the country and the need
to inculcate an ' artistic ' sense among the people was ventilated a t
various levels. An eminent litterateur like Bankim Chandra
Chatterj ee reacted to Srimani's book in an essay similarly titled,
' Arya jatir Shuksha Shilpa ' (The Fine Arts of the Aryan Race) ,27 in
which, interestingly, the theme of an I ndian and ' Aryan ' art
tradition hardly figured . Instead, Bankim expounded a general
theory of beauty, elaborating on the exalted pleasures it offered, only
to arrive at the conclusion that the Bengalis, both by tradition and by
nature, were singularly lacking in the love of beauty. That the
Bengali, in Bankim's view, showed such a marked apathy for ' fine
arts ' (particularly painting and sculpture) stemmed from a basic
deficiency in the taste and eye for beauty. 28
While Ban kim did no more than deplore the absence of ' art ' in his
country, at quite a different level, the problem was sought to be
26
Shyama Charan Srimani, pp. 72-74.
27
Bankim Rachanavali, 8th edition (Calcutta, 1 983), Vol. I I , pp. 1 92-94.
28
ibid., pp. 1 93-94. However, many ofBankim Chandra's later novels draw on Indian pictorial
imagery and allude to his familiarity with the traditions of miniature and pata painting,
claymodels, religious oleographs, etc. (referred to in Shyamali Chakravarty, ' Shilpasan­
dhani Bankimchandra , Baromas, Autumn 1 985). And his last novel, Sitaram ( 1 88g)
'

expresses the author's rapturous encounter with a wondrous store of artistic achievement in
India's past, with the ancient sculptures of Udaygiri and Lalitgiri in Orissa. But his opinions
about the present poverty of artistic tastes remained undeterred.
 A rt-histories and aesthetic discourse 1 25

resolved through practical training and instruction. Bengali reactions

to the founding of the School of Industrial Arts in Calcutta harped
repeatedly on the sense of their own deficiency of taste and the need
' to rectify and elevate the tastes of the nation ' . What the bhadralok
had at stake in British art education was both aesthetic refinement
and the constitution of a new identity as ' artists ' : an identity that
would evolve through conscious supersession of the existing ' dis­
tasteful ' productions of ' native ' art. Enthusiasts emphasised the need
not j ust for direct instruction in the School of Art for students wishing
to make a profession in the field, but also for a general education in
the ' fine arts ' for the educated public - so that they ' may be so
habituated to the sight of superior specimens of artistic production
that they would insensibly imbibe those principles ' .29 At a different
level, in the same interests of disseminating a sense of ' art ' , attempts
were made to provide ordinary students with simple practical
guidelines on how to draw and paint. Charuchandra Nag's Chitravidya
(Lessons in Drawing and Painting), published in r 874, tried to cater to
a need which neither the English drawing-books· nor Bengali books
on art like that of Srimani could fulfil. While the former were found
to be neither easily accessible nor comprehensible to Bengali students,
the latter kind, dealing only with ancient Indian art, was seen to be
a large step removed from the problem of practical instruction. 30
With the aid of illustrations, such books provided stage by stage
instruction, firstly in the ou tline drawing of still-life forms, flowers,
foliage and the human face and anatomy, secondly in the in­
corporation of tone and shade to add volume and dimension to the
outline drawing. In providing a back-up to the art-school curriculum
through a simplified package of instructions, they absorbed fully the
aesthetic conventions of the colonial institution. While setting out the
rules of anatomy drawing, the author of Chitravidya stated that the
most proportionate forms of the human face and figure could be seen
in the ancient Greek race, and that such a figure formed the best
model for the artist. 31 The values of European classical art, projected
as the pinnacle of artistic excellence, were being transposed on to life
and on to a person's entire norm of seeing and representing. For both
Bankim and for the authors of such small drawing books, the
definition of art and aesthetics remained trapped in a Western

29 The Hindu Patriot, 2 1 June 1 85 5

3° Charuchandra Nag, Chitrauidya, Part I (Calcutta, 1 874). 31 ibid. , p. 3·
 The making of a new ' Indian ' art

classical model. Raj endralal Mitra or Srimani's interest in past

Indian traditions was still insulated from the sphere of contemporary
tastes and standards.
When the first Bengali art journal, Shilpa-pushpanjali, appeared in
the next decade, 3 2 once again the focus was on the inculcation of a
general artistic awareness rather than on Indian art in particular.
The main intention of the magazine was to cultivate a greater
appreciation and interest in art among the educated Bengalis, whose
artistic faculties were seen to be sadly lagging behind their de­
velopment in literature, science and in professions such as law. Art, as
was discussed in its pages, was associated mainly with technical and
vocational skills that could be acquired through proper, systematic
instruction. The attention of readers was drawn chiefly to matters of
the utility of art education and the need to incorporate a knowledge
of drawing within the general educational curriculum. 33 Here, too,
we find long serialised lessons and exercises being given in
' Elementary Outline Drawing and Shading ' , ' Drawing of Sym­
metrical Decorative Forms ' , and in the ' Drawing of Obj ects with the
help of blocks and graphs ' . 340ne of the articles, taking up the title of
the magazine, probed into the terminology of the word, shilpa. As
against the limited Western conception of the ' fine arts ' (as poetry,
music, dance, painting, architecture, and sculpture) , it highlighted
the more complex and wide-ranging connotations of the term in
Sanskrit aesthetics, where it could stretch to indicate as many as
sixty-four different kinds of arts (kalas) .35 The implication was that
art encompassed the notion of both the ' fine ' and the ' applied ' arts ;
that the artists' genius belonged not merely to the realm of
imagination but also to that of practical craftsmanship. 36
As these different definitions of art emerged, they settled around a
common verdict that there was little being produced in the country
then that merited the epithet of ' art ' . Within the scenario of the
visual arts, painting invited the maximum attention, for it is here that
the worst evidences of degeneration were detected . Shyama Charan
Srimani, establishing the heritage of an ancient Hindu and Aryan art
tradition in I ndia, wrote of the progressive disappearance of the art

32 The journal, a monthly miscellany dealing with the arts, literature, natural science, etc.,
edited by Amritalal Bandopadhyay, was published in 1 886 and continued only for a few
issues.
33 Shilpa-pushpanjali, 1 st year, I 293/ I 886 - ' Suchana', pp. 2-3 ; Biharilal Ray, ' Chitra-vidyar
U poyogita ', pp. 30-3 I .
34 ibid. ' Chitra-vidya ' , serialised drawing lessons, pp. 70-7 I , 73-76, I 1 7, passim.
, ,
-

35 ibid. - ' Shilpa K i ? ' pp. s-8. 36 ibid. ' Shilper Bal pp. 6 I-62 .
'
-
 Art-histories and aesthetic discourse 1 27

of paining over time, attributing the main cause to the Muhammadan

invasions and the prohibitions regarding replication of images in
Islamic canons. The art, in his view, suffered an ignominious fall from
the realm of the ' classical ' to the ' folk ' . In Bengal, the pictures
produced by the village and Kalighat patuas were, to him, a stark
example of the decline into ' lifeless ' and ' ghastly ' compositions. 37

THE DISCOVERY OF RAVI VARMA AND A NEW I NDIAN

' '
H I G H-ART

This brings us to the issue of the shifting tastes for locally produced
pictures, and the evolving hierarchies within these regarding what
was considered a better and more refined style. A demand for
' realism ' and three-dimensionality had engendered a clear line of
divide between the old and the new, between the stylised conventions
of the pat or the Bat-tala wood-cuts and the ' life-like ' images of the
new oils and oleographs. I mplicit in this was also the differentiation of
the work of a new creed of ' gentleman ' artists, who were seen to have
acquired the proper skills of drawing, painting and print-making,
from those of the ' bazaar ' painters. The ' Mytho-pictures ' produced
by the Calcutta Art Studio since the late 1 87os, and the illustrations
of the Ramayana and Mahabharata in Shilpa-pushpanjali in 1 886 had
provided some of the first alternatives to the other traditional
iconographies : they had marked a decided shift in tastes for a new
kind of I ndian picture. The middle-class public received these
pictures with great enthusiasm, welcoming the realism ( the shading,
the volume, the perspective, the naturalistic figures and back­
grounds) they introduced within the old mythological narrative. The
discourse on taste and aesthetics converged with that of social and
religious reformism. In the first flush of responses to Western art
education, the new art, like the new learning, was looked on as the
harbinger of progress and reason. And the distaste for ' native ' art
forms coincided with the aversion for Hindu superstition and
idolatry, echoing the coloniser's verdict on the ' monstrous ' Hindu
divinities. ' The idols we worship ', it was announced, ' outrage taste,
as the worship itself outrages all reason . Let our readers now consider
what would be the effect of a body of artists with high conceptions
and a refined taste modelling the idols were worship ' . 38 The Calcutta
Art Studio pictures appeared to fulfil this promise and potential. The

37 Shyama Charan Srimani, pp. 68-7 I . 38 The Hindu Patriot (4th May 1 854) .
 The making of a new ' Indian ' art
techniques of ' realistic ' representation seemed to both dignify the
status of the divinities and to equip these pictures with the new
aesthetic status of ' art ' .
When, in I 8 7 7-78, the literary magazine, Bharati, was launched by
members of the Tagore family, it was a Calcutta Art Studio picture
of the goddess, Saraswati (Figure 29) , which was selected by
J yotirindranath Tagore to appear on the cover of the first issue. The
young Abanindranath, in his memoirs, recalled the great impact that
this Bharati cover had on his impressionable mind. 39 The mythological
pictures that appeared in Shilpa-pushpanjali appeared to have caused
as great a stir among the readers and accounted for the main
popularity of the journal. Where the parameters of taste were set by
the European example, the greatest praise reserved for these pictures
was that they could easily be mistaken for European prints.40
The I 8gos witnessed a further progression in aesthetic preferences
about contemporary I ndian pictures, centring around the encounter
with the mythological paintings of Raja Ravi Varma. The process of
the ascendancy of a middle-class cultural hegemony is crucial, here.
The arrival of Ravi Varma' s pictures in Calcutta coincided with the
constitution of a new cultural elite, who would be the chief arbiters of
middle-class taste. I t also augured the emergence of a set of novel
aesthetic criteria, by which I ndian painting would be evaluated,
and the pauranic paintings of Ravi Varma placed on a scale far above
the Calcutta Art S tudio lithographs and other varieties of cheap
religious pictures on the market.
For the first time, in the I 8gos, the concepts of ' beauty ' (saundarya)
and ' emotion ' (bhava) appeared as key categories of art criticism in
Bengal. They had become highly contested notions, with a group of
critics battling to establish the universalism of these ideas and to
absorb them within one ' legitimate ' code of aesthetic sensibility. At
the same time, the idea gained ground that the greatest potentials of
pai�ting in I ndia lay in grafting on the themes, imagery and
metaphors of classical Sanskrit literature. Balendranath Tagore, a
Sanskrit scholar and prolific young critic, provides in his essays a
striking expression of these concerns. Discovering in Ravi Varma the
most promising artistic talent of modern I ndia, Balendranath's
writings asserted a new aesthetics of I ndian art that anticipated many
of the arguments of the later nationalists. Exposing the shallowness of
39 Abanindranath Tagore, ' Bharatir chhabi ' in Bharati, Baisakh 1 323/ 1 9 16.
40 Readers' responses published in Shilpa-pushpanjali, 1 293/ 1 886, pp. 29 1-92.
 Art-histories and aesthetic discourse 1 29

Fig. 39· Ravi Varma ' Vishvamitra and Menaka ' (oil, c. r 8g8) .

the contemporary fascination for Western Old Masters and al­

legorical paintings, he underlined the need to evolve an indigenous
type of ' high art ', drawing on a range of ideas and images, feelings
and religious values that belonged intimately to India. Ancient
I ndian mythology and epic Sanskrit literature existed, in his view, as
the richest reservoirs of such ' pictorial ' themes and imagery. 41
Balendranath was most effusive about the vividly ' picturesque '
language ofKalidasa, about the ' word pictures ' that flowed through
the descriptive passages of a text like Abhijnana Shakuntala, and about
the scope of transforming the literary metaphors and descriptions
in to visual imagery. 42
41 ' Ravi Varma ', ' Hindu-debdebir Chitra ' in Chitra o Kavya, pp. 97-g8, 1 08-1o.
42 ' Kalidaser Chitrankani Pratibha' in Chitra o Kavya, pp. 2-r 8.
r go The making of a nac ' Indian ' art
We need, today a kind of artistic talent that, with the help of the brush, can
give form and life to ( this) ancient mythic imagination. I n language, it is
conveyed partly through description, partly through suggestion, partly
through the author's own style, leaving the whole sense to be freely
construed in the mind of the reader. This cluster of beau tiful ideas and
emotions - the part which is stated, and the parts implied but left unstated
- have to be metamorphosised into line and form. This is the real task before
the (country's) new artists .43 (author's translation)

The second crucial requirement of a painting, closely linked with

the first, was said to lie in the expression of mood and emotion, such
emotive quality being singled out as the marker of any ' great art ',
whether literature or painting. In Ravi Varma, the author found an
artist who fulfilled all these expectations, whose mythological
paintings brimmed with a sense of beauty and captured the essential
lyrical tenor (rasa) of the theme.44 Detailed appreciation of some of
these paintings emphasised primarily the element of ' mood ' and the
expressive eloquence of each : for example, the pain and agony writ
across the faces of Rama and Lakshmana in the scene of ' Sita
Bhoopravesham ' ; the seductive radiance and tenderness in the
expression of Menaka as she tried to break the meditation of
Vishvamitra (Figure 3 9 ) or the lofty and intense characterisation of
the lover in the figure of Arjuna in the painting he considered to be
one of Ravi Varma's best, ' Arj una and Subhadra ' (Figure 40) .45
Such comments point inexorably to the historical relativity of taste
and the sharp shifts that occur over time. The very paintings which,
in the next decade, would be attacked for their crassness and
vulgarity, were then seen to convey the most lyrical and refined
sentiments. For Balendranath Tagore, writing in I 8g4, the main foil
to Ravi Varma's paintings were the Kalighat pats and the ' hideous '
pictures produced by th� Calcutta Art Studio. The lithographs that
had superseded the Kalighat pictures on the market by their
' superior ' technique and taste were now lumped together with
' bazaar ' art in a common category of the ' debased '. It was in
marked contrast to these, through a definition of what was ' wrong ',
that the ' right ' kind of Indian painting was identified in the work of
Ravi Varma. For Balendranath, the greatest weakness of the Art
S tudio pictures was the complete absence of feeling (bhava) or a sense
of beauty in colour-scheme and composition.

43 ' Ravi Varma ' , p. g8. 44 ibid., pp. g8- IOO. 45 Z'b Z'd. , pp. IOI-6.
 Art-histories and aesthetic discourse

Fig. 40. Ravi Varma, ' Arj una and Subhadra ' (oil, c. r 8g8) .

The face of Saraswati, which i s meant to glow with divine inspiration, is

rendered b y all the efforts of the Art Studio painter into a dull and
expressionless visage - which only shows his total alienation from the
Goddess of all the arts.46 (author's translation)

The critic was most caustic about the crude and naive grafting of
literary metaphors in these pictures, and the resultant distortion of
the natural conventions of anatomy drawing and colouring.
Go u ranga is coloured a shocking yellow, j ust because, in literature, his fair
complexion is compared with the hue of burnished gold. (And) Sri Krishna,
the beloved of Radha, appears over the ages to have vigorously rubbed his
whole body with blue coloured pencils.47 (author's translation)

46 l'bl'd. pp. 98-gg.

, 47 ' Hindu-debdebir Chitra ', p. I I r.
132 The making of a new ' Indian ' art
This rich store of Balendranath's writings on Ravi Varma and
Hindu mythological pictures contains significant leads into future
debates . Here, we find one of the earliest propositions that ' art ' in
I ndia must be equated with classical I ndian literary and mythic .
themes, and that the real test of its success lay in the evocation of the
' right ' moods and emotions latent in these. What was highlighted
was the spontaneous, widespread and exclusive appeal to I ndian
sentiments of such mythological pictures, the ability to touch this
deep core of Indian sensibility being regarded as the foremost merit
of a Ravi Varma painting. An equally important issue thrown up was
the extent to which a painting could appropriate the metaphors and
imagery of literature, and still remain within the bounds of what was
seen as visually feasible and pleasing. I n this context, the attention
turns to Balendranath's continued conviction that form in a painting
had to be faithful to life, that Academic Realism constituted the only
proper mode of representation. The gods and goddesses, even as they
embodied the spirit of I ndian canonical or literary descriptions, had
to remain within the parameters of the ' natural ' and ' real ' . I t was
Balendranath's strong belief that it was only when mythology
corresponded to the loftiest sentiments, experiences and images of a
mortal existence, that it could come alive in the picture. 48 I t needs
emphasising that this aesthetics of I ndian art did not as yet extend to
the issue of a distinct ' Indian-ness ' of style and form. While it laid
stress on a separate domain of themes and imagery and also a
separate sphere of ' I ndian ' feelings on which the artist should draw,
it had no doubts that these could be effectively represented in the
Western Academic style.
Similar ideas about I ndian art were also being voiced by
Rabindranath Tagore around this time. Picking on a set of oils
illustrating episodes from the Sanskrit play, Banabhatta's Kadambari,
painted by Jamini Prakash Gangooly (Figure 36) , he argued the
same case of developing in India a new genre of history paintings,
depicting themes from mythology and classical literature. 49 Rabin­
dranath enthusiastically took up this example of]. P. Gangooly, the
epitome of a Western-style oil painter in Calcutta, being drawn
towards the rich reserve of pictorial images in ancient Sanskrit
48 ibid., pp. 1 08-10, I 1 2- 1 3 .
4 9 Rabindranath Tagore, ' Kadambari Chitra ', pp. 4 1 -48. Two of these paintings of J . P.
Gangooly, one depicting ' The court ofking Shudraka ' and the other, the ' The presen.tation
of the parrot, Vaishampayan, at the court by the chandala maiden ' were reproduced along
with this article in Pradip.
 Art-histories and aesthetic discourse 1 33

literature. Like Balendranath, he too felt that the ' picturesque '
images and metaphors in the passages of Kadambari seemed to be
waiting to be transformed into visual forms. In fulfilling this need, he
argued, lay the raison d'etre of painting in I ndia.
Outside the sphere of literature and mythology, Rabindranath
had discovered another source of great promise and hope for modern
Indian art. A plaster sculpture by Ganpatrao Kashinath Mhatre, a
young student of the J. J. School of Art, Bombay, during r 8g2-94, of
a woman carrying a plate of offerings to the temple (Figure 4 1 ) had
attracted a lot of attention with the art authorities in India.50
Principal Greenwood of the J. ]. School of Art saw it fit to have the
statue placed among the Greek antique casts in the school hall, doing
the work (what he saw to be) its greatest honour. Sir George
Birdwood wrote an exultant review of the sculpture, seeing in this
' masterpiece ' the highest fulfilment of European classical stan­
dards . 51 Rabindranath was also all praise for the perfect combination
of ' classical ' form and ' I ndian ' theme in this sculpture - for the
beauty, harmony and rhythm that flowed out of every turn and
posture of the woman's body and each fold in the drape of her saree.
Anatomical perfection combined with intensity of feeling to fulfil
what were seen to be the two main requisites of a ' work of art ' . 52 One
ofRabindranath's main points in this review concerned the universal
language of the visual arts, which could transcend the divides of
region; language, culture and custom. Contrasting it with literature
whose appeal was automatically confined to the readership of a
particular language, a painting or sculpture, he contended, could
belong to a whole nation and to the whole world. Thus, while Bankim
Chandra of Bengal remained largely unknown among Marathis,
' their Mhatre ' could easily be accepted by Bengalis as their own. 53
The same point about the advantages enjoyed by the visual arts
over literature in ' making for national unity ' was simultaneously
made in another article that appeared on the same subject of
Mhatre's sculpture. I t was argued by Ramananda Chatterjee, the
prominent writer, editor and critic, then teaching at the Kayastha
Pathshala at Allahabad, that the great attention that had been
attracted by the work of Mhatre and by the mythological paintings
50 Mhatre, at the age of r 6, won a medal at the prestigious Bombay Art Society exhibition of
r8g5 for this sculpture.
51 G. C. M. Birdwood, ' To The Temple ' -J IA I , V I I I , January r 8g8, pp. r-5.
52 Rabindranath Tagore, ' Mandirabhimukhe , Pradip, Paush r 305/1 8g8-gg.
'

53 ibid., p. 4·
I 34 The making of a new ' Indian ' art

Fig. 4r. G. K. Mhatre, ' To The Temple ' (plaster-cast sculpture, r8g5 ) .
 Art-histories and aesthetic discourse 1 35

of Raja Ravi Varma, through their reproduction in magazines, was

an indication of an approaching ' artistic revival ' in India. And art,
he hoped, would be the main factor in bringing together the ' nation ',
by its common, universal appeal. 54
In hindsight, an interesting feature of these writings is a frank
admission of bias in the aesthetic tastes of the author. Rabindranath
stated his position quite clearly, that what he had to say about the
sculpture by Mhatre would amount mainly to emotional exuberance
and offer little by way of scholarly, discerning criticism. At the same
time, he insisted that such enthusiasm about these achievements of a
few modern Indian artists was inevitable in the present state of
decadence and stagnation in the arts. Underdevelopment in his view,
had necessarily pared down artistic expectations in India and had
attached an exaggerated significance to the work of artists like Ravi
Varma and Mhatre, through sheer contrast with what existed
around them. 55 Here, Rabindranath was echoing Balendranath's
contentions that, whatever the flaws in Ravi Varma's paintings, the
time was not yet ripe for criticism - for, in the present context, Ravi
Varma was the best that I ndia could offer. 56
Theirs was a vision of a continuous evolution, progress and
improvement of modern I ndian art, which assumed that the future
would inevitably overtake artists like Ravi Varma - which, nonethe­
less, accorded him and others of his kind the full credit of their
achievements within the given historical context. When, during the
next decade, ' cultured ' aesthetic preferences shifted dramatically
from the work of Ravi Varma to that of a new group of ' Indian-style '
painters, it involved, however, a sharp disavowal of what had gone
before and what continued in parallel . Attitudes hardened and
options closed in more -firmly on the kind of work that could qualify
as the only ' genuine ' Indian art of modern times. Rabindranath and,
to an extent, Balendranath, had openly admitted the emotional bias
in their j udgement. I n a more highly charged environment, the bias
took on the guise of a superior aesthetic - a gushing admiration,
overflowing with rarified notions of the ' beau tiful ' and the ' emotive ' ,
became the standard norm of art criticism.
54 An extract from the article in Kayastha Samachar (c. r 8gg-r goo) is quoted in a later article
of Ramananda Chatterjee, ' Ravi Varma ' - The A1odern Review, January r 907, p. 85.
55 Rabindranath Tagore, ' Mandirabhimukhe ' , pp. 2-4.
56 Balendranath Tagore, ' Ravi Varma ', pp. 106-7.
 The making uJ u new : Indian ' art

THE NEW CULTURE O F ART JO URNALS AND ART CRITICISM

These writings on the new I ndian artists found their forum in some
prestigious Bengali journals which were then appearing on the scene.
These were not art journals of the type of Shilpa-pushpanjali, with a
primary interest in matters of teaching, training and vocation in the ·
arts. These were mainly literary miscellanies, bringing out the first
reproduction of paintings, and publishing essays on art and aesthetics
by eminent writers. Art (defined with a capital A) was fas t becoming
a part of the high literary culture of Bengal . As it did so, there was a
distinct shift of planes in the concerns it embodied - from a largely
practical interest in the acquisition and polishing of artistic skills and
in arriving at the ' right ' mode of representation, it began to move
into a more esoteric realm of sensibility and bhava. Both the work of
art and the criticism of it assumed an overtly literary quality. The
aesthetics of painting and literature were brought to merge within a
common ground of a middle-class culture, even as the cui ture
constituted itself through a conscious cultivation of a ' superior '
artistic and literary taste. While the artist dipped into the themes and
metaphors of classical Sanskrit literature, the critic adopted a
language and an approach that was even more overtly literary. He
used the painting, often, only as a starting point to meander into a
range of ideas and emotions and a general commentary on I ndian
culture and tradition, which made the writing stand by itself. 5 7 This
preponderance of the text over the image shows the way the visual
was being robbed of its natural, non-literary communicative poten­
tials - and the way it was being appropriated within a secluded zone
of ' art ', to which only a select educated literati had access.
Balendranath Tagore's essays, trendsetters of this kind of art
criticism, had first appeared in the journal, Sadhana, a high-brow
monthly magazine of the time which was almost exclusively a reserve
of the writers of the Tagore family. I t was the first to bring out a
reproduction of a Ravi Varma painting, and Abanindranath Tagore
made his artistic debut on the pages of this magazine, with his

67 One of the best examples of this is Rabindranath's discussion of J. P. Gangooly's

' Kadambari ' paintings, where he branches off into a comment on the slow-moving,
leisurely, emotional tempo of Sanskrit literature, drawing parallels with the evocation of a
raga in Indian classical music. By implication, the same aesthetic that prevailed in classical
literature and music is suggested in the appreciation of J. P. Gangooly's paintings ­
' Kadambari Chitra ', p. 45·
 Art-histories and aesthetic discourse 1 37

illustrations for the poems of Rabindranath and Dwijendranath

Tagore. I t was another journal, Pradip, begun by Ramananda
Chatterjee in December I 897 - where Rabindranath's articles on
Mhatre's and J . P. Gangooly's work appeared - which gave a greater
boost to this new aesthetic culture. 58 There was nothing new about
Pradip, as an illustrated magazine. I t fitted into the same trend of
illustrated and pictorial magazines, emerging since the I 87os : the
drawings that framed the title-heads and cover pages sported a
similar range of cherubs, angels and swooning Victorian maidens,
appearing with local faces and clothes. But what made the real
difference in this magazine was the appearance of the name of U.
Ray (Upendrakishore Raychowdhury) , and his novel technique of
' half-tone ' photo-engraving for the reproduction of pictures. This
new process introduced a greater gloss, a greater refinement of details
and more subtle tonal graduations than lithography could achieve.
The print became nearly photographic in the black and white, blue
or sepia-tinted pictures that were produced. While the technique
was widely used to print photographs in Pradip, it was also used for
reproducing the works of modern Indian, artists, like G. K. Mhatre,
Ravi Varma or J . P. Gangooly (examples, Figures 35, 36, 39-4 1 ) .
These pictures could clearly be set apart from the general run of
engraved and lithographed illustrations as reproductions of' works of
art '. In the case of these, the artists figured as prominently as the
paintings or sculptures ; and Rabindranath's write-ups on some of the
individual works provide the best measure of the special attention
these prints in Pradip received.
Overall, the choice of articles and the selection of pictures for this
journal had quite a conscious nationalist motivation. The calumny of
cowardice and physical weakness that the British heaped on the
Bengalis provided a major provocation and a series of counter­
assertions. Several life-histories of eminent Bengalis of the past
century, along with their portraits, appeared in Pradip. Heroism,
valour and the military might of Bengalis, it seems, were the main
qualities at stake ; whether this strength was employed against the
British or on behalf of them was an issue of much less importance.
Thus, the historical novel, Lal Polton (The Red Brigade) , where a
brigade of valiant Bengali fighters, adept at both land and sea

58 The launching of this new illustrated journal, Pradip, is discussed in Shanta Debi, Bharat­
Muktishadhak Ramananda Chattopadhyay o Ardha Shatabdir Bangia (Calcutta, n. d.).
 The making of a new ' Indian ' art

warfare, were portrayed as the main force behind Clive's conquest of

Bengal, was, then, a source of great pride. And Pradip serialised the
novel over six months.
The stage was set for the appearance of the most significant of the
new Bengali magazines, Prabasi, which would carry these trends in
the reproduction of paintings, nationalist criticism and writing to
new heights. I t was the brainchild once more of Ramananda
Chatterj ee, a college lecturer in English who, since the 1 88os, was
constantly trying out his hand in the editing and publication of
magazines._59 Prabasi and, later, its English counterpart, The Modern
Review, would be the most prominently successful of his journalistic
ventures. These would place the writer-editor in the additional role
of a nationalist art critic and patron, who took on a special
responsibility of sponsoring Abanindranath Tagore's new school of
' Indian ' painting. Relinquishing his editorship of Pradip in 1 900, he
launched the new journal Prabasi in April 1 go 1 from his new base in
Allahabad, making himself both editor and proprietor. The senti­
ments ofBengali communities living outside Bengal, and discovering
a larger nation outside their immediate homeland, were quite
important in the conceptualisation of the journal - as was reflected in
the very name that was given to it. 60 The designing of one of the first
covers (which later became a standard feature) was also meant to
have conveyed tpis idea of the I ndian nation surrounding the prabasi
Bengali. I ts symbols were some major historic temples and monu­
ments ; the Amaravati cave temples, the Lingaraja temple of
Bhubaneswar, the Sanchi stupa, the Bodhagaya monastery, the
Qutb Minar, the Taj Mahal and the Golden Temple of Amritsar ­
which were all brought together to form a colourful collage on the
cover. I ndia was identified through a kaleidoscope of her ' great art '
heritage. The emphasis was equally on the past and the present in
I ndian art, in the first art features and reproductions of paintings to
appear in Prabasi. The firm of U . Ray & Sons was, once again, in
charge of all the reproduction of paintings, initially in sepia
monotones and soon afterwards, in colour, using an improved process
of three-tone colour blocks. The star of the first issue of the journal

59 Among Ramananda Chatterjee's many early ventures were Dasi, a social welfare magazine
directed at the plight of women, begun in r 8g2 : Mukul, one of the first illustrated children's
magazines, which he helped bring about in r895 ; Pradip, which he founded and edited from
r 897 to r goo and Kayastha Samachar, which he edited briefly during r 8gg-r goo at Allahabad.
60
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
northern India over the late nineteenth century.
 Art-histories and aesthetic discourse 1 39
was Raja Ravi Varma, with seven of his mythological paintings
reproduced along with a long biographical article on the artist by the
editor. 6 1
It was in the pages of Prabasi and The Modern Review (published
from I 907, also from Allahabad) that a sharp break would occur in
the kind of ' Indian ' painting that was sponsored and in the aesthetic
propaganda that grew around it. It would be reflected most clearly
in the rej ection of Ravi Varma and his brand of mythological
painting, and in the shift of preference to the work of Abandindranath
Tagore and his group. However, during the first few years of these
journals, the range of paintings that were reproduced show a
surprising catholicity of tastes. There were no hard barriers raised
between ' Western ' and ' I ndian ' art, still less between the different
styles of Indian painting that I ndia's new generation of artists were
producing.
An editorial on art in the third year's issue of Prabasi ( I 903 )
proj ected an avowedly open stand on the issue of the reproduction of
paintings. 6 2 I t was responding to an objection raised by readers to the
publication of Raphael's painting of S t Catherine, on the ground of
it being ' Western ' and ' Christian ' art, and to the view that Prabasi
should confine itself to paintings on ' I ndian ' themes. I n its own
defence, Prabasi asserted that the choice of a work of art should be
guided by a sense of its beauty and its emotional appeal, and not by
narrow religious or national considerations. Clearly, it was the
examples of Western Renaissance and post-Renaissance painting of
the past three centuries which conditioned these notions of ' beauty '
and ' art ' and attributed to these the sanctity of a universal standard.
While the journal was committed to the reproduction of the works of
Indian artists, it also laboured the point that the art of painting in
I ndia had never really attained the same level of excellence as in the
West. I n its view, it was only Hindu faith which could give the cheap
pictures of Kalighat or the Bat-tala religious almanacs a greater
appeal than a Raphael painting. The ' universal ' criterion of beauty,
to which the editor attributed all aesthetic j udgement, left no doubt
as to which was ' true art ' . 63
During its first few years, Prabasi, therefore, carried reproductions
of a number of European paintings to instal into readers the right
taste for ' art' . I ts choice was guided by a selection of masterpieces out

61 Prabasi, Agrahayan/Paush I 308, pp. 2 I 7-302. The article was simultaneously published as
a booklet, Ravi Varma : The Indian Artist (Allahabad, I go r ) .
62 ' Chitra ' - Prabasi, J aishtha 1 3 1 of I 903, pp. 63-64. 63 ibid., p. 63.
 The making of a new ' Indian ' art

of all the major museums of Europe, that the English magazine,

Strand, had published in November, 1 90 2 . 64 As underlined in the
editorial on art (May-June I 903 ) , the main criteria for the selection
of paintings were not those of technique or style, but those of
classicism, spirituality and emotional appeal. Raphael and Guido
Reni, the favourites among the Old Masters, figured side by side with
nineteenth-century Victorian painters - with Sir Lawrence Alma­
Tadema's neo-classical scenes from life and legends of ancient
greece,65 or G. F. Watts' mystical allegories of ' Love ' , ' Death ' and
' Hope ' .66
Within this aesthetic framework, attention also came to centre
around the paintings of I ndia's new artists, like Ravi Varma, G. K.
Mhatre or M. V . Dhurandhar. These were seen to provide the best
meeting point between a specifically I ndian and a universally artistic
appeal. Themes and images from I ndian mythology, transplanted on
the European ' high art ' forms, invested I ndian art with its own halo
of classicism and allegory. I n other sculptures of Mhatre, obvious
copies of Greek statuary donned in I ndian costumes appeared as
' Saraswati ' or ' Parvati ' . The model of European ' history ' painting
was imported to reconstruct narratives from the Ramayana, Maha­
bharata and ancient Sanskrit literature.
An ex-student and teacher of Sir J. J. School of Art, Bombay,
M. V. Dhurandhar had become the prototype of Ravi Varma in
Bombay, lending his training in the Academic style to a wide range
of I ndian mythologieal and literary themes, as he operated outside
the school for a wide commercial market. 67 He made his debut in
Bengal with a dramatic painting of sage Vishvamitra at the court of
king Dasharatha, soliciting the help of Ramachandra to kill two
Rakshasa miscreants.68 Grand palaces, lush forests, and intricate
details of costumes and ornaments were typical features of these
mythological paintings of Dhurandhar. But as great a value was
placed on atmospheric splendour as on the ' emotive ' quality of a
painting - on the sense of episodic drama, on the intensity of facial
64 ' Chitra ' - Prabasi, Agrahayan 1 309I I 902, pp. 295-96.
65 These paintings of Alma-Tadema accompanied an article by 0. C. Gangoly, ' Europer
Prachin J uger Chitra '-Prabasi, Magh r 3 I 2 I I 906, pp. 603-7.
66 Reproduced in Prabasi, Baisakh I 3 I I I I 904.
6 7 Information on Dhurandhar based on (i) an interview with his daughter, Ambika
Dhurandhar in Bombay in I983 and (ii) the artist's autobiography, Kalamandirantil Ekchalis
VarsheiForty One Years in the ].]. School of Art, January 1890-]anuary 1931 (Bombay, I 940).
68 The painting, now in the National Gallery of Art, Madras, was reproduced in Pmbasi, Paush
I 3091 I 902-3.
 Art-histories and aesthetic discourse

'"W;r.lt, �f� '\5ltfl'IC·-!:!t" '�

11*1 �--;-r. "�r�n �f<l �5�� 1

Fig. 42. M. V. Dhurandhar, ' Gouri Utsav '.

expression, and particularly on what were typified a s ' feminine '

moods, gestures and sentiments. Notions of the ' classical ', the
' aesthetic ' and the ' Indian ' all came to revolve around a rarified
ideal of womanhood. While images of devis (goddesses) and classical
nayikas (heroines) were the most important draw from myth and
literature, even outside mythology, women and what was defined as
the women's world - home, cultural traditions, rituals and religious
observances - figured as a very popular ingredient of I ndian
 The making of a new ' Indian ' art

Fig. 43· M . V. Dhurandhar, ' The Sacred Steps ' .

painting. Some typical examples can be seen in Dhurandhar's

painting of a Hindu household ceremony of Mahar ash tra, the ' Gouri
U tsav ', symbolising the advent of goddess Lakshmi into the house,
(Figure 42 ) or his study of two Marathi women on ' the sacred steps '
of a temple ( Figure 43 ) .
The I ndian subj ect matter turned out to be the major point of
interest of the critic, in his presentation of these pictures to the public.
I n the notes which accompanied the paintings, the particular
. � mythological legend or episode would be narrated at length,
emphasising the moral lesson of the story and the emotional force of
its portrayal. The ' au then tici ty ' of a painting was measured in terms
 Art-histories and aesthetic discourse 1 43

of its faithfulness to the descriptions given in mythology and

literature, and its ability to convey the same ideals and sentiments.
The visual had to seek its main validity in a text, which formed its
main reference point. The critic was quick to point out any
deviations from the mythological narrative, as in the case of one of
Dhurandhar's paintings on the Shakuntala theme, depicting Sha­
kuntala facing non-recognition and rej ection at Dushyanta's court,
where the succession of events had obviously been muddled up69
(Figure 44) . The question of ' style ' - or the mode of representation
of the images and subj ect matters that were considered ' I ndian ' ­
was hardly ever raised. It was assumed that, to qualify as ' works of
art ', these paintings had measured up to a broad criterion set by
Western Academic norms. The standards of realism in these I ndian
mythological paintings were clearly quite loose, as showed up most
frequently in anatomy drawing and in the conceptualisation of
figures. But, while a digression from the story sequence was immedi­
ately commented on, the inadequacies in representational skill
tended to be glossed over. The presence of a child with Shakuntala as
she appeared at the court of Dushyanta jarred more with the critic
than the stiff and ungainly theatricalism of Shakuntala's posture.
Overall, these works by I ndia's new artists had come to hold a
confirmed status as ' high art ' - a status that found its clearest
sanction in the awards they won in various ' fine art ' exhibitions in
Madras, Bombay and Calcutta. British recognition and publicity
formed an important basis and prerequisite to the I ndian appre­
ciation of their own new genre of neo-classical art. Most of the
paintings of Ravi Varma and M . V. Dhurandhar and the sculptures
of G. K. Mhatre, which were selected for reproduction in Prabasi,
were already marked out by prizes and medals they had been
awarded in the ' fine art ' exhibitions of the Empire. And these laurels
were always proudly mentioned by the editor or the critic, in the
notes to the pictures.
Even as Prabasi brought ou t the first set of the new ' Indian-style '
paintings of Abanindranath Tagore in the issues of r go2-3,
alongside the ·works of Ravi Varma, Mhatre, Dhurandhar and
Western artists, the criteria of evaluating these paintings seemed to

69 This painting of Dhurandhar of ' Shakuntala at the court of king Dushyanta ' showed
Shakuntala with her son, who is meant to have been born much later on in the story ­
' Chitra Prabasi, J aishtha I go I / I gog, p. 64.
',
1 44 The making of a new ' Indian ' art

Fig. 44· M. V. Dhurandhar, Shakuntala at the court of king Dushyanta.

 Art-histories and aesthetic discourse 1 45

hardly change. 70 The narration of the themes in eloquent literary

passages emphasised the ' Indian ' content and ethos of these pictures.
Once more, the focus was on the Western appraisal of these paintings,
in this case, on the praise extended by the art teacher and scholar,
E. B . Havell. It was by quoting extracts from Havell's article in The
Studio, 71 and the responses in the English press to the reproductions of
Abanindranath's paintings, that elements of a distinctly ' Indian­
style ' were identified in these paintings. As Abanindranath's paint­
ings began to appear regularly in Prabasi, together with equally
large numbers of reproductions of the pictures of Ravi Varma,
Dhurandhar or Bamapada Banerj ee, no immediate case was made
for the superior aesthetics of the one against the other, nor for their
greater authenticity as ' Indian ' art.
70 The first two of Abanindranath Tagore's paintings to appear in Prabasi in r gog were
' Vajramukut and Padmavati ' and ' Buddha and Sujata ' (Figure 53).
71 E. B. Havel!, ' Some Notes on Indian Pictorial Art', The Studio (October r go2), Vol. 27, No.
I 15.
 CHAPTER 5

Oriental ism and the new claims for Indian art : the
ideas of Havel!, Coomaraswamy, Okakura and
Nivedita

I n Calcutta i n the 1 goos the battle to establish a new ' Indian '
aesthetics and a new ' national art ' would be waged through a
sharply altered definition of tradition and a narrowed ideology of
I ndian-ness. To a large extent, again, it was Western intervention ­
this time, the claims and verdict of a new influential group of
Orientalists - which took the lead in remoulding attitudes and
aesthetic preferences, and in fostering a new code of ' legitimate '
taste. Displacing Ravi Varma, Abanindranath Tagore was now
projected as the sole representative of an ' artistic revival ' in modern
India. Nationalism, in league with Orientalism, set out to create an
alternative, more exclusive space of a ' high art ' , centering around
the newly acclaimed ' Indian-style ' paintings of Abanindranath and
his following.
The new nationalist ideology of I ndian art, its aesthetic self­
definitions and its search for a ' tradition ' had strong roots in
Orientalist writing and debates. British Orientalism produced and
structured much of its notion of an I ndian art tradition. While it had
provided the core of historical knowledge and archaeological
expertise on the subject, it would also stand at the helm of the
aesthetic reinterpretation of I ndian art during the turn of the
century. The period witnessed a dramatic shift in European
approaches to I ndian art : from a Western classical bias to an
exclusively ' Indian ' point of view, from an appreciation of only the
' decorative arts ' to the discovery of a rich ' fine arts ' tradition with a
sublime spiritual aesthetic that was uniquely Eastern. I n the first
decade of the twentieth century, E. B. Havell and A. K. Coomara­
swamy emerged as the two most influential spokesmen of this
alternative front in Orientalism. They pioneered an ' I ndian defence '
in reaction against the insidious ' Western bias ' that had so far
dominated the European view of Indian art.
 Orientalism and the new claims for Indian art 1 47

In studying this new phase of Orientalism , the point of concern,

however, is not merely the growth of a greater cultural empathy and
understanding in the European approach to the subject. The issue of
empathy and authenticity does not block out the epistemological
problems involved in the very processes of Orientalist representation
and formulation of knowledge : a process by which the Orient was
constituted as the non-European ' Other ', the antetype against which
Europe-defined itself. 1 The new body of discourse of Indian art
continued to fall within the European phenomenon of Orientalism :
that systematised mode of knowledge, with its implicit ' cultural
hegemony ', whereby Europe was able ' to manage - even produce ­
the Orient, politically, sociologically . . . ideologically, scientifically
and imaginatively ' .2 The development of Orientalist studies in India
was, for rulers like Curzon, ' a great Imperial obligation ' . ' Our
capacity to understand what may be called the genius of the East ' , he
told the House of Commons in r gog, ' is the sole basis upon which we
are likely to be able to maintain in future the position we have won '.3
It was a matter of establishing ' a flexible positional superiority ' : out
of it had developed the mounting interest in Indian design and crafts
since the mid-nineteenth century.
The beginnings of British art education in India in the r 8sos, and
. its programme of the preservation of Indian handicrafts, had been a
part of paternalistic commitments and search for new cultural roots
in the Empire in the post- Mutiny period. 1\tlen like Owen Jones,
Henry Cole, George Birdwood or James Fergusson, in their varied
positions as industrial designers, education-authorities, museum­
keepers, art administrators and experts, felt it a part of a wider
imperial commitment to weave their theories about Indian art.
Under their initiative and authority, Indian art was reconstructed
and revived, for display in exhibitions and museums, for implemen­
tation in new Schools of Art and Design, and for academic studies
and imaginative discourses. E. B. Havell and A. K. Coomaraswamy
were products largely of this expanding Orientalist establishment

1 Anour Abdel Malek's essay, ' Orientalism in Crisis ', Diogenes, 44, Winter rg63, was one of
the first to explore this theme of the collaboration of power and knowledge in the production
of discourses on the Orient. :More recently, E. W. Said's Orientalism has been the most
influential theoretical statement on the subject. See also Said, ' Orientalism Reconsidered '
and essays by other authors in Europe and its Others, Papers from the Essex Coriference on the
Sociology of Literature (Colchester, r 985) ; Ronald Inden, ' Orientalist Constructions of Indi a '
in Modern Asian Studies, 20,3, r g86. 2 Said, Orienta/ism, p. 6.

3 z"b z"d. , p. 2 1 4.
 The making of a new ' Indian ' art

and its m1sswn of ' improvement ' . I n time, however, their whole
ideological stand would rest on their opposition to the dominant
trends of colonial art administration in India, and on the ex­
clusiveness they claimed in their commitment and sympathies for
I ndian art. The ' hegemony ' of their new knowledge constituted itself
precisely around this point of opposition, this point of departure from ·
the official mainstream. For this is where the new Orientalism
established its immediate and powerful influence over nationalist
thought, securing for itself a potently anti-colonial, pro- I ndian
image. Orientalism, while it openly emptied itself of its colonial
content, exercised its greatest power in the very authority it
commanded over representation - in its ability to shape, define and
fix the image of I ndian art in both Western imagination and
nationalist perceptions. I t was during this phase that Orientalism
created a powerful equation between the ideas of ' art ', ' tradition '
and ' Indian-ness '. The image it projected of the Indian art tradition
(as integrally linked with antiquity, religion and mystical philosophy)
conditioned the wider image of I ndia as an abstracted, essentialist
entity, encapsulated within an idealised past.
This chapter studies this sharp turning point in ideas that made for
the new assertive strength of Orientalism. But it also underlines
certain continuities which placed figures like Havell and Coomaras­
wamy within the existing framework of British art education in
I ndia. I n England, by the end of the nineteenth century, the interest
in Indian art was acquiring different dimensions. 4 The initial
fascination for the principles of Indian design and craftsmanship,
generated by the Great Exhibition in London of I 85 I , had been
replaced by a growing criticism of the declining state of handicrafts in
the Empire, with British commercialism and negligent government
policy marked out as the main targets of attack. 5 Simultaneously, the
reformist movement in industrial design, where the main concerns
had been with the practical relevance of Indian design in British
industry and art education, was giving way to a new phase of Arts
and Crafts idealism, whereby craftsmanship became ' a mode of
thought ' and a whole way of life. The earlier theoretical interest in
the ' right ' principles of ornament expanded, now, into a broader
4 For British attitudes towards Indian art, as it evolved from the middle of the nineteenth
century, see Partha Mitter, Much Maligned Monsters and Mahrukh Keki Tarapor, Art and
Empire.
5 One of the earliest critiques was voiced in Sir G. C. M . Birdwood's Handbook to the British
Indian Section, Paris Universal Exhibition of 1878, p. 59·
 Orientalism and the new claims for Indian art 1 49
concern with the ' ideal social context ' : with the pre-industrial
village community in I ndia that had produced and continued to
produce a wealth of design and handicrafts. 6 Havell and Coomaras­
wamy both emerged at the head of these shifting trends of thought and
attitude, producing a significant conjuncture of the anti-industrial
ethics and craft idealism of late Victorian England with currents of
aesthetic nationalism in I ndia. Their careers stand at an interesting
crossroads of Western and Indian concerns in the evolving approach
to I ndian art.

E . B. H A V E L L : T H E R E F O R M I S T S C H E M E S A N D P O L I C I E S O F

THE ART TEACHER IN CALCUTTA

Ernest Binfield Havell ( I 864- I 93 7 ) came out to work in India as

Superintendent, first, of the Madras School of Arts in I 884 and then
of the Calcutta School of Art ( Figure 45) . There seemed to be two
distinctly separate aspects to his career : beginning as an art
educationist, he emerged in time as an ideologue and art historian,
caught, occasionally, between the conflicting priorities of these two
roles. The emphasis here is on the shifting nature of his ideas and
preoccupations from I ndian_ design to the I ndian ' fine arts ' of
painting and sculpture, from the direct problems of art policies in
I ndia to an idealised defence of I ndian art. Havell's career as
Superintendent of the Government School of Art, Calcutta ( I 8g6-
I go6) coincided with his discovery of Abanindranath Tagore as the
first ' genuine ' Indian artist of modern times. Consequently, Havell
in Calcutta has been associated primarily with the rise of the new art
movement. A fresh look at his career, less from a Bengal School
hindsight and more as a sequel to South Kensington policies in I ndia
and his own earlier career in Madras, helps to analyse better the
nature of his plans of I ndianisation and the extent of the break
involved.
Havell's main efforts in Calcutta were directed towards a
reorganisation of the curricula of the School of Art, with the avowed
obj ective of ' making I ndian art the basis of all instruction ' . 7 His
scheme of reform involved primarily a transformation of the Calcutta

6 Mahrukh Tarapor, pp. r-49, r r 6-43.

7 E. B. Havell's Memorandum on the present working of the Calcutta School of Art ­
BGP /E, June 1 904, 24-2 7.
1 50 The making of a new ' Indian ' art

Fig. 45· Ishwari Prasad, Portrait of E. B. Havell (water-colour, c. r 905 ) .

 Orientalism and the new claims for Indian art

School of Art from a Fine Arts Academy into a school of design and
applied arts, with a special focus on the I ndian traditions of
decorative arts. 8 Over 1 8g7-g8, a number of new classes in
' decorative design ' were begun within the School - stencilling for
wall decoration, fresco painting, lacquer work on wood, and the
preparation of stained-glass windows. 9 Alongside, Havell also called
for a special allocation from each year's grant to the Government Art
Gallery for the purchase of ' fine old specimens of oriental art
indus tries ' which he planned to use as teaching models.10
Such schemes of reform clearly fitted into the pre-existing model of
British art education in I ndia, with its priority fixed on the cultivation
of I ndian design and the preservation of Indian decorative arts. True
to his South Kensington training, Havell argued for the abolition of
all ' artificial ' distinctions between ' fine ' and ' applied ' arts and for a
relinking of art and industry, highlighting design as the basis of all art
and any sound art instruction. For, he believed, it was only through
learning design that students could be made to feel that art was
' something for the public streets, for their own homes and everyday
lives ; not merely a luxury exotic imported from Europe and only to
be studied in picture galleries and museums ' .11 In line with William
Morris and the ' Arts and Crafts ' movement, he also saw in design
and the handicrafts the only ' living art ' of India, which kept alive
tradition and ' had still a natural and spontaneous growth, similar to
that of the industrial arts in Europe in the middle ages ' .12 I t was the
status of the Calcutta School of Art as primarily a Drawing and
Painting Academy which Havell found to be among its chief defects
when he proposed his plans of reorganisation. The back-dated and
purely imitative nature of the Drawing and Painting curriculum,
with its rigorous Academic drill of ' copying ' , he argued, produced
' tenth-rate portrait painters, instead of first-rate industrial artists ' . I t
deflected Indian students from developing what he considered to be
their true potentials in design and craftsmanship, and it prevented the
use of Oriental models in the drawing, painting and design classes. 13
One of the most striking features of Havell's scheme of reform was
its lack of interest in the development of ' fine arts ' . This outlines the
distinctly separate layer of his ideas as an art teacher in I ndia, before

8 Havell's scheme for the reorganisation of the Government School ofArt, Calcutta - BGP /E,
May r 897, 49-50. 9 AGRPI, Bengal, r 897-98, r 898-99.
11 12 ibid.
10 BGP/E, May r 897, Nos. 49-50, p . 5· ibid., p. 2 .
13 l'b l'd , p. 3 ·
.
 The making of a new ' Indian ' art
he emerged in quite a different role as champion of the ' fine arts ' .
Even though Havell, i n theory, wanted to remove all false distinctions
between ' decorative ' and ' fine ' arts in his teaching, his scheme of
reform was constantly torn between these existing polarities. To .
Havell, in the 1 8gos, the importance of I ndian art and artists lay
primarily in the sphere of design and craftsmanship, wherein also lay
the main responsibilities of the British government in I ndia. And he
saw no need to reconstruct or I ndianise the ' fine arts ' division of the
school's curriculum. I n a report that seems ironic in a later context,
he called only for a substitution of the existing back-dated modes of
teaching by ' a better system . . . founded on that of the best European
Academies ' 14 ; and he recommended a raise in fees in this division to
restrict the entry of students only to those with a ' talent and aptitude
for the higher arts ' .15 There was in Havell's schemes, as in much
of official policy of the time, an implicit categorisation of the ' fine arts '
as a European domain and an area of special talent and aptitude, and
the ' decorative arts ' as an I ndian domain and the main sphere of
official concerns and tutelage.
Havell's efforts to promote I ndian traditions of design and craft
work within the Calcutta School of Art were of limited success.
Despite the new orientation towards decorative design, draughtsmen,
drawing masters, engravers and lithographers formed still the main
turn-over of the school. Havell's craft programmes increasingly
found a wider and more successful forum outside the school. The
revival of I ndian handicrafts, particularly the championship of
handloom weaving against the mechanised textile industry, became,
for him, a crucial id eological issue which set him at variance with the
general thrust of official policy. With handloom weaving, what
Havell had in mind was not merely the diffusion of the mechanical
innovation of the fly-shuttle, but also the setting up of independent
weavers' cooperatives which would provide interest-free credit to
weavers to establish their economic independence, as an essential
prerequisite to the mechanisation and maximisation of production. 16
The issue of handlooms had become symbolic of ' the entire issue of
national culture ' , and its decline was seen to reflect a broader
deterioration of taste and the cultural impoverishment of I ndia.
Meanwhile, the craft projects that actually got running under
Havell were concerned more with illustrations of traditional I ndian

14 AGRPI, Bengal, r 8g 7-g8. 15 BGP/E, May I 8g7, 4g-5o, p. g.

16
' The Revival of lndian Handicrafts ' (lecture, I go I ) , published in his Essays on Indian Art,
Industry and Education ( M adras, I g I o).
 Orientalism and the new claims for Indian art 1 53
art-ware and the circulation of good examples of ornamental design.
The pioneer in this field had been John Lockwood Kipling
(Superintendent of the Mayo School of Art, Lahore, r 8 75-93 ) , and
the Journal of Indian Art and Industry, launched under his ini tiative in
r 886. Under Havell, in 1 902-3, a serial brought out by the Survey of
I ndia's office, called the Technical Art Series, began to feature a similar
range of traditional art manufactures, illustrating them with a
greater eye to the practical applicability and utilisation of the
designs. With the same intention of providing working craftsmen
with a choice repertoire of traditional designs, Havell floated another
project for the preparation of Standard Pattern Books.17 The Schools of
Art were entrusted with the task of producing these books, which
were meant to provide more simplified stage-by-stage break-up of
designs for the benefit of ordinary craftsmen, and were to be
distributed free among bona-fide artisans. 18
Throughout these projects, Havell's aesthetic evaluation of Orien­
tal design was constantly grounded in priorities of a practical revival
of such designs in surviving art industries. He was unusually sensitive
to the dichotomy that prevailed between acknowledging the artistic
merits of traditional design and ensuring the commercial feasibility of
their revival . To bridge this dichotomy, he was aware that craft
policies in India would have to progress beyond mere documentation
and circulation of traditional designs into a wider economic
protection and patronage of handicraft industries. Despite this
awareness, this is where his efforts to promote I ndia's handicraft
traditions met with their main practical constraint and obstacle.
Nonetheless, the basic aim with which he set out in Calcutta - that of
making Indian art the basis of all instruction - came closest to
fulfil ment in these craft programmes.
Simultaneously, Havell's preoccupations were undergoing a
subtle, gradual transition from the sphere of art education and its
exclusive interests in I ndian design and crafts to a new sphere of
I ndian ' fine arts ' . One of the clearest manifestations of this lay in his
acquaintance with Mughal miniature painting, as proof of the
existence of a rich heritage of ' fine arts ' in I ndia. Since the late r 8gos,
a steady build up of collections of Oriental metal-work and textiles
and samples of medieval I ndian architecture for the Government Art
Gallery was accompanied by the acquisition ofsome choice specimens

17 BGP/E, August 1 904, 1 7 1-72, june 1 905, 27-28.

18
BGP/E, November 1 907, 75-85.
1 54 The making of a new ' Indian ' art
of Mughal miniature painting.19 This was a part of a parallel
programme of Indianising the collection of this Gallery and
redefining its educational purpose in the instruction of Indian art
students. 20 To cater to the special needs and potentials of Indian ar�
students, and to initiate them in Oriental and decorative art
traditions, Havell wished to fill this Gallery with reproductions of
Byzantine and early pre-Renaissance I talian art, on the one hand,
and with samples of Ajanta and Mughal painting, on the other.21
Interestingly, both were valued primarily for their ' decorative '
essence.
The final decision in I 904 to sell the bulk of the Gallery's Viceregal
collection of European Academic paintings, and to utilise the sale
proceeds in the purchase of Indian art, became the cause celebre of
Havell's years in Calcutta.22 To both its opponents and advocates,
this sale came to hold dramatic implications that went far beyond the
immediate outcome of the event. Havell's own perception of it most
emphatically underlined the notion of a great breakthrough. The Art
Gallery now became the main forum through which he evolved a
marked sense of the exclusiveness of his own position within British
art administration. His self-image as one of the sole saviours of Indian
art comes across strongly in the firm stand he took, the same year
( I 904) , against the Government proposals to amalgamate the
collections of the Art Gallery with the art section of the I ndian
Museum. 23 The Art Gallery, he argued, had been transformed by him
into an institution of unique importance for Indian art, and its
educational value would be completely lost if it was merged with
what he considered the far inferior collection of art-ware of the Indian
Museum. Havell's personal claims to the greatest knowledge and
commitment about Indian art brought on his staunch reluctance to
hand over his domain to the museum authorities.
Another dramatic shift in Havell's interests and ideas on Indian art
came with his discovery of Abanindranath Tagore as ' the only really
original native artist which India has produced under British
19 Some of these bore the seal of the court ofJ ehangir and the signature of his talented court
artist, Ustad Mansur. There is also reference to the collection of some miniature paintings
from the courts of Sher Shah and Shah Jahan - AGRPI, Bengal, 1897-8, 1903-4.
0
2 E. B. Havell's proposals on new guidelines in the management of the Calcutta Art Gallery
and in the purchase of works of art for it - BGP /E, May 1 897, 52-53.
21
ibid., p. 2.
22 Sale of European pictures in the Calcutta Art Gallery, proposed by E. B. Havell - BGP jE,

May 1 904, B 39-42.

23 Printed report and memorandum from Havell to the DPI, 1 2 September 1 904 - BGPjE,

December 1 904, 32-38.

 Orientalism and the new claims for Indian art 1 55

administration '. Since 1 895-96, Abanindranath had begun to

experiment independently with a new ' Indian-style ' , drawing on
design and calligraphic patterns of the late medieval miniatures. I t
was, however, Havell's claim that Abanindranath's development as
an ' Indian ' artist was owed ' entirely to the new collections of the Art
Gallery '. 24 Right from the start, his promotion of Abanindranath
Tagore would be coloured by the paternalistic overtones and
possessive claims of British Orientalism. Just as Havell looked on
himself as the main champion of Indian art, so also he claimed
Abanindranath Tagore as his protege and discovery. 25 In an article in
The Studio in October 1 902, Havell presented Abanindranath to the
West as the real hope and future of Indian art.26 And, in 1 905, he
drew Abanindranath into the post of Vice-Principal of the Calcutta
School of Art, to strengthen his camp within the school. 27
A close examination of the issue of Abanindranath's appointment,
however, reveals, once again, a sharp duality in Havell's ideas. His
official correspondence regarding the appointment of a new Vice­
Principal shows him thinking squarely within the framework of
South Kensington ideas on art education in I ndia. 28 While he was
willing to encourage I ndianisation of the staff at the level of class
teachers, the post of Vice-Principal, he argued, required a man of
' superior education and attainments ' to those produced by the
I ndian Schools of Art. I t needed someone with ' a thorough all-round
artistic training . . . especially in practical decorative work ' . Yet in
Abanindranath, Havell ca_me to push not only an I ndian candidate
but one who had none of the required training in teaching art or in
technical art work. This sharp volte-face in Havell's stand on the
issue of suitable art teachers in I ndia is probably more apparent in
hindsight than it was to Havell himself.
For, by this stage, Havell's concerns about Indian art were evolving
in multiple directions - the continuing preoccupation with design
and crafts had acquired a new layer of interest in the ' fine arts ' ;
the reorganisation of the Calcutta Art School and Gallery had
24
ibid., pp. 6-7·
25 This relationship of master and protege would also be invoked in many of the British reports
and much Anglo-Indian writing of the time. Later in life, Havel!, assailed by a sense of
frustration in his endeavours to champion Indian art, complained about the way
Abanindranath and his followers had usurped the whole credit of pioneering the ' new
school ' of painting - Letter from Havel! to Rothenstein, Rothenstein Papers ( I OLR
26
Collection ) . E. B . Havel!, ' Some Notes on Indian Pictorial Art '.
27 BGP/E, August 1905, B 76-90.
28
On the appointment of a successor to Mr 0. Ghilardi as Vice-Principal of the Calcutta
School of Art - BG P/E, March I 904, I I- I 4·
 The making of a new ' Indian ' art
expanded into a broader critique of British art policies in India and
a commitment to the reemergence of Indian artists (and not j ust
craftsmen) . Abanindranath Tagore had come to symbolise the new
' cause ' of his career. In drawing him into the art school, his practical
considerations about art education policy were swayed by a new
wave of aesthetic preoccupations.

E. B . H A V E L L : T H E T R A N S F O R M A T I O N O F THE ART T EA C H E R

INTO AN AESTHETE AND SCHOLAR

The articles Havell wrote over r902-3 reflect the different slant in his
ideas and concerns. Much of the writing of this period was focused
around an attack on what he termed ' British Philistinism ' and the
injuries it was causing to I ndian art. 29 His view of the historical
development of Indian painting was rounded off by a picture of
accelerated decline since the eighteenth century ' under the successive
blight of Mahomeddan bigotry, political anarchy and British
philistinism ' . A large part of the The Studio article on Abanindranath
was given over to a scathing criticism of the British system of higher
education in I ndia which completely ignored and crushed out art,
and the ' destructive ' nature of the government art schools, art
galleries and museums which denied the very existence of an Indian
tradition of' fine arts ' .30 The architectural programme of the Empire,
in particular, was regarded as a glaring instance of destructive policy,
which foisted on India a confused j umble of so-called classical styles,
and totally neglected the indigenous ' living ' traditions of building
and the ' living ' communities of skilled craftsmen. 31
Through such extended critiques, Havell emphasised the point
that he stood outside this general milieu ofBritish art administration,
on the side of Indian art and artists. The position he evolved rested
on certain notions about Indian art, which were constantly to recur
in his writings and would form the core of his new aesthetic
involvement with the subject. Art in India was equated not just with
a ' living tradition ' of design and skilled craftsmanship, but also with
the ' higher ' qualities of imagination and spirituality, 32 and with an
29 ' British Philistinism and Indian Art ' in The Nineteenth Century, February 1 903, No. 53·
30 ' Some Notes on Indian Pictorial Art', pp. 26, 29.
31 This critique of the Public Works Department of the British I ndian administration would be
reiterated in articles like ' Indian Administration and Swadeshi ' in Essays in Indian Art,
Industry and Education. And it would build up to Havell's committed campaign to have Indian
styles and artisans employed in the building of the new capital at New Delhi.
32 ' British Philistinism and Indian Art ', p. 200.
 Oriental ism and the new claims for Indian art 1 57

exclusive Eastern aesthetics that was inscrutable to the West. Western

misconceptions and ignorance about Indian art, he argued, stemmed
from· their inability to look beyond the merely decorative aspects and
absorb the more abstract ' spirit of Eastern artistic thought ' . The
sheer inscrutability of Indian art became its greatest virtue. ' The
spirituality of Indian art permeates the whole of it ' , he wrote, ' but it
shines brightest at the point where we cease to see and understand
it. l 33
Havell's new role as writer and aesthete launched itself with the
publication of two travelogues, intended to initiate readers into the
great I ndian traditions of art and religion. The firs t of these, A
Handbook to Agra and the Taj, Sikandra, Fatehpur Sikri and the Neigh­
bourhood ( I 904 ) , presented a tight definition of what constituted the
specifically ' I ndian ' character of Mughal architecture, separating
the Persian influences from a central underlying core of Hindu
features in construction and in ornamental details. 34 Implicitly,
' Hindu ' became synonymous with being genuinely Indian. To
confirm the purely ' Indian ' pedigree of the Taj, Havell had not only
to highlight the genius of the Mughal architects and designers who
conceived of it - he had also to reveal the strong u nderlayer of Hindu
influences to which they were indebted .
The next book, Benaras the Sacred Ciry : Sketches of Hindu Life and
Religion ( 1 905 ) effected more openly the swing back from the Mughal
to the Hindu past, as the more ' authentic ' mark of Indian civilisation.
The equations were clear and powerful : Benaras was Hinduism,
synthesising all the different creeds of worship and different shrines
into a syncretic Hindu philosophy of ' One in Many '35 ; Benaras was
also I ndia, encapsulated into this one sacred city. The city was, to
Havell, ' the microcosm of all India ' . 36 I t offered a kaleidoscope of
' picturesque ' sights to the nineteenth-century Western artist and
traveller in I ndia, drawing on many of the terms and imagery of the
European Grand Tour. I t also corresponded to the new Orientalist
ideal of an unchanging Hindu civilisation in I ndia, with a deep
spiritual core. Finally, Benaras provided a vivid case where ' the
desecration and destruction ' of Muhammadan times could be
contrasted with the order and progress of British rule. The greatest
boon ofBritish rule was seen to lie in the restoration ofBenaras as the

33 Essays on Indian Art, Industry and Education, pp. 2-3.

34 A Handbook to Agra and the Taj, pp. I 42-43.
35 Benaras, The Sacred Ciry (London, r 905), p. 76. 36 ibid., p. I 56.
 The making of a new ' Indian ' art

sacred city of the Hindus, and in the setting up of institutions like

Annie Besant's Hindu Central College, which initiated a liberal
trend within Hinduism to counteract the orthodox, obscurantist
Brahmanical religion . 37 The aim was to give I ndia back an ideal past
of a ' Hindu golden age ', and ensure ' progress ' within the bounds of
this ancient Hindu civilisation.
Henceforth, this interest in Hindu metaphysics and the Hindu past
became the dominant trait in Havell's whole approach to I ndian art.
His involvement with Hindu religion and philosophy has been traced
back to his close links with the Theosophical Society during his years
in Madras.3 8 I n Calcutta, his acquaintance with Sister Nivedita of
the Ramakrishna M ath must have drawn him more and more to the
mystical and spiritual aspect of Hindu aesthetics. At the same time,
his associations with the Tagore family generated a powerful
undercurrent of nationalist sympathies in the ways in which Havell
articulated his commitment to Indian art. I ndia now became
representative of an idealised spirit of nationality and of a wider
entity of the Orient fighting against the repression of the Occident.
Havell's growing involvement with mysticism and Tantric cults
took its personal toll. He left I ndia in 1 905, initially on sick leave, to
be later declared ' unfit for further service in I ndia ' . However,
removed from the scene of policy manoeuvres and wranglings,
Havell's commitmen t to the study and interpretation of I ndian art
reached a new crescendo. Writing became, now, his most potent
weapon : his corrective to the ignorance, philistinism and ' insidious
vandalism ' of British art administrators in I ndia. The distancing
from the I ndian environment, in a sense, fundamentally conditioned
the nature of Havell's discourse on Indian art.39 While Calcutta had
provided the first cause and stimulus, England became the more vital
arena of affirmation of Havell's stand as an ' authority ' and a
' sympathiser ' . The publication of Indian Sculpture and Painting in 1 go8
- his first extended construct of an Indian ' great art ' tradition ­
came as the dramatic breakthrough in the history of Western
attitudes to Indian art, causing a sweeping reversal of hierarchies
between West and East. As the celebrated author of Indian Sculpture
and Painting, and its follow-up volume on I ndian aesthetic philosophy,
37 ibid., pp. 224-25. 38 Mahrukh Keki Tarapor, pp. 95-96.
39 Said argues that Orientalist discourse is fundamentally premised upon such exteriority - on
the fact that the Western Orientalist scholar almost always stands outside the field, ' makes
the Orient, describes the Orient, renders its mysteries plain for and to the West' -

Orienta/ism, pp. 20-22.

 Orientalism and the new claims for Indian art I 59

The Ideals ofIndian Art ( I g I I ) , Havell, abroad, became more powerful

and influential than he may ever have been in his years in India.
These two books came to be the most significant texts of a new
Orientalist discourse, where art in I ndia was associated with a range
of specially ' Indian ' attributes - an ancient, classical past ; a deep
reserve of religiosity and spiritualism ; and a new spirit of nationalism.
Both works revolved around certain key notions of ' art ' vs.
' archaeology ', of a sharply polarised ' Indian ' vs. a ' Western ' point
of view. Havell's main defence of I ndian art was to proffer an
' artistic, not archaeological interpretation ' and ' to place himself at
the I ndian point of view ' ,40 which could be arrived at only through
unearthing ' the Divine Ideal in I ndian art ' .41 Given the mystical and
complex nature of Hindu iconography and the Western misun­
derstanding of it, he believed the greatest j ustice he could do to his
subj ect was to evoke ' a feel for I ndian spiritualism ' , rather than
provide mere technical interpretations.
The arrival of these books also marks the formation of a strong
lobby of committed Orientalists around Havell. I ndia's art heritage,
in its definition as exclusively ' Indian ' and predominantly spiritual,
had found other powerful advocates who discovered in Havell's
Indian Sculpture and Painting a crucial boost to their cause. For these
new advocates of Indian art, there was a great b attle to be fought, not
mere additions to be made to existing knowledge on I ndian art. And
the context of the battle determined the exaggerations and counter­
postures of their ' Indian bias ' .

A. K. C O O M ARASWA M Y : ARTS AND C R A F T S I D E A L I S M AND THE

' '
INDIAN BIAS I N ART AND AESTHETICS

The excitement generated by H avell's publications focused attention

on the other leading exponent of ' the Indian defence ' in Britain,
Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy, who was then equally committed
to the cause of defending I ndian aesthetics and rewriting I ndian art
history. Indian Sculpture and Painting coincided with the publication of
Coomaraswamy's first major book Mediaeval Sinhalese Art. This book
vividly outlined the road through which the author had entered his
subject, reflecting the full weight of Coomaraswamy's involvement
with the last phase of the Arts and Crafts movement in Britain, and his

40 Indian Sculpture and Painting, pp. v-vi. 4 1 ibid., Chapter I I I .

r 6o The making of a new ' Indian ' art

indebtedness to the ideas of William Morris and C. R. Ashbee. 42

Mediaeval Sinhalese Art also marked a subtle transition in Coomaras­
wamy from his Arts and Crafts preoccupations to a new concern with
the propagation of Oriental art and aesthetics, from a purely ' Eastern
standpoint ' . 43 The timing of the book was fortuitous : arriving on the
scene j ust as Indian art had exploded into a major issue, it invited the
protagonists of the new ' cause ' to read into the book the signs of a
wider defence of I ndian tradition and I ndian nationality. 44
From the beginning, Coomaraswamy's interest in the traditional
art, architecture and handicrafts of his native land had been
combined with an acu te awareness of the colonial destruction of his
people's ' national character and individuality '. His was the national­
ism of an outsider : of mixed Sinhalese and English parentage, he
grew up in England and returned to Ceylon in his mid-twenties,
steeped in Victorian ethics and morality. The years in Ceylon
( 1 903 / 4- 1 90 7 ) proved to be the great turning point of his career,
transforming the geologist into a social reformer and ideologue. A
messianic reformist zeal to recover tradition and national culture in
Ceylon produced one of his earliest rhetorical essays, Borrowed Plumes
( 1 905 ) , a strong indictment of the widespread conversion of the
contemporary Sinhalese people to foreign religion and dress ; and it
spilled over into numerous other pamphlets and letters he addressed
to readers in Ceylon . The aesthete and the art historian in him had
also begun to emerge during these Ceylonese years, for in Coomaras­
wamy's view, the most destructive impact of colonial rule on Ceylon
could be seen in the disappearance ofher traditional art, architecture
and handicrafts. The urge for national reform thus pushed him into
studying the dying traditions of Kandyan craftsmanship, leading to
the publication ofhis monumental work, Medieval Sinhalese Art, on his
return to England.
The basic intent of the book was polemicaL Its evocation of the
ideals of the past ( the past of Ceylon fitting into the larger, more
glorious past of I n dia) was devoted to the ' possibility of a true
regeneration . . . of the national life of the Sinhalese people ' .45 Tra­
dition was located in the medieval Ceylon that existed prior to British
42 Roger Lipsey, Coomaraswamy ( Princeton, 1 977), Vol. 3 : His Life and Work, contains a detailed
discussion of Coomaraswamy's involvement with the Arts and Crafts guild of C. R. Ashbee
at Broad Campden, England during 1 907-8 and the pu blication of Medieval Sinhalese Art.
43 The term is used in Nivedita's exultant review of the book in The Modern Review, July 1 909,
p. 67. 44 ibid., p. 67.
45 Medieval Sinhalese Art (Broad Campden, 1 908), p. vi.
 Orientalism and the new claims for Indian art 161

occupation, especially in her arts and crafts that flourished till the
invasion of Western commerce and machine-industry. Regeneration
of national c1:1lture was conceived of primarily in terms of a
reorganisation of traditional handicrafts, and a restoration of old
guild associations of craftsmen. The book thus came to stand as a
manifesto of the Arts and Crafts idealists in England. C. R. Ashbee's
vision of ' a nobler, finer and saner order of things ' and ' the
protection of standard in life '46 was given the reality of a pre­
industrial, traditional world of craftsmanship in the medieval
Kandyan kingdom of Ceylon. The nostalgia for a medieval past
found, here, a model world, more accessible in time than the
European middle ages for it had preserved itself right into the
nineteenth century, and traces of it still lingered on. The main thrust
of the study was on the ' ideal ' social context of the pre-industrial
village civilisation - on the royal and religious patronage of the arts ;
the security of the craftsmen in land-holdings and state and temple
endowments ; and the central place of art in the religious and daily
life of the people. 47 A people's art, a religious art, an art that belonged
not to the luxury and ostentation of courts but to the everyday life of
peasants : to the author, all of this made the handicrafts of Ceylon ' a
true art ' .
Back in England, between r go 7 and r gog, Coomaraswamy's life
was to become fully involved with the last phase of the Arts and Crafts
movement, with the Chipping Campden Guild and School of
Handicraft begun by Ashbee. 48 His next book, The Indian Craftsman
( r gog) , contained a still more concentrated assemblage of arts and
crafts ideas, in their Indian manifestation, presenting the craftsman
as an organic element in the traditional national life of India. 49 The
move from the microcosm of Ceylon to the broad spectrum of India
was only natural : for, in Coomaraswamy's view, the religion and
culture of Ceylon was but a fragment and an inextricable part of the
Indian tradition. The importance of this book for Arts and Crafts
idealists in Britain is evident in the foreword written by C. R. Ashbee,
which underlines vividly the importance of an idealised Orient in the
spiritual discontent and search for salvation of the West. 5°

46 C. R. Ashbee, Craftsmanship in Competitive lndust1y (Campden and London, I go6) , pp. g-IO.
47 Medieval Sinhalese Art, pp. I g-49.
48 Morris' Kelmscott Press had been taken over in I 8go and transferred to Chipping Campden
by C. R. Ashbee, who founded here a modern guild of workmen - Roger Lipsey, pp . 47-50.
49 The Indian Craftsman (London, r gog), p. 73· 50 ibid., p. xiii.
 The making of a new ' Indian ' art
Hm.vever, by 1 gog, the Arts and Crafts movement in Britain was
distinctly on the ebb, and Coomaraswamy's own craft preoccu­
pations were being superseded by more wide-ranging concerns about
I ndian art and I ndian nationality, and about the problems and
potentials of the Swadeshi movement in Bengal. I n a pamphlet
entitled ' The Deeper Meaning of the Struggle ' ( I go7 ) , Coomaras­
wamy defined the real goal of I ndia's nationalist struggle to be the
propagation of ' the great ideals of I ndian culture ', and shunned a
movement which strived purely for material gains. 5 1 His discourse on
I ndian nationalism picked on Indian art as the main vehicle of the
' higher wisdom ' and superior culture of India - as the greatest
embodiment of ' Idealism ', ' Imagination and Genius '. 52 Reacting
strongly against the European classical and Renaissance canons of
representation, both Havell and Coomaraswamy were drawn to
Neo-Platonic arguments about the primacy of the ' idea behind
sensuous appearance ' , of the ' ideal ' behind the illusory trappings of
the real. This was their best defence of the ' superior ' and separate
aesthetics of I ndian art - it was also, perhaps, the best means of
disguising their own u nclear perceptions of the very different stylistic
conventions they encountered in ancient I ndian painting and
sculpture. During these years Coomaraswamy also entered the heart
of the debate in Orientalist circles on the controversial issue of the
Greek influence on I ndian art. In a lecture at the I nternational
Orientalist Conference at Copenhagen in 1 go8, he refu ted the
prevalent European view, which saw in the Greek influences on the
Buddhist sculptures at Gandhara the highpoint of I ndia's artistic
achievements, and he asserted the totally independent evolution of
the ' Indian ideal ' in art, long after the period of contact with the
Greeks. 5 3
I n this crowded span of Coomaraswamy's writings between 1 go7
and 1 gog, India had emerged from a craftsman's paradise to an
ancient homeland of a most sublime and independent tradition of
' fine arts '. All these writings on I ndian art, aesthetics and nationalism
came together in two books, Essays in National Idealism ( 1 gog) and Art
and Swadeshi ( 1 g I 2 ) - the latter focusing his ideas particularly on the
issue of the role of art in the Swadeshi movement in Bengal.
Coomaraswamy's approach to the question of a ' national awak­
ening ' had always been predominantly ethical and moral. I n

61 Reprinted in Essays in .National Idealism (Colombo, r gog). Indian reprint (New Delhi, r g8 r ) ,
pp. r -2 . 5 2 ' The Aims and Methods of lndian Art ' - ibid., p . I 7·
53 ' The I nfluence of Greek on Indian Art ' - ibid., p. 94·
 Orientalism and the new claims for Indian art

Calcutta in I gog, as a close acquaintance of the Tagores, Coomaras­

wamy was exposed to the same degree of disillusionment and aversion
against Swadeshi violence and excesses, that had surfaced among the
Tagores after an initial phase of euphoric involvement. In the face of
the forced boycott and terrorist tactics, he retreated even more firmly
from the political reality of the Swadeshi upheaval in the idealised
space of an artistic and cultural revival. I ndian nationalism, he
stated, had its real significance as ' an idealistic movement ' , which
could best seek self-fulfillment in art. 54 Coomaraswamy made a clear
distinction between what he perceived as ' true ' and ' false ' Swa­
deshi.55 The existing Swadeshi movement, in its aim of making
I ndia economically self-sufficient by replacing European manu­
factures by a multiplication of I ndian products, was dismissed as
' false ' - for it was based on ' false ' commercial values and the purely
material preoccupations of industrial competition. His vision of
genuine Swadeshi was a full-fledged argument against an indus­
trialism, which subordinated the lives of men to the production of
things and surrendered art to a degraded material culture. 56 While
Coomaraswamy discovered the promise of an artistic revival in the
new ' Bengali school of national painters ', I ndian nationalism, in his
view, was lacking in the more vital revival ofcrafts and craftsmanship,
which alone could preserve the fabric of national culture. ' If
Abanindranath and his followers stand in this art revival of ours . . . in
the place of the pre-Raphaelites in the history of England, where is
our William Morris ? '57 Even as an ideologue ofSwadeshi, Coomaras­
wamy's arguments belonged more to the aesthetic discontent of late
Victorian England than to the unrest in colonial I ndia. The nature
of his discourse on I ndia placed him more in the camp of the
Orientalists than of the Indian nationalists, although the two veered
very closely together in defining their sympathies for Indian art.
Meanwhile, the most climactic break in the defence of i ndian ' fine
arts ' and aesthetics in the West would take place in I g I o, in a
sensational debate at the Royal Society of Arts in London. Here, the
long-standing old guard of Euro-centric prej udices was stormed
decisively by Havell's alternative ' Indian ' and ' artistic ' point ofview,
which now rallied a large influential lobby of British opinion around
it. The debate had been sparked by an earlier talk given at the
Society by Sir Cecil Burns ( Principal of the Bombay School of Art) in

54 Essays in National Idealism, p . i .

5 5 ' Swadeshi, True and False ' i n Art and Swadeshi ( Madras, I 9 I 2 ) .
5 6 ibid., p p . rg-20. 57 ' The Function of Schools of Art in India ' - ibid., p. 52.
 The making of a new ' Indian ' art
I gog on ' The Function of Art Schools in India ' , where he had argued
against the whole Western concern for the revival of Indian
handicrafts on the grounds that ' the ancient crafts of I ndia dying
long since, is now . . . decided! y dead ' ; the Art Schools, in his view,
had to provide I ndian artisans with a practical industrial training in
keeping with changed conditions.58 An extensive reply came with
Havell's famous address on ' Art Administration in India ' at a
meeting of the Royal Society of Arts on I 3 January I g I o, chaired by
Sir George Birdwood.
Summarising from hindsight the failures and frustrations of his
career as an art teacher in India, Havell's talk orchestrated more
powerfully than ever his critique of the existing British methods of
training and British biases against Indian art, and it emphasised
pointedly the isolation of his own efforts and commitment towards
the revival of India's art heritage. 59 I t is interesting to observe here
the clear line of divide that emerged between the official group
involved in the art administration in I ndia, and a new lobby of
aesthetes and ideologues. Havell had come full circle in his transition
from the first sphere to the second.
Birdwood was joined by other old India hands like Robert
Chisholm and Alfred Chatterton ofMadras, and Col. T. H. Hendley
of Jaipur, in their contention that Havell's was a one-sided picture,
which grossly over-stated his own case, and ignored the many
instances of the immense interest taken, particularly, by individual
officials in promoting Indian art. I t was the definition of what
constituted ' Indian art ' which was really the main issue at stake. The
divide between the two camps became most explicit over the question
of the existence of a tradition of ' fine arts ' in India. Burns' statement
that in India ' painting and sculpture had never been considered
except as a part of the decorative scheme of a building or some
other composite work '60 demanded a fresh reassertion of the
fundamental unity of the ' fine ' and the ' decorative ' arts. More than
Burns, Birdwood emerged as the real villain of this debate, by
completely denying the existence of ' fine arts ' in India and by his
notorious statements of denouncement about an Indonesian statue of
the Dhyani-Buddha (reproduced in Havell's Indian Sculpture and
58 Journal of the Royal Society of Arts, 27 May Igog.
59 ' Art Administration in India ' - Journal of the Royal Society of Arts, 4 February I g io, pp.
274 ff.
60
Quoted by Havell in his rejoinder to Burns, ' Indian Schools of Art ' The Basis for Artistic
-

and Industrial Revival in India (Madras, I g I 2 ) .

 Orientalism and the new claims for Indian art r 6s

Painting) . ' A boiled suet pudding ' , he said, ' would serve equally well
as a symbol of passionless purity and serenity of soul. ' 6 1
I t was Birdwood's remarks that were singled out in the outrage
which decisively turned the tide of aesthetic opinion in favour of
I ndian ,. fine arts ' . Soon after the publication of the minutes of the
Royal Society of Arts meeting, vVilliam Rothenstein and twelve other
prominent artists and critics rushed to the defence of Buddha and
I ndian art, in a famous letter of protest to The Times (28 February
I 9 I 0) , 62 to be followed the next day by an editorial on the subject by
Roger Fry. This letter stands as a vital manifesto of the new
Orientalism, outlining the main contours of its aesthetic involvement
with I ndian art. Indian art was given the status of both a ' great art '
with a glorious past and a ' living art ' where tradition was continually
being given a new lease of life. I ts greatness as ' great art ' was located
in a central religious and divine inspiration, with the Buddha image
highlighted as its supreme embodiment. At the same time, its fresh
potential as a ' living tradition ' was seen to lie in the flourishing of a
' school of national art ' in the work of Abanindranath Tagore and his
group. I t is significant that, by I 9 I o, Orientalist discourse was not
only reasserting the glorious past of I ndian art but also attributing it
with a present-day ' national ' identity.
In I 9 I O the sheer provocation of Birdwood's remarks also drove
William Rothenstein into the major step of organising the new I ndia
lobby around an institution, called The India Society.63 The events
of I 9 I O in England became a major turning point in Western
aesthetics. As Roger Fry succinctly analysed, there had been two
major phases in the transformation of taste and broadening of artistic
horizons in the West. The first had come with a move from Graeco­
Roman and high Renaissance art to a new fascination with Primitive,
Gothic and Byzantine styles ; the second, more dramatic breach in
the fortified world ofWestern aesthetics occurred with the opening of
the flood-gates to the East. 64
The story of the increasing impact of Oriental art on the West
would henceforth find some of its most significant directions in the
researches of Coomaraswamy. Havell continued full force in his
polemical battle against European misconceptions, using as his main

61
Journal of the Royal Society of Arts, 4 February 19 1 0, p. 287.
62 Partha Mitter, lvfuch Maligned Monsters, p. 2 70.
63 Mahrukh Keki Tarapor, pp. 1 86 ff.
64 Roger Fry, ' Oriental Art ', The Q.uarterly Review, 422, january 19 1 0, pp. 226, 239·
r 66 The making of a new ' Indian ' art
weapon the spiritual and transcendental aesthetics of Indian art. For
Coomaraswamy, the fever and pitch ofHavell's battle coincided with
a more rigorous definition of his commitment to Indian art, 65 and a
new phase of hard-core documentative research. Rajput painting
was the exciting arena of his debut. In his two-volume work of r g r 6,
for the first time, a systematic historic classification was made,
according to period and style, of a practically unknown heritage ; and
an in-depth survey made of the religious and literary iconography of
the paintings of Rajasthan and the Punj ab hills.66 One of the
central points of the study was to differentiate the ' Hindu ' and
religious genre of Rajput painting from the secular genre of Mughal
court painting, and to link the former with an unbroken line of an
I ndian tradition that could be stretched back to the frescoes of
Ajanta. In keeping with the author's earlier bias for ' a people's art ',
Raj put painting was also attributed with the spirit of a partially ' folk
art ' , as distinct from the aristocratic court art of the Mughals. The
proposition was as follows : Raj put painting was a Hindu and
predominantly religious art ; it was therefore more purely and
genuinely ' Indian ' than the secular painting of the Mughal courts.
Though many of these assumptions have been revised since, the
significance of Coomaraswamy's discovery of Rajput painting was
inextricably linked to the way in which it was fitted into this
constructed framework of an ' Indian ' and a ' great art ' tradition.
The publication of this work also had a different significance from
the point of view of the author's own career and involvement with
India. Coomaraswamy had emerged by now as one of the most
eminent and discerning collectors of Indian art, and the prestige of
his collection (Raj put painting constituting a large section within it)
was attracting the attention of museum curators of the West. He
offered his collection to Benaras to boost the proposals for setting up
a ' national museum of I ndian art ' there, trying at the same time to
get a post as a Professor at the Benaras Hindu University. But war,
and a disappointing lack of initiative and response to I ndia got in the
way. In r g r 6, Coomaraswamy and his entire collection moved to the
U SA, to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts where he became curator
of the newly created Indian section. Henceforth began the new, more

65 This is setout in an address to the Royal Asiatic Society in r g r o, ' On the Study ofindia Art'
- Essays in National Idealism.
66
Rajput Painting (London, r g r 6) , Vol. I : Text, Vol. I I : Plates.
 Oriental ism and the new claims for Indian art
famous phase ofhis career, which would produce his main scholarship
on the subject of I ndian art and aesthetic philosophy. 67

KAKUZO OKAKURA AND SISTER NIVEDITA : P A N- A S I A N I S M ,

H I N D U M E T A P H Y S I C S AND T H E D O C T R I N E OF NATI O N A L I S M

IN I N D I A N ART

The transmission of the ideas of Havell and Coomaraswamy within

the nationalist environment of Bengal cannot be studied without
drawing in two other prominent champions of the new ' Oriental '
Orientalism - Kakuzo Okakura, the japanese scholar-ideologue and
art expert of international repute ; and Margaret E. Noble, better
known as Sister Nivedita, the I rish disciple of Swami Vivekananda
and proponent of a militant Hindu nationalism in I ndia. Even as
I ndian art won its great victories in England in I 9 I o, and a new
phase began in more investigative researches, Okakura's and
Nivedita's lives were nearly over. Nivedita died in I 9 I I , Okakura in
I 9 I 3 . But the exuberance of the first phase of the defence and

redefinition of the I ndian art tradition was inseparably bound up

with their rhetoric and writings, and their direct presence in Calcutta.
A move back in time to I 902 finds Okakura during his first visit to
I ndia, a guest of Surendranath Tagore ( nephew ofRabindranath) in
Calcutta, about to publish his book, The Ideas of the East, for which
Sister Nivedita was writing an introduction. Nivedita was acting as
the main mediator and promoter of Okakura's Pan-Asian aesthetic,
trying to harness it to the cause of nationalism and an artistic revival
in I ndia. I t was she who introduced him to the Tagore brothers,
paving the way towards the close personal and artistic links that
would be forged with Japan by Abanindranath Tagore's � New
School of I ndian Painting ' .
Kakuzo Okakura's career provides a n interesting parallel to that
of Coomaraswamy, in terms of the fundamental associations with
European Orientalism which moulded his awareness about his
artistic heritage and made for his international renown. 68 As a
67
See, for example, The Dance of Shiva (London, I 9 I 8) , the serialised Catalogue of the Indian
Collection in the Museum ofFine Arts, Boston ( I924- I 93o) , and History of Indian and Indonesian Art
(London, Leipzig, New York, I92 7 ) .
68
For information on Okakura, see Sister Nivedita's ' Introduction ' in Okakura's The Ideals of
the East (London, r 903) ; William Sturgis Bigelow and John Ellerton Lodge, 'Okakura­
Kakuzo ' - Ostasiastiche <:,eitshrift (Berlin, I 9 I 3-I4), pp. 468-7o ; Surendranath Tagore,
' Kakuzo Okakura ' in VBQ (August-October, I 936) ; Roger Lipsey, pp. r go-g I .
r 68 The making of a new ' Indian ' art
student of the Imperial University at Tokyo, Okakura had come
under the strong influence of the remarkable American Orientalist in
Japan, Ernest Francisco Fenollosa. 69 I nspired by him into a deep
commitment towards conserving Japan's art treasures and pre­
venting their drain to foreign collections, he emerged in time as one
of the foremost authorities on his country's archaeology and art
heritage. Before the Boston Museum of Fine Arts acquired Coomara­
swamy's collection of Indian paintings and bronzes, it had already
built up an extraordinary collection of Chinese and Japanese
paintings, through the acquisitions ofFenollosa and another collector
and admirer ofJapanese art, William Sturgis Bigelow. Okakura was
invited in r go4 to come and catalogue this collection. He was thus
closely associated with the same museum, to which Coomaraswamy
was to come, three years after his death.
Okakura's credentials as ' the foremost living authority on Oriental
archaeology and art ' combined with his role as a Japanese
nationalist, and his efforts ' in the direction of a strong renationalising
of Japanese art, in opposition to the pseudo-Europeanising ten­
dency . . . so fashionable throughout the East ' . 70 One of the chief
members and organisers of the Imperial Archaeological Commission
ofJapan, which was working diligently at the protection of works of
art as ' National Treasures ', Okakura was also the first Director of the
new Imperial Art School at Ueno, Tokyo. In r 8g8, following strong
differences with the authorities over the European Academic
structure of art instruction, he, along with thirty-nine prominent
young Japanese artists, broke away from the I mperial Art School and
launched an alternative school, the Nippon Bijutsuin (or the Hall of
Fine Arts) . This was to be the centre of the new movement for the
' renationalising ' of Japanese art. Okakura's new school of painters
drew largely on the existing Meiji ideology of the nihonga ( a reinforced
Japanese identity) and interpreted it more creatively to draw out
some of the best artists from the strictures ofboth the existing Western
and ultra-traditionalist camps. 7 1
Japan became a model for India. The links between Japanese and

69 Brought to Japan in the r 87os from Harvard as a professor of philosophy and political
economy, Fenollosa had been converted to Buddhism, evolving at the same time as a
passionate collector and connoisseur of Japanese paintings.
70 Nivedita's Introduction in The Ideals of the East, pp. ix-x.
7 1 Michaiki Kawakita, Modern Currents in Japanese Art (New York, 1 974), provides a good
survey of the art movement of ' The Tenshin (Okakura) Group '.
 Orientalism and the new claims for Indian art 1 69
I ndian nationalism in art were more strongly established through the
close personal contact of Abanindranath Tagore and his circle with
the visiting Japanese artists, Yokoyama Taikan and Hishida Shunso,
whom Okakura sent out to Calcutta. But it was the ideology of
Japanese nationalism more than the artistic inspiration of the
Bijitsuin artists which first, most forcefully, hit India in the person of
Kakuzo Okakura. Okakura, in Calcutta in r go2-3 , was out to
conquer with a powerful proselytising ideology, which was all the
more influential in that it spilled over the boundaries of Japan to
absorb a whole unified entity of Asia.
The Ideals of the East became central in the new discourse of
Orientalism - an Orientalism which was in search not merely of
antiquity and a lost civilisation in the East, but of a living wave of
spirituality and a ' superior ' wisdom that could resist the colonisation
of the West. Okakura's book provided it with a welcome picture of a
single, integrated civilisation of the Orient, where all 9f Asia stood
unified by race and a common ' range of ideals ' that ranged far above
the material culture of modern Europe. Here, the separate strands of
the Chinese and I ndian civilisation, the learning of Confucius and the
religion of the Vedas were seen to come together in ' that broad
expanse of love for the Ultimate and Universal which is the common
thought-inheritance of every Asiatic race, enabling them to produce
all the great religions of the world ' . 72 This idea of a Pan-Asian
civilisation acquired a special relevance for nationalist pride in I ndia,
for it placed I ndian religion and philosophy at the heart of this
civilisation. Vedic India was looked on as the great ' motherland ' of
all Asiatic thought and religion, and Okakura proclaimed that in her
new self-awakening, ' in spite of the separation of ages, Japan is
drawn closer than ever to the motherland of thought '. 73
Like Havell, Coomaraswamy and the Arts and Crafts idealists,
Okakura described as ' Asia's true wealth ', ' the whole of that
industrial and decorative art which is the heirloom of ages ' , and saw
in its destruction a great spiritual loss. ' For to clothe oneself in one's
own house, is to create for the spirit its own sphere ' . 74 While
craftsmanship came to symbolise a preservation of identity and
independence, the interest in crafts merged with the paramount
notion of a ' great art ' heritage, where art was equated with the
highest realms of religion and philosophy and the loftiest aspects of

72 The Ideals of the East, p. r. 73 ibid.) pp. 8o-8 I . 7 4 ibid., pp. 236-37·
I JO The making of a new ' Indian ' art
national culture. In discussing the successive waves of influence on
the national culture of Japan, Okakura imposed a subtle hierarchy
between the ' Confucian ideal ' (:lnd the ' Buddhist ideal ', between a
' Chinese art consciousness ' that tended more towards symmetry and
decoration and Buddhist aesthetics which released art and led it up
to ' the expression of commanding ideals ' . 75 This is where Okakura;
again, looked admiringly towards I ndia, as he traced in the encounter
with Buddhism and its ' original stream of abstract idealism ' the
growth of the best of Chinese and Japanese art. The Buddha
sculptures at Ellora were seen as the fundamental sources of
inspiration for the .Buddhist art of T' ang China and of Nara and
Kyoto.
Yet, underlying this Pan-Asian aesthetic and its idealisation of
India, there prevailed in Okakura a strong sense of an independent
and unique Japanese culture within the broader gamut of Asiatic
culture. Convinced that ' the national genius had never been
overwhelmed ',76 he upheld his contemporary Japan as the only
country which had preserved the glory and self-respect of Asia in the
face of the Western colonial onslaught. The Meiji Restoration had
flowered into ' a modern Renaissance ', and the outcome was the
emergence of Japan as ' the new Asiatic power '. 77 These ideas were
repeated and expanded in a second book, The Awakening of Japan,
published in 1 905. Japan's victory in the Russo-Japanese war that
year occasioned new heights of national egoism. The secret of the rise
and ' reincarnation ' ofJapan was seen to lie in a j udicious acceptance
of modern science and knowledge, without sacrificing her real roots
in her traditional culture. 78 This independent and harmonious
merger of the old with the new was best to be seen in the sphere of art,
in the new creative and individualist ' national ' art produced by the
painters of the Nippon Bijitsuin.
While Bengal's nationalist aesthetes and artists drew much of their
optimism about an ' artistic renaissance ' in India from the Japanese
example, it was Nivedita who immediately mobilised Okakura's
polemics in the I ndian situation. Nivedita read into The Ideals of the
East the message, primarily, of the resurgence of the ancient Hindu
civilisation of I ndia, expanding the idea of I ndia as the fountain-head
of Asiatic thought and religion to new proportions. She emphasised

75 z"b"d
z . , pp . 40-4 1 . 76 z"b"d
z . , pp. rg-2o. 77 ibid., p. 223.
78 The Awakening of Japan (London, 1 905), pp. r 1 2 , 1 84-200.
 Orientalism and the new claims for Indian art I 7I

that the ' awakening ' of Japan meant primarily a strengthening of

the ' Indian ideals ' within Japanese culture79 - that the spread of
Buddhism to China and Japan had implied a wider transference of
the philosophy and culture of the mother-religion, Hinduism and,
with· it, the essence of Indian civilisation. 80 And the old process of the
diffusion of Buddhism, she believed, was repeating itself in a new
aggressive, proselytising force of Hinduism, sparked off by Swami
Vivekananda's fiery speech at the Parliament of World Religions at
Chicago in I 8g3. 81 Nivedita identified in Okakura's book the promise
of a reunification of Asia under the aegis of Hindu religion and
philosophy, before the unified force of the new Hinduism could sweep
through the West. Overall, Nivedita's writings provided the most
significant alignment of Hindu revivalist ideology with an assertive
nationalism in the evolving discourse on Indian art. As an ardent
disciple of Swami Vivekananda, Nivedita (then, Margaret E. Noble)
had come out to live and work in India in I 8g8, and was initiated the
same year into the newly founded Ramakrishna Math, Calcutta.82
The influence of Swami Vivekananda also drew her into the wider
cause of ' nation-building ' in India, her spiritual involvement with
the Ramakrishna Mission acquiring new dimensions of social and
political activism. Particularly after Vivekananda's death in I go2,
Nivedita increasingly broke away from the restrictions of the
Ramakrishna Order, and stepped into the combustible sphere of
Swadeshi activities in Calcutta.
Accounts of the Swadeshi movement include Nivedita's name
among the prominent revolutionary leaders. They place her among
those who formed the first short-lived revolutionary council, set up by
Aurobindo Ghosh in I 902, and show her to have been an active
participant of a number of the Swadeshi secret societies, like the
Anushilan Samiti where organised physical culture was combined
with moral and spiritual instruction in the Ramayana, the Maha­
bharata, the Gita and the doctrines of Vivekananda. 83 One of
Nivedita's special contributions was to provide such societies with a
rich collection of European revolutionary literature. While many

79 Introduction in The Ideals of the East, p. xviii. 80 ibid., pp. xv-xvi.

81
ibid., pp. xx-xxi.
82 I nformation on Sister Nivedita's life based on two biographies - Pravrajika Atmaprana,
Sister Nivedita of Ramkrishna- Vivekananda (Calcutta, r g6 r ) ; Barbara F oxe , Long Journey Home :
A Biography of Margaret Noble (London, 1 975).
83
Sumit Sarkar, The Swadeshi Movement in Bengal, pp. 465 ff.
I 72 The making of a new ' Indian art '

instances can be cited of Nivedita's involvement in Swadeshi, one

must guard against the romantic exaggerations of certain bio­
graphical accounts which present her as a hard-core revolutionary
and terrorist, who had to spend two years of voluntary exile in
England during 1 907-8, to escape arrest by the Government of
I ndia.84
Yet, regardless of the precise dimensions of Nivedita's activities in
the Swadeshi movement, there is no denying the charisma of her role
as an ideologue of a militant Hindu nationalism. Nationalism to her,
was primarily a matter of mobilising Hindu spirituality to inculcate
a new vigour, robustness and ' masculinity ' in I ndians, and to initiate
a powerful sense of nationhood. Nivedita's rhetorical writings on
' Kali the Mother ' provided Swadeshi nationalism with its distinctive
religious imagery, and its most potent iconography of the ' mother­
land ' . 8 5 Just as Bipin Chandra Pal, another high-priest of Swadeshi,
urged a worship of Durga, ' not merely as a pauranic deity or as a
mythological figure, but as the visible representation of the eternal
spirit of their race ', 86 so also Nivedita evoked the spirit of India in the
dual images of Shiva, the very ' ideal of Manhood, embodiment of
Godhead ', and of Kali, Shakti incarnate and a symbol of ' Eternal
Motherhood ' . 87
Notions of masculinity and femininity converged significantly in
Nivedita's invocation of the I ndian nation. Nationalist ideology of
the time was both appropriating and inverting the masculinity/
femininity dichotomy, around which colonial culture proj ected its
ideas of power and achievement. 88 Faced with the British correlation
of power with images of manhood and virility, Bengali nationalism
reacted at two levels. On the one hand, it indignantly fought back the
slander of cowardice and effeteness flung at the much-maligned
babu ; on the other hand, it came defiantly to glorify and worship the
female principle, drawing on the ancient Hindu cult of the mother­
goddess to evoke a new emotive concept of the motherland. Nivedita
sought to resolve the tension through constant recourse to the dual
principles of the masculine and feminine - to the different though

8 4 Girijashankar Raychaudhuri, Sri Aurobindo o Banglay Swadeshi Yuga (Calcutta, r gs6). The
myth has been discounted by Aurobindo himself; drawing on his evidence, the point has
been further stressed by Sumit Sarkar, pp. 475-76.
8 5 Nivedita, Kali, the Mother (London, r goo) , reprinted in The Complete Works of Sister Nivedita

(Calcutta 1 967), Vol. I .

86 Bipin Chandra Pal, ' The Durga Puj a ' in Swadeshi and Swaraj (Calcutta 1 954) , p. r os.
8 7 Complete Work 88 Ashis Nandy, The Intimate Enemy, pp. 4-r r .
s, pp. 477, 479 ·
 Orientalism and the new claims for Indian art 1 73
complementary qualities of strength and shelter, protection and
tenderness - in her ideal of nationhood.
Art and aesthetics were two of the main spheres where Nivedita
expounded her effervescent views on Hinduism, religion and nation­
ality in India.89 Like her entire approach to I ndia, Nivedita's ideas
on Indian art were derived essentially from Vivekananda. In the
Paris U niversal Exhibition of 1 goo, the Swami's exposition on Indian
art had entered the main current of the new Orientalist interpre­
tations, by rej ecting the model of Hellenistic influence and exalting
the early Buddhist art of India as the greatest in the world. 90 While
V\Testern art placed great importance on the representation of nature,
ancient Indian sculpture, he believed, transcended nature to enter a
different realm of thought and inner perception. For Vivekananda,
as for Nivedita, proj ecting the independent evolution of I ndian art
through an exclusive ' inner ' reserve of aesthetic idealism became an
important theme of nationalist assertion. Both ' art ' and ' I ndian ' had
grown to be load.ed terms : a motivated linking of the two made the
role of art appear vital in the making and shaping of the nation.
I n an article of 1 907 pointedly titled ' The Function of Art in
Shaping Nationality ', 9 1 Nivedita upheld art as the most important
vehicle of nationality - for it ' offers us the opportunity of a great
common speech and its rebirth is essential to the upbuilding of the
motherland '.9 2 Western art, Nivedita analysed, offered two main
attractions for Indians, the temptations of realism and the idea of
individualism. To draw attention back to their own heritage, she
emphasised, firstly, the prevalence of conventions of ' a superior
realism ' in the Indian tradition, as in the Ajanta paintings, where the
artist brilliantly integrated two different faculties - ' to know the
human form, and to recognise the expression of overwhelming
emotion, especially in worship ' . Secondly, she reaffirmed the value of
a collective identity of race, culture and inherited tradition in any
' great art ', arguing that such a collective did not in any way exclude
individualism or freedom of imagination. In the new India, she
looked forward to a new ' guild of painters . . . drawn not from any

89 Nivedita's polemical writings on Indian art and aesthetics, and her reviews of the new school
of ' Indian-style' painters of.Calcutta appeared regularly in the journals, The Modern Review
and Prabasi (in Bengali translation ) .
90 Some ofVivekananda's reflections o n art are recorded i n a conversation with the art school
artist, Ranada Prasad Gupta, during 1 90 r . Swami Shishya Sambad - Swami Vivekanander Bani
o Rachana (Calcutta, 1 983), Vol. 9, pp. 1 86-92.
91 The Modern Review, January, February 1 907. 92 ibid., January 1 907, p. 49 ·
1 74 T he making of a new ' Indian ' art

single caste, but from the nation as a whole ' . 93 From this article
emerged the central idea that ' art ' , to be truly great, had to be
imbibed with a high and noble ideal. To Nivedita, nationalism was
to be the new most elevating religion of I ndian art, the Divine ideal
of the past being transmuted into the present ' mighty dream of an
Indian Nationality ' . 94
•

By 1 907, Nivedita had emerged as a prominent critic and

champion of I ndian art. A significant role of her writings was to
transmit locally and circulate the ideas of Coomaraswamy and
Havell through lengthy reviews of their new books, and to flavour
these with her own urgent nationalist preoccupations. If Nivedita
had derived from Okakura's book a Pan-Asian vision of Oriental
culture, she had been equally convinced about the central place of
Indian art and religion within it. Her review of Coomaraswamy's
Medieval Sinhalese Art discovered in the book the same idea of ' I ndia,
as the mother of a whole circle of art-synthesis ', on which all the art
and craft traditions of the East depended for ' constant inspiration
and sustenance ' . 95 Nivedita's three-part review of Havell's Indian
Sculpture and Painting in 1 909 was certainly as important for
I ndian readers as the book itself.96 Havell's ' artistic ' understanding
of I ndian art ' through I ndian ideals ', she believed, had set the
framework for the rebuilding of a ' great art ' in I ndia. What she
considered specially important was Havell's view of I ndian art as one
continuous living tradition, where I ndia's past, present and future
stood as one, where the very continuity with the past contained ' the
rich promise of the future ' . 97
I n more personal terms, Nivedita underlined her own growing
admiration of I ndian art under the influence of Havell's writings. 98
Travelling extensively over Western India, she was drawn par­
ticularly to Aj anta, Ellora and Elephanta. The Hindu sculptures of
Ellora and Elephanta, she wrote, stood as a standing refu tation of the
theory of the Western scholar, Grunwedel about ' the inability of
Hindus to evolve real sculpture ' .99 However, it was Aj anta which
came to her as the greatest revelation. Comparing these paintings
with the early Florentine work of Fra Angelico for the similar
religiosity and devotion of their monastic painters, she revelled in the
' superior powers ' of Ajanta. To Nivedita, the example of Ajanta also

93 z'b t'd., pp. 52-53· 94 t'bz'd• 96 z'b t'd. , J ul y r gog, pp. 64-6 5·
96 ibid., October, November, December r gog. 97 ibid., October r gog, pp. 365-66.
98 Letter from Nivedita to Havell, 3 March 1 9 1 0 - H avell Papers ( I OLR Collection) .
99 Letter from Nivedita to Havell, 7 April, r gr o - Havell Papers (IOLR Collection).
 Orientalism and the new claims for Indian art 1 75

held out prospects of ' a great future in I ndia for mural painting ', of
reviving this art form as a vehicle of nationalist ideology to propagate
the new ideals of national history and national life. 100
This concern with the creation and propagation of a new ' national
,
art - in India was the main thread that ran through all Nivedita's
writings. The study of past traditions occupied second place, as she
assumed the main role of promoting a national artistic revival
through championing the paintings of Abanindranath Tagore and
his group. She stood within a closed circle of nationalist art critics and
aesthetes in Bengal, who imbued this new group with an exclusive,
clear-cut identity of a ' movement ' , cordoning off their work from the
other kinds of Indian paintings that flourished alongside .

THE R E C O N S T R U C T I O N OF A N I N D I A N ART T R A D I T I O N

Over the first decade of the twentieth century, Havell, Coomara­

swamy, Okakura and Nivedita thus gave the main shape and body to
the new Orientalist vision of Indian art and aesthetics. An overview
of this reconstructed image of Indian art points to the strong mix of
connoisseurship and polemics that lay at its base. Born out of a clear
sense of a battle against the existing establishment, the new
Orientalism was ridden by a set of counter-assertions and theories
that became as important as the empirical knowledge it provided on
I ndian art. It was this ' episteme ' ofOrientalism (its ' way of knowing '
with its in built assumptions about the power and infallibility of that
knowledge) which gave this reconstructed tradition i ts sharpest
edges.
Havell's Indian Sculpture and Painting, the most important and
influential of the new texts, contained the clearest indication of
purpose. The new approach defined itself primarily through oppo­
sition, underlining repeatedly the main points of disagreement with
the prevalent European policy and opinion. Where policy was
concerned, the British art establishment in India was accused of
destructive commercialism, the negligence of the living traditions of
crafts and architecture and the perpetuation of debased s tandards of
taste. Havell's worst indictment ofBritish art policy was to place it in
a rank even lower than that of the infamous ' iconoclastic rule ' of
Aurangzeb. 1 0 1 The other, more insidious threat to Indian art was

100
The Modern Review, December I gog, p. s8g.
101 Indian Sculpture and Painting, pp. I 3- I 4·
 The making of a new ' Indian ' art

seen to lie in the hallowed confines of Orientalist scholarship itself,

where the experts, guilty of much the same biases as the adminis­
trators, laboured under what Havell termed the ' archaeological '
approach. 1 0 2 Trapped within rigid Western aesthetic conventions, ·

this ' archaeological ' approach, while it investigated past traditions

and classified them according to periods and styles, was reluctant to
concede them the status of' fine arts ' in I ndia. By standards that were
clearly Euro-centric, any striking example of Indian ' fine arts ' that
may have been discovered was attributed to ' Western influence ' . A
typical attitude was that of the historian Vincent Smith who
considered the Buddhist sculptures at Gandhara, showing a marked
Graeco-Roman influence, ' to be the best specimens of the plastic art
ever known to exist in I ndia ' , adding that even the best were only
' echoes of the second-rate Roman art of the 3rd or 4th centuries ' . 103
While Gandhara was the scene of a pioneering European interest
in the iconography and stylistics of I ndian sculpture, it was also
where European prej udices were stacked up most formidably in the
belief that classical Greece was the source of all great art, including
the fragments that were ' great ' in the I ndian tradition. 10 4 The
' defence ' of I ndian art and aesthetics inevitably focused around
Gandhara. A systematic inversion of the Gandhara bias became one
of the central premises on which I ndian art staked its claim to a
superior aesthetics and its own firmly independent history of
evolu tion. The counter argument drove home the following points :
firstly, that the influence of Greek art on ancient Buddhist sculpture
had been only peripheral for, as Havell argued, long before the
arrival of the Macedonians, ' Indo-Aryan ' styles of building and
sculpture had planted themselves deeply in I ndian soil ; secondly,
that nothing produced in Gandhara under the Kushana kings could
compare with the best Buddhist art of the preceding Asokan
period. 1 0 5 In an interesting reversal of hierarchies, Gandhara, it was
argued, underlined the relative bankruptcy of Western art and the

1 02 I t was associated with archaeologists like Alexander Cunningham and the established
historian of Indian architecture, James Fergusson.
1 03 Vincent Smith, ' Graeco-Roman Influence on the Civilisation of Ancient India ' in Journal
of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, Vol. 58 No. 3 ( I 88g) , p. I 73 ·
1 04 Albrecht Grunwedel's Buddhist Art in India (published in German in I 893, then in English
translation in I go I ) was followed by Alfred Foucher's L' Art Grico-Bouddhique du Gandhara
(Vol. I , I 905), where the extended title of the book (' Etudes sur les origines de !'influence
classique dans l'art bouddhique de l'Inde et de l' Extreme-Orient ') made its bias clear.
1 05 E. B. Havell, The Ancient and Medieval Architecture of India (London I 9 I 5), pp. 4, I I 5- I 6.
 Orientalism and the new claims for Indian art 1 77

greater influence o f I ndian religion and aesthetics on the foreign

craftsmen.
The main concern of the ' defence ' was to define and highlight an
' original ' , exclusive aesthetic philosophy of Indian art that had
found expression well outside the minor arena of Gandhara. The new
reading of Indian art history looked back and beyond Gandhara in
search of ' a golden age ' of I ndian art. Looking back to the early
Buddhist art of Nasik and Karle, Bharhut and Sanchi, Havell also
looked past Gandhara to discover the highpoint of Buddhist
sculptures at Sarnath and in the reliefs of Amaravati during the
Gupta age. 1 0 6 Following a long scholarly exchange with Foucher,
Coomaraswamy established two distinctly separate strands of devel­
opment in Indian art that took place around the same time at
Gandhara and at Mathura (around the first-second centuries A.D . ) .
While the Gandhara sculptures were seen as a hybrid mix o f Indo­
Greek styles, the Mathura images of Buddha were described as the
genuine ' I ndian ' type, which could be traced back to the pre-existing
images of the yakshas in Buddhist sculptures. 10 7 The alternative
construct of I ndian art history now revolved around Mathura, and
its direct lead into the ' Gupta golden age ' , when much of Southern
and Eastern Asian art came under the orbit of the ' Indian ideal ' . 1 08
The debate over Gandhara points to the two most significant
themes that marked this new Orientalist discourse on I ndian art. Both
themes were concerned with a fundamental definition of ' I ndian­
ness ', with searching out something purely and q uin tessen tiall y
' Indian ' in I ndia's art heritage. One located the answer in the
abstruse realm of religion , metaphysics and aesthetic philosophy, the
other, in the pattern it devised for the history of I ndian art - a history
that was set out as a ' paradigm of antiquity and originality ' . 1 09
A basic problem in the European approaches to I ndian art was the
incapacity of Western scholars to appreciate the iconography and
canons of Hindu art, and the distorted picture they presented by
evaluating it through Renaissance and Academic standards. I n
Europe itself, the reaction against Classical and Renaissance art was
106
Indian Sculpture and Painting, pp. 83-rog.
107 Coomaraswamy, 'The Indian Origin of the Buddha Image ' - Journal of American Oriental
Society, Vol. 46, No. 2 , pp. I65-70.
108
With the dramatic turn in the tide of opinion, the earlier views of Vincent Smith were also
revised in the author's later extensive work, A History of Fine Art in India and Ceylon (Oxford,
I 9 I I ) , where he propagates a similar picture of a Gupta ' golden age '.
109
Said, ' Orientalism Reconsidered ', p. r 7 .
 The making of a new ' Indian ' art
increasingly evident in the fascination with the Gothic and pre­
Renaissance medieval art. Rej ecting the Renaissance emphasis on
'objective ' representation and the faithful imitation of nature, this
opposing view drew on the Platonic doctrine of the ' Idea ' as a
metaphysical ideal which reigned behind the world of material
appearances, and it associated the whole concept of ' art ' with a
transcendental ideal of beauty and the ' inner vision ' of the artist. 11 0
This Neo-Platonic aesthetic, which enjoyed a great preponderance
with all nineteenth-century critics of Academic and Neo-Classical
art, also lodged itself at the centre of the new Orientalist view of
Indian art.111 To explain and j ustify their admiration for it, ' fine arts '
in India was associated with a profoundly transcendental view of art
in I ndian philosophy. Havell's and Coomaraswamy's natural choice,
here, was the Vedanta school of lndian philosophy, which considered
the material world to be an ill usion (maya), the veil of which had to
be removed in order to perceive the ideal .
Reinforcing the sharp East-West dichotomy in aesthetics, a new
polarity was created between ' realism ' and ' idealism ', between an
outer representation of nature and the inner spiritual perception ofit.
I ndian art, and with it the very notion of ' great art ', was placed at
the opposite pole of the ideal and the spiritual. 11 2 The main contrast
with Western aesthetics was seen to lie in the very different conception
of nature and reality with which the Indian artist worked. While
Greek artists took as their model an ideal physical type of an athlete
or a warrior, the Hindu artists sought their ideal in forms that
' transcended ' nature into something supernatural and divine. Their
ideal type was said to be embodied in the figure of the Yogi, and the
central philosophy of Indian art was seen to be Dhyana- Yoga or
spiritual contemplation of the Divine. 1 1 3 The problem of differential
codes of visual perception and representation was being overlooked
and glossed over by the religious metaphors of renunciation and
other-worldliness. Coomaraswamy joined Havell in an elaborate
exposition on the links between art, ascetism and Yoga in the I ndian
tradition, showing how the worshipper and the artist became one in
the construction of divine images. 114
This vision of a mystical and spiritual art tradition came to pin
110
The Neo-Platonic aesthetic philosophy, with its notions of the primacy of the ' Idea ' in art,
is discussed in E. Panosky, Idea: A Concept in Art Histmy (Columbia rg68); E. H.
Gombrich, .Norm and Form: Studies in the Art ofthe Italian Renaissance (London rg68), pp. 87 ff.
112
m Partha Mitter, pp. 272-73. Indian Sculpture and Painting, p. 25.
113 11 4
ibid., pp. 28-38. ' The Aims and Methods oflndian Art', pp. 2 1 , 30.
 Orientalism and the new claims for Indian art 179

itself specifically to the inspiration of Vedic thought. Vedic India was

marked out as the real and ' original ' India; in Vedic religion and
philosophy was located the pure ' Indian ' essence of all Indian art.
Though it produced no immediate outcrop of ' fine arts ', the Vedic
period was considered of supreme consequence for the understanding
of Indian art - as the period of gestation of the whole of Indian
artistic philosophy. 115 In a typically essentialist argument, Orien­
talism invoked the idea of ' the great I ndian synthesis ' and tried to
collapse and encapsulate all phases of I ndian art history within a
pristine core of a Vedic Hindu civilisation. For this essentialist
character was central in stamping this ' object ' of Orientalist
discourse with its ' constitutive otherness ' - with its ' customary,
passive, non-participating ' character. 116
I n the parallel reconstruction of Indian art history, this universalist
view moved beyond the pale of the Vedic to associate itself, more
broadly, with Hindu religion and culture. The term ' Indian ' became
synonymous firstly, with a pristine Vedic civilisation and secondly,
with its main lifeline in Hinduism. In Orientalist literature of the
past, Hindu iconography and symbolism had borne the main brunt
of the ' monster ' myths. A greater appreciation of Buddhist imagery
had led scholars like Henry Cole117 and James Fergusson to put
forward the theory of a hieratic decline in Indian art since the early
Buddhist period, explaining the later phases of Hindu and Buddhist
art up to the advent of Islam (with its over-intricate iconography and
ornamentation) as ' a gradual relapse into superstition and bar­
barism ', as a story of ' backward decline ' . 118 The new interpretation
set itself on reversing this theory and on discovering the zenith of
I ndian art in Hindu painting, sculpture and architecture of the early
Christian era (around the 3rd-gth centuries A.D. ) .
But it also subtly created an alternative hierarchy. The entire line of
Indian art history was blocked out into two prominent phases : the
early period of Hindu-Buddhist art, when India stood as the central
source from which artistic currents flowed north, south, east and
west ; and the later period of secular court painting under the
Mughals in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It was implicit in

115
The Ideals of Inaian Art (London I 9 I I), p. r r.
116
Anouar Abdel Malek, pp. 107-8.
117
H. H. Cole, Catalogue of the Objects of Indian Art Exhibited in the South Kensington Museum
(London r874) contains one of the earliest histories oflndian art.
118
History of Indian and Eastern Architecture, pp. 33-34 ff.
r8o The making of a new ' Indian' art
this classification that the first phase formed the mainstream and the
core of Indian art history. Mughal painting, by its very definition as
secular and worldly, could not classify as ' great art ' on a par with
Hindu and Buddhist art. It could not share the central impulse of
' the Divine Ideal ' in I ndian art, although it was absorbed in time
within ' the great I ndian synthesis ' . 119 The emphasis in the new art
histories was, thus, on reconstructing a classical and an imperial age
of ancient I ndian art of the Maurya and the Gupta periods. This was
the period which saw both the merger of indigenous tradition with a
flood of artistic influences from Western Asia, Greece and Rome, and
the great diffusion and outward flow of I ndian art and religion to
China, Korea, Japan and many parts of South East Asia. This story
of India's ascending glory was seen to reach its peak in the flow of
Buddhism and Indian colonists to Java and the creation of the
Borobudur sculptures over the eighth and ninth centuries. To Havell,
Ajanta, Ellora, Elephanta and, finally Borobudur marked, in rising
order, the high points of the ' golden ' and 'imperial ' age of I ndian
art.12o
If the widespread diffusion of Indian art and aesthetics in the
ancient and early medieval period was one of the main themes that
emerged in I ndian art history, the other was the notion of ' the great
Indian synthesis ' based on Hinduism. Hindu religion and though t
was considered the one all-pervasive syncretic force in Indian culture,
which absorbed all different creeds and sects within it. This argument
was applied full force to ancien t Buddhism, which was seen as
nothing but an early variation of Hinduism. This idea of the central
masterforce of Hinduism engulfing all oflndian culture acquired an
even more chauvinistic vigour in discussing the medieval, ' Muham­
madan ' phase of I ndian art. The main emphasis in the study of
Mughal architecture and painting was to show how the Persian and
extraneous elements within it were transformed by the greater force
of existing Hindu traditions ; Mughal art could therefore be classified
as essentially ' Indian ' . Havell was bent on linking the best of Islamic
art of Central Asia to the skills of Indian craftsmen, building up a
complex picture of the circular flow of Indian talent out of India and
back. 121 A similar essentialist approach also structures, though
less overtly, Coomaraswamy's studies of Mughal and Rajput
pai n ting. While H avell had found in Mughal painting mainly a
120
1 19 Indian Sculpture and Painting, pp. 225-26. t'b'd
t ., pp. r 8- rg.
121
ibid., pp. r 82-83.
 Oriental ism and the new claims for Indian art r8 r

wonderful ' decorative ' quality, Coomaraswamy discerned in it a

richer combination of ornament, technical finesse and expression of
feelings of ' immense tenderness, purity and intimacy ', and accorded
it the status of ' an independent and great art ' . B u t ' synthesis ' was
once again the main point of his analysis, as he emphasised ' the
combination of Persian with I ndian technique and sentiment ' in the
creation of a wholly ' original ' , ' Indian ' school of painting. 122
Such an essentialist definition of an I ndian art tradition followed
from the general tendency in Orientalism to locate in the history of
I ndian culture and civilisation a Platonic ideal, a kind of perfect
prototype that could embody the ' real ' and ' essential ' India. Such
an I ndia, identified with an ideal religious, philosophical and social
order of the Vedas and of Hinduism, was also associated with an ideal
racial type of the Aryan. This Aryan myth had long been present in
the race theories that were applied to the study of Indian art and
I ndian civilisation. 123 A blatant manifestation can be found in
Fergusson's history of I ndian architecture, with i ts framework of the
' inverted evolution ' of I ndian art, where artistic achievement was
equated with the strength and purity of a race, and all architectural
styles tied up with a hierarchical construct of purer and lesser ethnic
groups. Associating the early Buddhist art with an undiluted Aryan
ethos, he saw the steady corruption of artistic standards, thereafter, to
result from the contamination of the Aryan race through its
intermingling with the culturally inferior Turanian and Dravidian
population. 124
An obsession with the mythic Aryan pedigree of the I ndian
civilisation continued u nabated in the new O rientalist writings,
particularly in those ofHavell. 125 The difference in Havell's approach
was that his ideal of Aryan I ndia was a wholly essentialist one, which
tried to subsume within it all the different religious creeds and all the
different phases of Indian art. So, he opposed Fergusson's break-up
and characterisation of different schools of I ndian architecture as
Buddhist, Jain or Indo-Saracenic, arguing for a strong unanimity of
basic structures and a common symbolism of ornament that could be
122
Coomaraswamy, ' Medieval Indian Painting ' - The Modern Review, April rgw, pp. 3 r 8- r g.
123
Partha Mitter, pp. 259-60.
1 24
James Fergusson, History of Indian and Eastern Architecture, pp. 9 ff; On The Study of Indian
Architecture (London r 867), pp. g-r o.
125
See, The Ancient and Medieval Architecture of India which had the subtitle : 'A Study in Indo­
Aryan Civilisation ' ; and The History of Aryan Rule in India from Earliest Times to the Death of
Akbar (London, r g r 8) .
 The making of a new 'Indian ' art
defined as ' Indo-Aryan ' . 1 2 6 But, interestingly, Havell's ' Aryan
I ndia ', tying up all of ancient I ndian history, accommodated the
medieval period only up to its high point in the Mughal empire under
Akbar. For Akbar, to him, was an honorary ' Aryan '- upholding the
ideal of ' synthesis ' in I ndian culture, he had followed the most
profound lesson of Indian history, that of ' making Indo-Aryan
traditions the central pillar of the Empire ' . 1 27
In line with colonial race theories, Havell's Aryan idealism
revealed its undertones of imperialist commitments. On the one
hand, continuing with his strong critique of the British denigration of
I ndian art and culture, he believed that the greatest weakness of
British rule in India was to ignore the glorious historical heritage of
I ndo-Aryan culture. At the same time, he highlighted the strong
bond of race, the common Aryan stock, that tied together the ruler
and ruled in I ndia and contained in it strong potentials of a
harmonious relationship - an internal harmony which, in r g r 8,
seemed particularly essential in the context of the external crisis of the
war. The real mistake of the British empire in India was seen to lie not
j ust in a system of ' un-British ' but also ' un-Aryan ' rule. And Havell
believed that a revival and appreciation of the ancient Aryan
civilisation in I ndia would provide the main basis for the integrity of
the empire . 1 2 8
Havell's defence and reinterpretation of Indian art history
remained enmeshed in the paternalistic obligations of the ruler
towards the ruled . Even as he repeatedly underlined his opposition to
British art administration in I ndia and Western scholarship on
Indian art, he continued to define his alternative commitments
within the framework of Empire. In Coomaraswamy, as in Okakura,
Orientalism acquired more decidedly nationalist overtones, rooting
itself in the patriotic fervour of a rej uvenated Japan, or a deep crisis
of self-identity at the denationalisation of Ceylon. Nivedita, through
her direct participation in the Swadeshi movement in Bengal, could
most effectively harness these ideas in the proj ect of a nationalist
' renaissance ' of Indian art. Overall, however, it is very difficult to
separate the contours of the Orientalist reinterpretations of I ndian
art from the parallel wave of nationalist self-awareness that flooded
the subject.
It was the alliance with Indian nationalism which made for much
126
Ancient and Medieval Architecture, pp. 5-6.
127 128
The History of Aryan Rule in India, p. ix. ibid., pp. ix-x.
 Orientalism and the new claims for Indian art
of the immediate power and influence of this body of Orientalist
writing on Indian art. The focus here on the few personalities and to
a limited selection of their work has been determined primarily by
this Indian context - by the ways in which these writings linked up
with the changed practice and propagation of art in Bengal. The
workings of these ideas within the climate ofupsurgent nationalism of
Swadeshi Bengal gave them a certain force and resonance that has
little to do with their later validity in art-historical scholarship. For
instance, neither on the grounds of empirical research, nor of a
constructive methodology, have Havell's books been considered a
major contribution to I ndian art history. 1 2 9 Havell, throughout his
writings on Indian sculpture, painting and architecture, was stepping
too far and too wide, his emotional exuberance often displacing his
academic rigour. Coomaraswamy's earlier corpus of writings also
contained large doses of nationalist sentiment and polemics, which
were to wane in the later, more mature phase of his scholarly career.
Yet, in the period under survey, I would argue that Havell and
Coomaraswamy themselves acted as the most powerful determinant
of the nature of ' scholarship ' and ' knowledge ' in Indian art : they
held the fort in their claims towards a ' true ' and legitimate
representation.
Since the 1 g2os, the issue of defending Indian art against the
notions of foreign influence subsided in importance. The ' Indianness '
of I ndian art had been adequately asserted; the problem, now, was
one of interpreting iconography and symbolism, and of closely
studying the ancient aesthetic and religious texts. Coomaraswamy's
work came to make its main contribution in this direction. Moving
beyond questions of sequence and periodisation in Indian art history,
it involved itself more deeply with form and its iconographic and
philosophical meanings. This is where the obsessions of the first phase
- with the idealism and spirituality of I ndian art- continued
unbroken in the later readings of symbols and their significations.
The rhetoric may have waned, but the metaphysical image of Indian
art had come to stay and would perpetuate itself most persuasively in
Coomaraswamy's writings. That this became the dominant view of
I ndian art in the world is borne out by the vast prestige of
Coomaraswamy's scholarship, and by the elaboration of his ideas in

129 Pramod Chandra's On The Study of Indian Art (Cambridge, Mass., rg83), in reviewing the
historiography of Indian art since the nineteenth century, hardly devotes any space to
Havell's books.
 The making of a new ' Indian ' art
the works of many other scholars, foremost among them, Stella
Kramrisch. Her reconstruction of an old Sanskrit treatise on painting
and her later studies on Indian sculpture and Hindu temple
architecture provided the immediate continuity to this art-historical
trend, that was concerned mainly with the ancient Hindu heritage
'
and its cosmic symbolism. 1 30
The end result was that Indian art, to the West, remained wrapped
in a veil of inscrutability. Escaping from the long-standing images of
the monstrous and barbaric, Indian art now retreated into an
opposite pole of the highly mystical and abstruse. While it recovered
and reinstated the subject, Orientalism continued to locate it in a
separate, insulated sphere, where its actuality receded before its
image as Europe's exotic O ther. By 19 1 0, Indian art had ' arrived ' in
the West; but the nature of its ' arrival ' involved a continued
distancing of the subject from the tangible sphere of a direct visual
empathy and enjoyment. At the same time, its ' arrival ' on the scene
of Indian nationalism had much the same ramifications of mystifying
and rarifying the whole idea of what constituted ' art ' and what gave
it an inalienable ' Indian ' essence.
130
See, for example, Kramrisch's Indian Sculpture (London 1933) ; The Hindu Temple (Calcutta
1946).
 C HAPTER 6

The contest over tradition and nationalism : differing

aesthetic formulations for (Indian) painting

A specific ' nationalist ' ideology in art, as it emerged out of the

prevailing trends of aesthetic discourse in Bengal, linked itself closely
to the power and influence of Orientalist knowledge. To a large
extent it was the new Orientalism which gave nationalism in Bengal
a distinct artistic cause : an agenda for a reinterpretation of the past
and a present-day ' renaissance ' . Claiming for itself a special
' aesthetic disposition ', nationalist ideology now thrived on a ' sense of
distinction ', differentiating itself from the kinds of Indian painting
and art criticism that had prevailed so far.1 I t now set out not merely
to recover a ' high art ' for the nation, but also to cultivate a set of
Romantic aesthetic values that were clearly in opposition to Western
Academic norms. The point of departure was made most explicit in
the displacement of Ravi Varma and his genre of Academic Neo­
classical painting by Abanindranath and his new brand of ' Indian­
style ' painting. An overview of the artistic attitudes and opinions of
the period shows the full weight of the Orientalist discourse in
drawing the lines of divide- in privileging one school of ' Indian '
painting over all others around it, and in mobilising it in the
nationalist project of the reconstruction of tradition and identity. I n
the volatile climate of Swadeshi activities in Bengal, Nivedita
declared that ' Art, like science, like education, like industry, like
trade itself, must now be followed ' for the remaking of the
Motherland ' , and for no other aim. ' 2 This burgeoning rhetoric of art
and nationalism now closed ranks around Abanindranath Tagore's
' New School of I ndian Painting ', demarcating its exclusive circle of
artists, critics and writers.
1 Pierre Bourdieu, in Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste (London, I 984),
argues that such a 'sense of distinction' is crucial in separating ' the aesthetic disposition'
from popular tastes, and in formulating exclusive notions of what constitutes ' legitimate'
culture and taste in society.
2 Sister Nivedita, ' The Function of Art in Shaping Nationality ' , I, p. 54·
r86 The making of a new ' Indian ' art

THE POLARITY BETWEEN RAVI VARMA AND

ABANINDRANATH TAGORE

An article on Ravi Varma in the first issue of The Modern Review still
acknowledged him 'as the greatest painter of modern I ndia ' , and an ·
important agent of 'nation-building ' .3 It set out a model construct of
'art ', in terms of the main didactic purposes it was meant to serve: a
historical purpose of reconstructing the glorious past of the country in
paintings and sculpture ; a moral purpose of elevating the thoughts
and emotions of the viewers ; and, most importantly, in the context of
modern I ndia, the purpose of 'nation-building ' . Ravi Varma's
mythological paintings were seen to have broadly fulfilled all three
purposes. 4 An evaluation of his paintings marked out as specifically
' Indian ' the artist's use of warm colours and his selection of various
types of womanly beauty ; and emphasised his laborious efforts to
reconstruct an authentic all-India costume for the figures in his
paintings. At the same time, however, there was a definite awareness,
now, of a 'foreign style ' in Ravi Varma's paintings, in the context of
a professed 'Indian-style ' that had emerged in the work of
Abanindranath Tagore.
The appearance on the scene of an alternative 'Indian-style ' of
painting had shifted the site of aesthetic preferences and brought a
new focus to nationalist preoccupations in art. Nivedita, writing on
'The Function of Art in Shaping Nationality ' clearly narrowed the
options of what could classify as national and what was worthy of the
very epithet of 'art ' . Raising the question, 'how can a man be a
painter ofNationality? Can an abstract idea be given form with flesh,
and painted? ' , she found her best answer in Abanindranath Tagore's
painting of 'Bharat-mata ' , the image of the motherland, painted in
rgos, that served as a very important symbol of Swadeshi ( Figure
65). 5 Simultaneously, she identified in two paintings of Raja Ravi
Varma, 'Shakuntala Patra-lekhan ' and 'Arjuna and Subhadra '
( Figure 40) images which she considered both grossly un-Indian and
unfit subjects for 'art ' . 'Not every scene ', she underlined,
is fit for a picture . .. In a country in which that posture is held to be ill-bred,
every home contains a picture of a fat woman lying ful l len gth on the floor
and writing a letter on a lotus leaf! As if a sight that would outrage decorum
m actuality, could be beautiful in imagination! In a country in which

3 'Ravi Varma' - The Modern Review, January 1 90 7 , p. 86. 4 ibid., pp. 86-87 .

5 Nivedita, 'The Function o f Art i n Shaping Nationality', I I , p . 1 20.

 The contest over tradition and nationalism
romantic emotion is never allowed to show itself in public, pictures of the
wooing of Arjuna and Subhadra aboun d . 6

The notions of ' beauty ' and ' imagination ', like that of ' Indian­
ness ' , emerged again as issues of contention. A dominant lobby of
Orientalists and nationalists now used these to assert a new code of
' refined ' taste and ' high art ' .
Coomaraswamy's verdict o n Ravi Varma was a s sharply damning
as Nivedita's, accusing the artist of ' theatrical conceptions, want of
imagination, and lack oflndian feeling in the treatment of sacred and
epic I ndian subjects ' . 7 Ravi Varma's gods and heroes, he argued,
were neither godly nor heroic but ' men cast i n a very common
mould ' ; by their very association with real life models, often low­
caste menials, who served as models, they had slipped from the ranks
of divinity and from the status of ' art ' . 8 As a direct contrast,
Coomaraswamy went into raptures about the paintings of Abanin­
dranath Tagore, picking out those he considered p.is best, like ' The
Passing of Shah J ahan ' or the ' Banished Yaksha ' of Kalidasa's
Megha-duta (Figures 56, 6 3 ) . Just as the Calcutta Art S tudio pictures
had earlier served as a foi l to the paintings of Ravi Varma, now the
latter provided the crucial contrast through which notions about a
' superior ' and ' genuine ' I ndian art were projected around the work
of Abanindranath Tagore.
However, the definition of ' Indian-ness ' , the sense of right and
wrong, remained largely a matter of rhetoric. Nivedita provides a
typical example, when she prescribed,
An Indian painting, if i t is to be really Indian and really great must appeal
to the Indian heart in an Indian way; must convey some feeling or idea that
is either familiar or immediately comprehensible and .. . arouse a certain
sense of revelation for which he is the nobler. 9

I t is difficult to sift out of such writing any specific criteria of

evaluation, barring an intuitive, undefined sense of a ' higher '
aesthetic. What surfaces is primarily a Victorian puritanism, which
shunned the ' vulgar ' sensuality of Ravi Varma's imagery, empha­
sised ' reticence ' and ' moral dignity ' as the true stuff of art, and
upheld these attributes as specially Indian. I t was argued that the
6 ibid.
7 A. K. Coomaraswamy, ' The Present State oflndian Art ' : I. Painting and Sculpture - The
Modem Review, August 1 907, pp. r o 7-8.
8 E. B. Havell, Indian Sculpture and Painting, p. 257·
9 Nivedita, ' The Function of Art in Shaping Nationality ', I, p. 49·
r 88 The making of a new ' Indian' art
mere choice of themes from Indian mythology and classics was not
enough ; the treatment of these had to correspond to a level of
idealism, reverence and lofty emotion that was in keeping with the
sacred and epic quality of the subjects. While the discourse on
tradition looked on I ndian art as an integral part of I ndian religion
and philosophy, the language of writers and critics transformed ' ar t '
into a religion and ethic in itself.
This new wave of aestheticism staked its claims over the same
qualities of ' beauty ', ' emotion ' and ' imagination ' that had
abounded in the earlier writings of Balendranath Tagore. But it now
placed such qualities squarely outside the reach of Western art-school
training and technical competence. The ' School of Art style ', with its
standard of Academic Realism, was condemned as a cheap external
gloss, which seduced an untrained public by its surface imitation of
life. 10 This tirade, directed against Ravi Varma, had as i ts other
target the Bombay School of Art, which was seen as a bastion of
mediocre Academicism and rigid Western standards of teaching.11
By contrast, the Calcutta School of Art, under Havell, and
Abanindranath Tagore were designated as the sole representatives of
an artistic revival in modern I ndia. The emphasis was, firstly, on
Abanindranath's great reserve of imagination and creativity, the
haloed characteristic of a ' true artist ' ; secondly, on the ' true
interpretation of Indian spirituality and an insight into that higher
world ' which he brought to bear on the literary and mythological
subjects he painted ; and, most important, on the links he re­
established with old Indian pictorial traditions.12 This last feature, in
particular, was seen to give Abanindranath his unique importance as
a ' nationalist ' artist.
' Self-developmen t ' and ' self-expression ' had emerged as the key
notes of Swadeshi ideology in Bengal.13 The programme of ' Con­
structive Swadeshi ' 14 in which Rabindranath Tagore and the
,

members of the Tagore household were actively involved during

r gos-6, emphasised the importance of building the strength,
resources and self-esteem of the nation on their own initiative,
rejecting outright the crutches of colonial institutions. To Rabin-
1° 11
Coomaraswamy, ' The Present State of Indian Art ', pp. 1 07 , rog. ibid.
12
E. B. Havell, Indian Sculpture and Painting, pp. 256-57.
13
Coomaraswamy, ' The Present State of Indian Art ', p. r ro. This idea of vigorous and
confident self-development is most powerfully propagated in Rabindranath Tagore's
Swadeshi essays, such as ' Swadeshi Samaj ' and ' Deshiya Rajya ' - Rabindra Rachanavali,
Vol. I I I (Calcutta r g46) .
14 Sumit Sarkar, The Swadeshi Movement in Bengal, pp. 47-63.
 The contest over tradition and nationalism r8g

dranath, a glaring example of the denationalised state of I ndians was

their indiscriminate fascination for Western art and artefacts,
reflecting an overall degeneration of tastes and a failure to discern the
truly ·beautiful and artistic. He fully endorsed, in this context,
Havell's decision to dispose of all the European paintings in the
Government Art Gallery, hoping this would forcibly break the
unfortunate spell which Western art had cast over Indians. But he
was convinced that ' Swadesh ' would ul timately grow only out of an
independent process of reorienting themselves to their own culture
and traditions.15 A self-made artist like Abanindranath, in con­
sciously opting out of the Western Academic style to experiment with
indigenous traditions of painting, provided a powerful embodiment
of these patriotic ideas. I t was, however, Orientalist and nationalist
propaganda which established him as a cult figure of ' national art '
and defined a ' New School of I ndian Painting ' around him.

THE RHETORIC OF ART CRITICISM: THE CONSTRUCTION AND

' '
PROPAGATION OF A NEW INDIAN-STYLE

I n Calcutta, during the Swadeshi years, the creation of a ' national

art ' would rely as much on the paintings as on the kind of art
criticism that grew around them, evolving a close inter-relation of the
visual and the verbal. The departures in pictorial form acquired a
special significance in an atmosphere of growing aesthetic self­
awareness, where the written word became more important than the
visual image in moulding tastes about what constituted ' genuine '
I ndian art. As the fine arts became enmeshed within a wider
intellectual and literary culture, the impact of the artist in society
came to rest crucially on the mediation of critics and on the force of
their language and rhetoric.
It has been argued that the ' concretion ' of a work of art is, in any
case, a joint product of the artist, the observer and the critic. I n
interpreting a picture, in reconstructing its ' effective ' characteristics
ou t of its schematic structure, the viewer actualises various elements
within it which were only in ' a state of potentiality ' . I t came to be the
special responsibility of the critic to guide and direct this process of
' concretion ', to give the viewer access to the ' real ' potentialities of
the work of art.16 The language of the visual had to be decoded

15 Rabindranath Tagore, ' Deshiya Rajya ', pp. 632-34.

16
Roman Ingarden, ' Artistic and Aesthetic Values ' in Harold Osborne (ed . ) , Aesthetics
(Oxford, r 979). See also Michael Baxandall, Patterns ofIntention: On the Historical Explanation
rgo The making of a new ' Indian ' art
through the critic's language of description and interpretation. The
importance of the role of the art critic in bridging the gap between the
artist and the public was specially underlined by Coomaraswamy.
The most constructive kind of art criticism, he wrote, is one ' in which
the critic, by translating the language of the painter . . . into that of the
writer, assists others to acquire by degrees the same direct under­
standing of the painter's language that he himself possesses '.17
Ruskin's writings, to him, were the best exemplar of this kind of art
criticism. This function of criticism manifested itself most clearly in
the way the paintings of Abanindranath Tagore and his group were
propagated through reproductions in Prabasi and The Modern Review
and presented to a specially constructed audience for ' high art ' .
The essence of the propaganda surrounding these paintings lay in
the monopoly it claimed over nationalism, ' Indian-ness ' , and a
special aesthetics of ' art ' . Equivocal in its dismissal of the art-school
Academic style, its alternative formulations drew on European
Romantic theories of art which defined art through certain exalted
concepts ofbeauty, sublimity, emotion and idealism.18 The Victorian
exponents of such an aesthetic ideology, John Ruskin and the Pre­
Raphaelite Brotherhood of painters, provided a model for Bengal­
a model of the ideal interaction of art criticism and painting in
upholding the highest moral values of art. Ruskin was the choice
reading of the time on which artists and aesthetes, like 0. C.
Gangoly, were bred. 19 And Pre-Raphaelite artists like Rossetti and
Burne-] ones were seen best to exemplify the notion of an ' idealistic '
art and the importance of literary imagery and symbolism in
painting. 20 The language of criticism that evolved was steeped in
Victorian ethics. The ' Notes ' accompanying the reproduction of
paintings in journals dwelt mainly on abstracted ideals and emotions,
sidestepping questions of form and style. 21 The issue of ' I ndian-ness ',
like the interpretation of the I ndian art tradition, remained mystified
of Pictures (London/New Haven, 1 985) for an analysis of the way the critics' words and
descriptions· fundamentally structure and ' produce ' the meanings of pictures.
17 A. K. Coomaraswamy, ' About Pictures ' - The Modem Review, November 1 9 1 0, p. 523.
18 For a discussion of European Romantic aesthetics, see August Wiedmann, Romantic Theories
of Art (Henley-on-Thames, r 986) .
19 Ordhendu Coomar Gangoly's memoirs, Bharater Shilpa o Amar Katha (Calcutta 1 969), p. 94·
20
0 . C. Gangoly, ' Bharatiya Chitrakala - Alochana', Prabasi, Ashvin 1 3 1 7/1 9 1 0, pp. 6 1 5-
16.
2 1 Benodebehari Mukherjee in ' The Art of Abanindranath Tagore ' (VBQ, May-October

1 942) emphasised, for the first time, the nature of art criticism in the ' Bengal School '
movement, and the way such criticism stood in the way of a proper evaluation of
Abanindranath's work.
 The contest over tradition and nationalism rgr

and shrouded in rhetoric. Nationalism in art became primarily a

moral and aesthetic value.
The most influential critics of the time were Nivedita, Coomara­
swamy and Ramananda Chatterjee, the art critics of The Modern
Review; Charuchandra Bandopadhyay, the main author of the
columns on paintings in Prabasi; and 0 . C. Gangoly, a bilingual
commentator on art and aesthetics, and a powerful participant in
debates as the main protagonist of the ' New School of Indian
Painting '. In all these writers, we find an obsession with the ideals
and emotions expressed in a painting, as its only value. This approach
rested on the Ruskinian view that ' painting, or art generally . . . is
nothing but a noble and expressive language, invaluable as the
vehicle of thought, but by itself nothing '. 22 This preponderance of
idea over form states itself vividly in Nivedita's response to Nandalal
Bose's painting of ' The Dance of Shiva '.
As is so often the case with these Indian pictures, we are i n the presence of
a work so psychological, so meditative, so intense that the faculty of criticism
ceases before it; and we are swept away by the idea that seized the artist , and
made to contemplate that alone. 23

The ' psychological ' was now extolled as one of the most important
dimensions of art, I ndian art in particular. This view asserted itself
not only in the qualities that were emphasised in a painting but also
in the way the mythological or literary subject of the picture would
be presented, highlighting the moral and emotional values inherent
in the theme. 24
The stress on moral idealism reached a new pitch when it came to
the paintings of Abanindranath Tagore or Nandalal Bose (his
foremost pupil) , particularly when i t concerned their representation
of women from myth and legend. For I ndian (implying, inevitably,
Hindu) women were now marked out as the supreme embodiment of
tradition : the spiritual Other of the Modern West. Pictures such as
Abanindranath's image of ' Sita in captivity in Lanka ', or N andalal's
painting of ' Sati ' (Sita's ordeal in the fire, to test her purity and
chastity) were said to symbolise a glorious ideal ofHindu womanhood
which stood at the heart of I ndia's cultural heritage25 (Figures 62,
22
The Lamp of Beauty: Writings on Art by John Ruskin ( Oxford, 1 g8o), p. 1 7 .
2
3 Nivedita, ' Notes ' - The Modern Review, September r gog, p. 2gg.
24 This was so, even in the discussion of Ravi Varma paintings, such as ' The Princess and the
Fowler' - see ' Chitra', Prabasi, Shravan 1 3 1 1 j 1 go4, pp. 2 1 4- 1 5 .
2
5 The Modem Review - March rgo8, p . 2 7 3 ; April r go8, p p . 36g-7o ; March r gog, p . 273·
 The making �fa new ' lndirm' art

79). Suffering, stoicism, self-sacrifice and unflagging wifely devotion

were the prime qualities of this ideal, with its main mythic referent
in Sita. Such an image of Indian women, moral and sublime, was
projected as the core of the Indian tradition and the greatest of
subjects of Indian art. 26 This disc o urse on womanhood linked up with
an exaltation of sorrow and separation as the loftiest emotion in art. .
I mages of romantic bereavement found their ideal prototype in
Abanindranath's paintings of the ' Abhisarika ' or the ' Banished
Yaksha ' (Figures 55, 63 ) . And the idea of separation was seen to
acquire its most ethereal dimension in the artist's image of ap­
proaching death, in the scene of ' The Passing of Shah J ahan '27
( Figure 56) .
The same attributes of the transcendental and idealistic that were
applied to I ndia's classical art heritage, were also associated with the
' New School of Indian Painting ' . The basic opposition that was
posed was not between Western and Indian art, but between the
categories of ' realistic ' and ' idealistic ' : this emerged straight out of
the nineteenth-century English debates about the nature of art and
aesthetic expression . 28 Faced with what they saw as the ' ugly realism '
of painters like Manet, late Victorian critics clung to the Ruskinian
contention that ' realism without idealism is not art ' . The dividing
line between the ' realistic ' and the ' idealistic ' was as moral as it was
aesthetic. To the English critic, it was best exemplified in the contrast
they drew between the ' naked ' female body, which had clear sexual
and carnal overtones, and the ' nude ', which was primarily artistic,
where sexuality was subsumed by a higher aesthetic ideal .
These notions of idealism, as they spilled over into the aesthetic
discourse of Bengal, acquired more overtly spiritual overtones.
Coomaraswamy provided one of the most ' transcendental ' defi­
nitions of art as something purged of all earthly desires, passions and
prejudice. 29 Aurobindo Ghosh, another forceful proponent of the
' transcendental ', described the artist as a rishi and art as ' an inner
revelation through sight ' . 3 0 Once more, the point was emphasised
26 Similar and a more varied body of literary representations of Indian womanhood as
embodiments of nationalist ideals are analysed in Tanika Sarkar, 'Nationalist Iconography :
Images of Women in rgth century Bengali literature'.
27 These paintings were reproduced in - Prabasi, Ashvin I3IO/ I 903, Kartick I 3 1 4 / 1 907; The
Modern Review, August 1907.
28
See Kate Flint, ' Moral judgement and the Language of English Art Criticism ' in Oxford Art
Journal, Vol. 6, No. 2, 1 983.
29 Coomaraswamy, 'About Pictures'- The Modern Review, December 1 9 1 0, p. 594·
30 Aurobindo Ghosh, 'Arter Adhyatmikata ' -Prabasi, Ashar I 323/1916, pp. 306-8.
 The contest over tradition and nationalism I9 3

through contrast : by lumping together photographs, Bat-tala book

illustrations and Ravi Varma's paintings as examples of the ' crudely
real '. Aurobindo wrote,
The photograph is inevitably ugly whether it be one of a naked woman or
of an ascetic. For in a photograph, we see only the naked female body, we
do not see the essence and ideal of the nude; we see the matted hair of the
ascetic, but we don't get an insight into his asceticism ... From the point of
view of art, Ravi Varma's images of gods and goddesses are as ugly as the
pictures in the Bat-tala novels ... such pictures are as repugnant to the sadhu's
spiritual sensibility as to the moralist's sense of decency and decorum, as also
to the artist's sense of beauty. 31 (au thor's translation)

If high moral values and intense spirituality was one aspect of this
construct of ' idealistic ' art, its other aspect was the importance
attached to emotion and expressiveness. A painting was read by
looking beyond form and unravelling layers of mood and emotion
that apparently lay beneath. With idealism projected as the
fundamental quality that defined all ' art ', whether Western or
Indian, bhava (emotion and feeling) became a central category for
evaluating the pictorial image, even the work of Western artists. In
presenting the allegorical images of ' Love ', ' Hope ' or ' Death ' of
G. F. Watts or Jules Breton's images of peasant life, the critics'
emphasis was on the play of emotions, on ' something below the
surface '.32 However, increasingly, a profusion and subtlety of feeling
(bhava-vyanjana) was marked out as the special feature of the paintings
of Abanindranath Tagore and his group. This was highlighted in a
contrast drawn between Ravi Varma's and Abanindranath's visu­
alisation of the same scene of ' Sita in captivity in Lanka ' (Figure
62) where Ravi Varma had placed Sita within a specific forest
environment, while Abanindranath left the background ambiguous,
with j ust a barred window looking on to the infinite ocean. ' This ', it
was felt, 'visualises her imprisonment and sadness as the garden of the
Asoka trees .. . could never have done. '33 To use Ruskin's analogy, a
painting was synonymous with a poem : more than telling a story, it
had to capture a mood and emotion.
Abanindranath, the pioneer artist and ideologue of the movement,
actively participated in this discourse of writers and critics. The sheer
inspecifities of form in his paintings - the smoky wash of colours, the
31 ibid., p. 30 7.
3 2 0. C. Gangoly, 'Chitre Darshan' - Prabasi, Baishakh r 31 r / 1 904; 'Chitra Parichay ', signed
N. (Nivedita) - Prabasi, Ashar 1 3 1 4/ 1 907, pp. 1 70-71.
33 Nivedita, ' Notes ' - The Modem Review, March rgo8, p. 2 73.
1 94 The making of a new ' Indian ' art
shadows which enveloped backgrounds, the hazy and wispy contours
of figures - were seen to express best the ' inner ' meanings of images.
His new technique of the ' wash ' appeared to deliberately negate the
physical presence of forms, converting these into abstracted ideals. I n.
parallel, his writings on art articulated with greater clarity the point
his paintings sought to embody. Responding to the work of his own
group of artists, Abanindranath drew a clear line of distinction
between rupatmaka and bhavatmaka paintings : one dominated by the
skilled workmanship of form, line and colour, and the other suffused
primarily with mood and emotion. 34 He talked about the greater
creative talent of an artist who could evoke the right emotions in a
painting, not so much by the use of line and colour as by the lack of
it. The conscious elimination of workmanship from the painting, he
believed, allowed the full play of the idea and the feeling within the
Image.
Abanindranath's stylistic experiments had set the stereotype of
' Indian-style ' painting ; simultaneously, in the language of art
criticism, the artistic values he highlighted set out the main criteria of
evaluation. The expressiveness or the mood-intensive aura of a
painting became the hallmark of its ' I ndian-ness ' . He and his circle of
painters had made their clearest break from Western Academic art in
their choice of style. But it is a comment on the nature of the criticism
and propaganda that grew around their work, that this differential
element of form remained on the sidelines while asserting the ' I ndian '
or ' nationalist ' identity of this school of painting. What was
emphasised, instead, were the apparent differences between Western
and Eastern ideals - between the sensual overtones of Western art
and the meditative essence of I ndian aesthetics, between Western
strength and resolve and I ndian lyricism and sentiment - to argue
the point that the ideal expressed in a painting was uniquely
' Indian ' . Nivedita, thus, interpreted in Nandalal's painting of ' Sati '
a specifically ' Indian concept of the Glory of Woman ' : a quiet
introspective glory carrying much greater dignity than the outer
flamboyance of the European concept of glory. 35
This rhetoric of art criticism, precisely because it skimmed over
specific definitions or formal analyses, gave the critic a remarkably
free hand in constructing ideas and assumptions about a painting.
The new aesthetics of I ndian art could, in the process, play an
34 Abanindranath Tagore, Priyadarshika (Calcutta 1 92 I ) , p. 8.
35 Nivedita, ' Notes ' - The Modern Review, April I 908, pp. 369-70.
 The contest over tradition and nationalism 1 95

overpowering and legitimising role, displaying vividly the weight of

words in propagating the ' renaissance ' of I ndian art. Critics would
construct around a painting a barricade of aesthetic and moral
qualities : there were cases of particularly arbitrary intrusions of
critics in projecting ' potentialities ' in paintings, without any ref­
erence or even relevance to their schematic structures. Words were
used both to shield the visual and to condition its meaning. For
instance, commenting on Nandalal Bose's painting of 'J agai Mad­
hai ', a masterly study in line and contoured form (Figure 8 1 ) , the
critic's main concern was with the ' moral ideal ' implicit in the
portrayal of the two drunken sinners, that looked forward to their
eventual conversion to Vaishnavism and encounter with divine bliss ;
and his final verdict was about the artist's flair for reaching beyond
physical foxm into ' an inner vision ' . 36
Such transposition of ideas and morals over a painting was
manifest at another important level - in the way nationalist senti­
ments would be read into paintings, often into images from myth and
legend. Certain paintings had overtly nationalist themes, allowing
for a clear-cut association of the visual imagery with the idea of
nationalism. The most notable example was Abanindranath's
painting of the motherland, ' Bharat-mata ' ( Figure 65) . Coomara­
swamy spun around the painting a literary allegory about the
motherland : a fable about a mother, subjected to a foreign lord, who
awakened in her children a new dream of freedom and self­
discovery. 37 Nivedita's response to the painting was more direct and
ecstatic.
We have here a picture which bids fair to prove the beginning of a new age
in Indian art. Using all the added means of expression which the modern
period has bestowed upon him, the artist, here, has given expression
nevertheless to a purely Indian idea . . . This is the first masterpiece in which
an Indian artist has actually succeeded in disengaging, as it were, the spirit
of the motherland. 3 8

' Bharat-mata ' was being revered not only as the new icon of Indian
nationalism, but also as ' the first masterpiece ' of modern Indian art,
a product of the new times, but unmistakably Indian in essence.
Particularly interesting is the emphasis on divine transcendence even
in this image of the motherland, wrapping it u p in the same spiritual
36 Charuchandra Bandopadhyay, ' Chitra Parichay : Jagai-Madhai ' - Prabasi, Kartick 1 3 1 7/
1 9 1 0, p . 97·
37 Coomaraswamy, ' Bharat-Mata ' - The Modern Review, April r 907, pp. 369-7 r .
38 The Modern Review, February r 907, p. 2 2 I .
r g6 The making of a new ' Indian ' art
aesthetics that dominated the entire concept of Indian art. I n the
writings of Bankimchandra, and in much of the popular Swadeshi
literature, the motherland was evoked in the powerful cult of the
mother goddess or Shakti. The idea of the mother was upheld as a
potentially life-affirming principle, a source of power for the santans
dedicated to her service. 39 Abanindranath's ' Bharat-mata ', by·
contrast, was a Yogic and a contemplative image, consciously rarified
and ' set . . . apart from the common world '.
The more active, political connotations of nationalism surface in a
little-known painting of the time, painted in the Academic style by an
obscure artist, Avinash Chandra Chattopadhyay40 (Figure 46) . As
explained in its notes, this painting depicted the scene of police
torture on a young freedom-fighter, Chittaranj an Guha, during the
Provincial Conference at Barisal in 1 go6. The hero stood firm and
unmoving, showered with heavenly blessings by the motherland,
who appears as goddess Durga. A real-life Swadeshi incident was
infused with strong mythic overtones. I t was announced that its
nationalist sentiments were the main reason for reproducing this
painting which was, otherwise, not of a high artistic standard. 4 1 This
implied distinction between the ' aesthetic ' and the ' nationalist '
appeal of a painting is significant for, in general, the two were seen to
be indistinguishable. Like Abanindranath's ' Bharat-mata ', a paint­
ing, while it conveyed the ideal of nationalism, had also to classify as
' great art ', with all the requisite emotive, imaginative and spiritual
qualities associated with the concept.
I nstances of such overtly nationalist paintings were few. There
were many more cases of free, imaginative analogies being drawn by
critics between the mythic, romantic imagery of paintings and the
sentiments of nationalism . Tales of medieval Rajput chivalry and
heroism had captured the nationalist imagination. Along with novels
like Romesh Chandra Dutt's Rajput Jeevan-Sandhya, or Dwij endralal
Roy's stirring historical plays, Rana Pratap Singha and Mewar Patan,
Abanindranath's Rajkahini gave such ' historic ' Raj put legends a new
fairy-tale dimension. Nandalal Bose's painting of Rana Bhim Singh
and Padmini on the roof of their citadel at night, holding out against
Alauddin's siege of Chi tore, was presented as a lesson in patriotism
and a heroic stand for independence. 42 At times, the sheer romantic
39 The term, santan, meaning children is used in Bankimchandra's famous patriotic novel,
Anandamath (Calcutta, I 882).
40 This painting titled, 'Nirjatite Ashirvad ', appeared in P rabasi, Jaishtha I 3 I4/I907.
4 1 ' Vividha Prasanga'
- Prabasi, J aishtha I3 I 4/ I 90 7.
42 The Modern Review, April Igog, pp. 377-78.
 The contest over tradition and nationalism 19 7

Fig. 46 Avinash Chandra Chattopaclhyay, ' Nirjatite Ashirvad ' (Blessings Amidst
Torture) .
r g8 The making of a new Indian ' art
;

or ' thought-provoking ' quality of a painting invited nationalist

interpretations. In Abanindranath's painting of ' Deepanvita ' or
' Feast of Lamps ' (Figure 64) , the critic compared the dark nocturnal
atmosphere of the picture with· the metaphorical darkness in which
British I ndia was plunged, and interpreted the image of the woman
carrying a lamp as the divine spirit of the motherland trying to dispel
the darkness. 43
The new aesthetics of I ndian art, as it reared itself on such a
mixture of rhetoric on idealism, nationalism and emotional intensity,
contained another critical point of reference - the value of tradition
in art. The discourse on tradition was, once again, heavily polemical.
Rather than conducting specific enquiries about how traditional
forms and canons could be transplanted to modern I ndian art,
tradition was exalted as a value in itself: as a perennial value of any
great art. Coomaraswamy exultantly defended tradition as a
' mother-tongue ' , ' a wonderful expressive language that enables the
artist working through it to speak directly to the heart ' . 44 Taking his
cue from Coomaraswamy, 0 . C. Gangoly argued that tradition and
innovation were not mutually exclusive categories ; rather, art, like
the whole of civilisation, was one continuous process of evolution,
where all newcomers had to spin out the thread left at the end by
their predecessors. 45
This point about the continuity with tradition was central in the
appraisal of the work of Abanindranath Tagore and his new school
of painting. Abanindranath's first ' Indian-style ' paintings, acquired
by Havell for the Government Art Gallery and displayed next to the
Mughal and Rajput miniatures, were seen to represent the lost link
between the traditional and modern schools of Indian painting.46
And, in exhibitions organised by the I ndian Society of Oriental Art,
where the works of the modern painters were juxtaposed with
specimens of late-medieval miniatures of Kangra, Delhi, Lucknow
and Benaras, the connections between old and new were constantly
invoked. Nivedita wrote of an exhibition of I g I o -
Prepared . . . by our rapid resume of the old Indian art, the modern
room . . . could be seen in its true light, as a natural outcome and develo pment

43 'Chitra Parichay ' in Prabasi, Agrahayan 1 3 1 4/ 1 90 7 , p. 475·

44 Coomaraswamy, 'The Aims of Indian Art', p. 43·
45 0. C. Gangoly, 'The Value ofTradition in Art ' - The Modern Review, October r g o g , p. 370.
46 This sense is conveyed in Suniti Kumar Chatterji's memories of his first visit to the
Government Art Gallery as a schoolboy - ' Abanindranath Tagore : Master Artist and
Renovator ' in JISOA, November 1 g6 r .
 The contest over tradition and nationalism r gg

of the old . . . We forgot the long period that had elapsed between the one
group and the other, and the long painful search for the right end of the
thread that had been lost. It had been found again . . 47 .

Such rhetoric acquired new dimensions as the public was given

greater visual exposure to traditional I ndian art. As with the
exhibitions, journals like Prabasi, Bharati and The Modern Review
began to carry reproductions of Ajanta frescoes and Raj asthani and
Pahari miniatures as full-page plates, side by side with the modern
paintings. Occasionally some of N andalal Bose's paintings, which
were branching out into warm bright colours and bold, decorative
patterning, were given the specific tag of an ' Aj anta-based style ' .48
While Abanindranath's paintings had recreated the delicate, natu­
ralistic beauty of the Mughal miniatures, Nandalal, it was said, was
dipping into the vibrant colours and flowing lines of the Ajanta
frescoes. The new artists were, at the same time, accorded the merits
of creative innovations within the framework of tradition. And it was
in keeping with the aesthetic priorities of the time that the main
difference in an Abanindranath painting was located in the greater
emotional and expressive verve it introduced into the ' decorative '
style of the Mughal miniatures.

T H E P O L E MICS OF TRADITI O N AND THE R E C O NSTRUCTION

' '
O F A N I N D I A N A E S T H E TI C

The stress on ' tradition ' within the vocabulary of art criticism was
backed by a parallel trend of reinterpretation of past history and the
formulation of a body of traditional canons for the appreciation of
Indian art. The polemics about what constituted ' genuine ' I ndian
art sought sanction and legitimacy in tradition. The approach to
tradition was thus strongly conditioned by a search for authenticity,
and assumptions of uniqueness and superiority.
The Orientalist defence and rediscovery of Indian ' fine arts ' ,
particularly Havell's campaign and writings, proved vital for
nationalist pride. The prestigious literary institution, Bangiya Sahi­
tya Parishad, accorded Havell full honours in a special address of
I gog, to record their indebtedness to him for revising their whole

47 Nivedita's review of the exhibition of the Indian Society of Oriental Art in The Modem
Review. April r g r o, pp. 4 1 0- r r.
48 ' Chitra Parichay' - Prabasi, Bhadra r g r 8/ rg r r, p. 538. The association of these paintings
with an 'Ajanta style' followed the reproduction of copies of Ajanta paintings, made by
Brahmachari Ganendranath Bandopadhyay, in the previous issues of Prabasi.
200 The making of a new ' Indian ' art
notion of the Indian art tradition. 49 Havell's Indian Sculpture and
Painting invited a flood of appreciative letters and reviews, some from
eminent scholars and litterateurs like Dinesh Chandra Sen. The book
was seen to provide a ' weapo n ' by which all enemies of I ndian art
could be ' vanquished ' . 50 ' In this transitional stage of Indian art, in
conflict with Western influences and national apathy ', it was believed
that Havell's book would ' help the new School of Painting to reassert ·
old national ideals ' . 5 1
Within Bengal, the writings of Abanindranath Tagore provided a
powerful indigenous parallel to Havell's ' Indian ' and ' artistic ' point
of view. A painter and litterateur of equal calibre, Abanindranath's
pen proved as influential as his brush in setting up the case for Indian
art. By the time Havell left Calcutta in r go6, the Tagore house at
Jorasanko had become the main meeting point of Orientalists and
nationalists, in their shared ardent admiration for I ndian art and
culture. Abanindranath's early writings, as they proj ected the new
role of the artist as an aesthete and critic, inevitably carried with
them the status and prestige of the Orientalist camp, and auto­
matically assumed a lead position in the championship of Indian art.
Abanindranath's pronouncements on art, like Havell's, were more
emotional than scholarly. But, filled with imaginative metaphors and
word pictures, these Bengali writings have about them the magic
touch of the master story-teller. Circulating through journals,
pamphlets and small books, Abanindranath's ideas had a far greater
reach and impact in contemporary society than those of Havell.
These ideas found their first, most polemicised expression in the
book Bharat-Shilpa ( r gog) :52 ' a treatise on the excellence of Indian art
and reasons for its revival ' . Abanindranath saw it as a reflection of
the shameful, denationalised state of his countrymen that they
wanted their art explained to them and that he had to take recourse
to his pen to propagate the worth of India's art heritage. Once again,
the muse of Indian art, neglected and abandoned, was invoked in the
image of a chaste Hindu bride who had been cast aside for a memsaheb,
49 Havell Papers (IOLR Collection ) . This address and the enthusiastic response that it evoked
at the meeting of the Sahitya Parishad is referred to in Abanindranath Tagore's letter to
Havell, 20 January I gog, in the same collection of Havell Papers.
50 Letter from Priyanath Sinha to E. B. Havell, 3 I March I gog - Havell Papers ( I OLR
Collection) .
61 Letter from Mohini Ranjan Sen (brother of the writer, Rajani Ranjan Sen) to E. B. Havell,
26 July I gog - Havell Papers ( IOLR Collection).
52 Excerpts from the book began to appear simultaneously as separate articles in Bharati, Ashar
I 3 I 6/ I gog, Ashvin I 3 I 8/ I g i I .
 The contest over tradition and nationalism 201

who urgently needed to b e restored t o her rightful place i n the home

and heart. The interpretation of the Indian art tradition that
Abanindranath provided in a mood of strident self-assertion was
brimming with new Orientalist ideas. Echoing the Pan-Asian ideal of
a single entity of ' Asiatic Art ' , I ndian art was again located as the
master tradition within it : the source from which influences flew
outwards in the great expansive age of Buddhism. 53 The linear
progression from an Oriental to a specifically I ndian national
consciousness culminated in an overarching notion of ' idealistic ' art.
While a spiritual essence was held to be the universal quality of all
ancient great art traditions, dhyana was identified as the particular,
distinctive attribute of Indian art. In Abanindranath's opinion, the
national art tradition was best exemplified by two samples, one
belonging to the realm of plastic arts, the other to the realm of
aesthetics - the first was the image of the Dhyani-Buddha, the second,
the art treatise of Sukracharya.
There is evidence throughout this book of the close partnership
between the author and his guru, Havell, in their campaign for Indian
art. Abanindranath had supplied Havell in England with interpre­
tations of iconography and notes from Sanskrit aesthetic texts for his
books.54 More important was the way he repeatedly invoked the
authority ofHavell in presenting his own formulations on Indian art,
particularly in dismantling the theory of Greek influence and the
' Gandhara-bias ' in Indian art history. While the Gandhara-style
was dismissed as a debasement, Abanindranath went on to comment
on the far more destructive impact that ensued from India's recent
contacts with Western culture. 55 But the tide in the contact of
cultures, he believed, would once again turn away from the West
towards i ts real source in the East. For all its Orientalist inspiration
and affiliations, Abanindranath's approach to tradition was firmly
rooted in nationalism : in a sharpened sense of being ' Indian ' . He
believed that preserving his identity as an I ndian artist entailed the
retention of an organic link with past traditions, even as one
continued to move towards new horizons. I-Ie used the metaphor of
the perennial flow of a river, which could neither sever its bond with
its original source, nor ever cease to surge forward. 5 6

53 Bharat-Shilpa (Calcutta 1 gog) , pp. 28-2g.

54 Letters from Abanindranath Tagore to Havell, July 1 907 to September 1 908 - Havell
Papers (Rabindra Bhavan Collection) . 55 Bharat-Shilpa , pp. 33-3 5.

56 z'bt'd. , pp. 24-25.

202 The making of a new ' Indian ' art
One of the main lessons the artist drew from his study of tradition
was a notion of the spiritual and imaginative nature of art. His
definition of ' art ' and ' artist ' dipped heavily into the rnystic
terminology of dhyana (meditation) and sadhana (austere dedication) ,
interpreting art as a religion in itself.
It is only through a lot of disciplined worship, devotion and edification that
one can become an artist ... True, that the brush or the compass are
important instruments [towards achieving this end] , but these are useless
unless one can learn, at the same time, the deeper secrets and formulae
(mantras) of their utilisation. 57 (author's translation)
Such an equation of art with religion was the central theme of an
article, ' Shilpe Bhakti-Mantra ' ,58 where he compared the perception
of art with the perception of the divine. Neither, he believed, could be
precisely explained or defined by scholars ; for both were a matter of
deep, intuitive sensibility. It was only through bhakti that Indian art
would reveal itself to its devotees in its true grandeur, and revive itself
in ever-new forms of beauty. 59 As before, such ideas rode on a strong
sense of shame and indignation at the denigration of Indian art under
colonial rule.
What also emerges from this article is the author's intense
admiration of the folk arts and village crafts, as the best repositories
of tradition in contemporary I ndia. There was a conscious attempt to
appropriate the ' popular ', in a sanitised, idealised form, within the
scope of the reconstructed tradition - to create for Indian art both
the legacy of a ' classical ' past and the pride of an uncorrupted ' living
tradition ' . In line with the Arts and Crafts idealists, Abanindranath
glorified the pristine beauty of the art of village Bengal : the simplest
of clay pitchers, the ornament crafted by the goldsmith or a Krishna­
Chaitanya pat painted by the humble patua. There was, nonetheless,
a novelty in Abanindranath's ideas, in the context of the prevailing
aesthetic values and preferences of his society. ' Cultured ' middle­
class taste in Bengal had always distanced itself from the ' bazaar ' art
of Kalighat and Bat-tala ; in the Swadeshi period, even as the
aversion grew against Western-style oils and art-school products, the
pictures of the patuas had seldom figured as an alternative focus of
admiration as ' Indian ' art. But Abanindranath was according the
clay-modellers and patuas of Kalighat and Puri a higher status than
those urban artists who had become slaves of mediocre European art,
57 ibid., pp. 82-83. 58 Bharati, Jaistha I 3 I 7/ I 9 I O .
59 ' Shilpe Bhakti-Mantra ', p. g8.
 The contest over tradition and nationalism 203

his main criteria of judgement being that of adherence to tradition.

All along, the ' folk ' was accommodated in its due rank within the
present hierarchy of art. Yet, aware as he was that the patua's craft
could never attain the ' higher ideals of Indian art ', he found their
greatest value to lie in their unbroken link with the age-old pictorial
conventions of the pat.6 0
Later, Abanindranath, both in his paintings and writing, would
take a growing interest in the folk-art traditions of Bengal. His book,
Banglar Brata ( I g I g) , a study of local folk rituals practised through
generations by Bengali women, made a pioneering display of alpana
designs (floor patterns) painted by women . In a refreshing break
from the preoccupations with the Aryan and classical heritage of
Indian civilisation, the artist, here, was concerned with stripping
away many of these rituals of their later Sanskritised accretions and
asserting their link with a pristine pre-Brahmanic folk cu l ture. Using
the simile of layers of alluvial soil, he constructed a hierarchy of
positions between Aryan, Shastric and folk rituals in Indian culture,
emphasising the survival of folk rituals, in a pure and unspoilt form,
at the core.61 To Abanindranath these rituals were the pivot around
which revolved the ' timeless ' world of the Indian village and the
Indian women : the two prime preserves of tradition. Nationalist
discourse was constantly demarcating an ' inner ' space of autonomy,
where ideas of the village, the home, women and rituals were invoked
as symbols of India's pure uncolonised self, uncontaminated by
colonial reason and progress.
In the excitement of the battle to rejuvenate Indian art, Abanin­
dranath's main focus, however, was not on ' folk ' but on the ' classical '
canons of the Indian art tradition. I n two long articles of I g I g- I 4, he
set out to provide an ' au thentic ' textual base in tradition to notions
of a special ' Indian ' mode of perception and representation. The first
of these articles/booklets, ' Murti ' , 62 drawing on two Sanskrit texts,
Sukranitisara ( the treatise of Sukracharya) and Pratima-lakshana (a
chapter in Varahamihira's Vrihat Samhita) , outlined the norms for the
conceptualisation of anatomy and creation of images of deities. A
traditional sculptor from a hereditary clan ofKumbhakonam helped
in the practical decoding of the Shastric canons ; while two modern
' Indian-style ' artists, Nandalal Bose and K. Venkatappa, provided
60 61
ibid., pp. gg- 1 0 1 . Banglar Brata (Calcutta, 1 9 1 9) , pp. 1-2, s-8.
62
Prabasi, Paush, Magh 1 320/ 1 9 1 3- 1 4. The English translation by Sukumar Ray appeared as
a booklet, Some Notes on Indian Artistic Anatomy (Calcutta 1 9 14).
204 The making of a new ' Indian ' art
illustrations to demonstrate the various shapes, forms and postures
discussed . 0 . C. Gangoly's foreword highlighted sharply the pol­
emical intent of Abanindranath's work. These notes had been .
prepared, he wrote, for the specific ' purpose of answering certain
criticisms against the many unreal forms and conventions which had
been adopted by Indian masters in sculpture and painting ' . The
Indian artist, he explained, was called on to devise certain conven­
tions of anatomy, suggestive of a higher and superior being ' beyond
the form of things '. 6 3
Yet Abanindranath, in searching out of the Silpa Sastras a set of
conventions and guidelines for the creation of ' the aesthetically ideal
figure ' in Indian tradition, was probing quite specifically the question
of form. His discussion took up, firstly, the five different categories of
images, classified in the Sukranitisara , with the separate scales and
proportions laid out for each type of image. Secondly, it analysed the
poses and postures to be adopted by divine images, classifying four
different kinds of Bhangas or inflections of posture. The longest and
most richly illustrated section dealt with the issue of the ' ideal ' shapes
and forms to be given to the different organs and limbs of the human
body, through comparisons with the natural forms of flowers, foliage,
birds, animals or obj ects. Thus, eyes were associated with the
imagery offish or a lotus-leaf, the neck with the form of a conch-shell,
or fingers with the proverbial description of buds of the champak
flower. Through such analogies, verbal and visual, the artist also
touched on the broader case for incorporating literary similes and
metaphors within a pictorial image.
I n a later essay, ' Sadrishya ' ,64 he argued that a picture, like a
language, relied heavily on rhetoric and figures of speech to capture
the right image and mood. I t was only when poetic similes and
analogies came into play in art that ' Form ' transcended itself and
reached ' the region of Thought ' . Kalidasa, the master of similes in
the Sanskrit literary tradition, was, therefore, seen to provide the best
aids to the Indian artist in the visualisation ofscenes and appearances,
expressions and gestures. The nature of similes in art, Abanindranath
explained, followed on the old Sanskrit saying, ' They differ and yet
have much of a sameness ' ( Tadbhinnatve sati tadgata bhuyodharmavat-

63 Some Notes on Indian Artistic Anatomy - Foreword by 0. C. Gangoly, p. i.

64 This essay appears in the author's Bageshwari Shilpa Prabandhauali (Calcutta 1 94 1 ) . Its
English translation, titled ' Likeness ' appears in JISOA, November 1 96 1 (page references
are to the JISOA article) .
 The contest over tradition and nationalism
tam ) . Their expressive power lay not in exact imitation, but in
suggestion, subtle allusions and evocation of a common spirit. 65
· While Abanindranath was drawing liberally on Sanskrit textual
sources in articulating his aesthetic views, he was, nonetheless,
emphatic that these canons of the Silpa Sastras should never be
regarded as ' absolute and inviolable laws ' . Upholding his Romantic
self-image of an artist, he remained committed to the creativity and
freedom of artistic expression. Mere adherence to tradition could not
make an artist - codes and instruction were important only in
orienting the novice till he came into his own ; but ' the master finds
himself emancipated from the tyranny of standards, proportions and
measures ' .66 In his study of the traditional texts, Abanindranath
clearly distinguished the approach of an aesthete from that of a
rigorous scholar.
The freedom and inventiveness of an artist's approach surfaces
more prominently in his second article, ' Shadanga or Six Limbs of
Painting ' ( I g 1 4) , where he reconstructed a theory of Indian painting
out of a single stanza picked out of Yashodhara's commentary on
Vatsayana's Kamasutra (Book I, Ch. 3 ) . 67 In the absence of any clear
aesthetic canons for painting in the Silpa Sastras,68 0 . C. Gangoly
underlined the need to search out of the Alankara Sastras, so far
applied mainly to dramaturgy and poetics, a set of conventions that
were equally applicable to the plastic arts of painting and sculpture.
This need had been fulfilled by Abanindranath. 69 There was a special
concern over the antiquity of the source, the Sanskrit couplet, to
prove the pedigree of these aesthetic canons. While the dating of both
the Vatsayana text and the Yashodhara commentary remained a
matter of controversy, it was speculated that these aesthetic canons
could probably be located around the 4th or 5 th century AD, to
coincide with the ' period of brilliant activity ' of Indian painting at
Aj anta and Bag h. 7 0 Once again, art was being placed before the

65 ' L'1 keness , pp. I , 6 , g.

'

66 Some Notes on Indian Artistic Anatomy, reprint i n J ISOA, November I g6 I , pp. 2, 2g-go.
67 ' Bharate Shadanga ', ' Shadanga Darshan ' - Bharati, Ashar, Shravan I 32 I / I 9 I 4 ; ' Shad­
anga or Six Limbs of Painting ', ' Philosophy ofShadanga ' - The Modem Review, May,June
I 9 I 4. Reprinted as a single essay in JISOA, November I g 6 I (page references are to the
JISOA article) .
68
The Chitrasutra, an extensive treatise on modes of painting and representation in the ancient
text of Vishnudharmottara, was, then, yet to be discovered. In I 924, the first translation and
interpretation of the Chitrasutra by S tella Kramrisch appeared in the Journal of the
Department of Letters, Calcutta University, No. XI.
69 Shadanga or Six Limbs of Painting (Calcutta I 92 r) - Foreword, p. i. 7 0 ibid., p. ii.
206 The making of a new ' Indian ' art
code ; the actual achievement in painting was being used to
corroborate the prevalence of the rules and conventions.
The claims to antiquity linked up with another popular theme : a
sense of a Pan-Asian Oriental art tradition. Abanindranath un d er­
lined the close affinities between the ' six limbs of Indian painting '
referred to in Yashodhara's commentary, and the six canons of
Chinese painting which were formulated by the Chinese art critic,
Hsieh-Ho in the 5 th century AD. The affinities were discovered not
merely in external matters of technique and form, but in the deeper
spiritual and imaginative content of the Indian, the Chinese and the
Japanese aesthetics. Thus, the principle of rasa, the fundamental
lifespring of Indian art, was compared to the principle of ' Ki-in ' in
Japanese art : both suggesting ' that indefinable something which in
every great work of art suggests elevation of sentiment ' . Interestingly,
in rounding up the comparison, Abanindranath talked about the
greater cohesiveness and completeness of the six canons of Indian
painting, as compared with the Chinese, implying that the aesthetic
philosophy was originally Indian and must have spread from India to
China.71
Leaving aside such claims, the main value of Abanindranath's
work lay in his analyses of the six canons of painting laid out in
Yasodhara's commentary : rupabheda, pramanani, bhava, lavanya-yoja­
nam, sadrishyam and varnika-bhangam. Rupabheda was described as the
subtle process of differentiation of different types of beauty in form, in
which the power of the mind was more important than the power of
sight.72 With the concept of pramanani ( the laws of proportion and
measurement ) , the main faculty was also seen to lie in pramatri­
chaitanya, defined as ' the wonderful measuring instrument of mind ' .
Our pramatri-chaitanya, Abanindranath analysed, while it measures
for us the differences in proportions, shapes and sizes, also gives us a
sense of the exact quality and quantity of colours to be mixed ' for
painting the clear sky, the swelling waves or land immersed in light
or darkness ' - it helped to gauge the broader mood and aura, that
surrounded a form .7 3 The centrality of bhava in a picture was tied up
with another central quality : vyangya which means implied or
elliptical expression. Just as pramanani imposed on forms the restric­
tions of measures and proportions, the next requirement, lavanya was
meant to control and regulate the expression of bhava, for artistic
71 ' Philosophy of the Shadanga ', pp. 25-28.
72 ' Shadanga or Six Limbs of Painting ', p. 14. 73 ibid., p. 1 5.
 The contest over tradition and nationalism 207

purposes. 74 With the last of the ' six limbs ', Varnika-bhangam,
Abanindranath referred to the detailed prescriptions given in
Bharata's Natya Sastra on the mixing of colours which underlined the
symbolic significance and expressive powers of different tones. The
central point, once more, was that colour was primarily a reflection
of mood, feeling or emotion. 75 In this way, each of the six different
canons of painting were brought together through closely over­
lapping definitions, all converging on the importance of an inner
perception vis-a-vis a mere grasp of external form.
The reconstruction of a traditional Indian aesthetic coincided fully
with the Romantic theories of art and artistic creation. These ideas
now acquired an Indian pedigree, with a base in ancient Sanskrit
treatises. Abanindranath, in his approach to tradition, was freely
moving between the different positions of a textual scholar, a critic
and an artist. The high value he placed on individual imagination
and creativity shows up even in his study of the focal folk tradition of
Bengal, where he clearly distinguished one form of ' artistic ' alpana
from the more narrowly ritualistic ones, in which the intensity of the
creative instinct transformed the ritual into ' art ' . 76 The recurrent
theme of the primacy of the mind over sight shaped the artist's entire
approach to a painting, in terms of contrasted values of ' feeling ' vs.
' form ' , ' emotion ' vs. ' skill ' . Constructing a hierarchy of values, he
placed bhava (feeling) above karigari (workmanship) , spontaneous
inspiration over taught rules and conventions in the making of a true
artist. Beauty was seen to be a deeply ' inner ' quality of a work of art,
often non-visual in its impact. 77
These ideas of Abanindranath would be developed and expanded
in the following decade in the famous set of lectures he gave on art
and aesthetics between I 92 I and I 929, when he held the post of
Bageshwari Professor of Indian Fine Arts at Calcutta University. A
more open appreciation of the plastic qualities of form combine here
with a lively analyses of the subtle nuances of' beauty ' and ' rhythm ' ,
' representation ' and ' similitude ', ' taste ' and ' inspiration ' in art.
Later compiled together into a book, Bageshwari Shilpa Prabandhavali,
these essays contain the full flavour of Abanindranath's mature
thought and all the richness ofhis poetic prose.78 A comparison of the

74 t"b t"d ., p. I 9· 75 ibid., pp. 22-23. 7 6 Banglar Brata, pp. 55-56.

77 Priyadarshika, p. I I .
78 For an extended discussion of Abanindranath's Bageshwari essays see Satyajit Chowdhury,
Abanindra Nandantatva (Calcutta, I 97 7 ) ·
208 The making of a new ' Indian ' art
author of Bharat-Shilpa, with all his fire and polemics, with the
Bageshwari Professor of the r g2os, with his more mellowed but
probing insights into the nature of art and creativity, underlines the
transition that had occurred in attitude and preoccupations. The
nationalist and the ideologue of I ndian art had been superseded in
time by a man who was primarily artist and writer, wrapped up in his
own aesthetic sensibilities.
I n the heyday of the propagation of the ' New School of Indian
painting ', Abanindranath's ideological campaign for I ndian art
drew other advocates from within his circle of students and following.
One of the most prominent among them was Asit Kumar Haldar.
Like Abanindranath, he combined painting in the new ' Indian­
style ' , with a spate of articles in Bengali on I ndian art and aesthetics,
which also found their forum in the two main journals, Prabasi and
Bharati. His book on Ajanta ( 1 9 1 3 ) was a product of his two study
tours of the Ajanta caves during 1 909 and 1 9 1 0, as a part of the team
of student artists assisting Lady C . ]. Herringham in her project of
documenting these paintings : a proj ect sponsored by the I ndia
Society of London. The book thus linked up with the great ' artistic '
discovery of Ajanta in the new Orientalist circles of London. This
phase of the discovery clearly differentiated itself from the earlier
archaeological excavations of Ajanta, and the initiatives undertaken
by Principal john Griffiths and the students of the Bombay School of
Art in the I 87os in copying the Ajanta paintings. The new Orientalist
and nationalist camp saw its own appreciation of Ajanta to be quite
novel - it emphasised the artistic inspiration that the Calcutta artists
drew from it vis-a-vis the mere documentative work done by the
Bombay students, pointing also to the better copies made by Lady
Herringham's group as against the Griffiths team. 79 Abanindranath
eulogistically described Nandalal's and Asit Haldar's trip to Aj anta
as a ' pilgrimage ', hoping it would rekindle the flame of art in modern
I ndia. 80 Art was placed on the same pedestal as religion, and Ajanta
identified as the epitome of India's artistic and religious past.
Asit Haldar's approach to Ajanta brings into focus, again, the
main aesthetic concerns that had accreted around the issue of I ndian
art. His classification of the history of Indian painting into two broad
chronological phases of Buddhist and Mughal followed the same

79 Asit Kumar Haldar, Ajanta (Calcutta, rgr 3) - 'Purbabhas'.

80
ibid., Foreword by Abanindranath Tagore.
 The contest over tradition and nationalism 2 09

hieratic pattern that Havell and Coomaraswamy were constructing

for Indian art history, placing the ancient above the medieval past,
the Buddhist and Hindu art tradition above the Mughal. The
distinctions drawn between Buddhist and Mughal painting were
those between a religious art and a secular court art. 81 Buddhist art,
symbolising faith and devotion, was seen to exude a tranquil grace
that was best perceived in the spontaneous flow of lines, while
Mughal art was described as a product of leisure and pleasure, its
ornate quality reflecting the ostentations of court life . 8 2 Feeding on
the same distinctions with Mughal art, Ajanta paintings formed the
central point around which another artist of the ' new school ' ,
Samarendranath Gupta constructed a notion of ' classicism ' i n art. 8 3
While Ajanta and the Kailasa temple of Ellora were given the epithet
of ' classical ' , Mughal painting or the Taj Mahal, however beautiful,
were seen to be lacking in that ' epic splendour ' , ' sublimity ' and
' higher feelings ' of the former, which were the true definers of a
' classic art ' .
More than Mughal painting, Western classical art formed the
fundamental point of contrast for Ajanta. Shyama Charan Srimani,
in his pioneering book of I 8 7 I , had attributed to Ajanta the ' merits '
of perspective, light and shade, and realistic anatomy-drawing. 84 By
I 9 I o, the points of admiration had significantly shifted, as had the

very definition of ' great art ' . For Asit Haldar, the real greatness of
Ajanta painters lay in the superior faculty of dhyana that enabled
them to conceptualise images through the ' inner eye ' . A denial of
sensuality was a basic theme in this definition of an idealistic, super­
sensory art in Ajanta. The nudity of the nude was all-prominent in
European art, the author wrote ; but the body in Ajanta paintings
was shorn of clothes only to express a deep inner ideal, its physicality
sublimated by the greater force of the idea. 85 An aversion to Western
Academic norms of representation and its illusionist style led Asit
Haldar to highlight only the element of line and linearity in Ajanta
painting, and ignore the importance of colour and volume ; similarly,
an obsession with the centrality of idea and emotion in a painting
produced the view that composition, here, as in most of Indian
painting, was focused on a single primary idea, mellowing down all

8 1 l"b Z"d. , pp. 1 7- 1 8 . 8 2 Z"bZ"d. , pp. 2 1-22.

8 3 'The Classic Art of Ajanta', serialised in The Modern Review, December 1 9 1 3 , January,
February 1 9 14. 84 Srimani, Arya Jatir Shilpachaturi, pp. 63-76.
85 Ayanta,
. pp. 24-2 6 , 45·
210 The making of a new ' Indian ' art
other diffusive tangents of this idea. 86 Clearly, the aesthetic values
and obsessions of the ' New School of Indian painting ' were limiting
and distorting the understanding of Ajanta painting, obscuring the
parallel importance, here, of colour and volume and of narrat{ve,
multi-focal compositions. Yet, it was precisely this definition of
Aj anta which now made it the supreme emblem of India's ' great art '
tradition. And it provided a model for an entire view of the nature of
Indian art, which Asit Haldar elaborated through several other
articles, such as ' Bharat Shilper Antar-Prakriti ' (' The Inner Nature
of I ndian Art ' ) and ' Bharat-shilpa ' .87
In Asit Haldar, this arbitrary construct of an ' idealistic ' aesthetic
also merged with a wave of regional Bengali chauvinism in his claims
for I ndian art. 88 He wrote about the ' striking affinities ' that existed
between the imagery and style of Ajanta and the indigenous painting
traditions of Bengal, such as the pata ( book illustrations on wooden
planks) , the chalchitra ( background frame painting to images of
deities) , or the Kalighat pictures. Quoting lines from Satyendranath
Datta's famous chauvinistic poem of the time, ' Amra Bangali ', he
even attributed the paintings of Aj anta to the painters of Bengal.89
Through such assertions, Asit Haldar was not only appropriating the
' folk ' but also linking it with the ' classical ' in a sequence of linear
descent, arguing out the idea of an unbroken line of tradition that
continued from Aj anta in the work of these village painters of
Bengal. 9° Kalighat painting now received the admiring attention of
writers like him and Abanindranath, as an example of ' living
tradition ' in their midst, carrying on the line of Aj anta, unsullied and
uncorrupted by Western influences.
For this consolidated camp of nationalist artists and writers, all
such interpretations of past tradition were geared to the current
agenda of mobilising art in the cause of nationalism. A study of the
ancient, classical inheritance, from an ' Indian ' and ' artistic ' point of
view, was meant directly to inspire the growth of a ' national art ' in
the country. The cultivation of a ' higher ' aesthetic sense was seen as
indispensable to the larger project of ' nation-building ' . As Samaren­
dranath Gupta wrote,
The nation that can sense the true and the beau tiful in art is marked out for
greatness . .. Along with sustained patriotism, let us cultivate the aesthetic

86 ' B harat Shilper An tar Prakriti ' , Prabasi, Ashar I 32 I / I 9 I 4, pp. 338-39.
87 Bharati, Chaitra I 3 I 9/ I9 I 3 · 88 ' B anglar Shilpa ' - Prabasi, Jaishtha I 322/ I 9 I 5 ·
89 AJanta, pp . 29-30. 9 0 ' Banglar Shilpa ' , pp. 230-32.
 The contest over tradition and nationalism 2I I

sense . . . so that the nation that will be ultimately evolved in India may be a
nation ful l of overwhelming love for the Motherland, full of chastity, full of
the subtle sense of the beau tiful in creative art.91

What nationalism in this context was placing the highest value on

was less the specific issue of an I ndian tradition, but more some
rarified ideals of beauty and sublimity which it saw as the birthright
of the Indian nation. This is powerfully articulated in Aurobindo's
manifesto on The National Value ofArt, where he set out a hierarchical
progression from the ' purely aesthetic ' value of art to its highest
' spiritual ' value, in the uplifting of the nation. 92 The central pre­
occupation was with the aestheticism of ' art ' , and its concomitant
spirituality. The artists and writers, consciously converging around
the cause of Indian art, based their exclusiveness mainly on this
ground.
The nature of this nationalist discourse . points to a crucial
distinction that has been drawn between ' artistic value ' and
' aesthetic value ' in the theory of art. 93 The former is defined as
something which arises in the work of art itself, and exists on its basis ;
while the latter is said to be an aggregation of certain aesthetically
valuable properties and qualities that can manifest itself in the work
of art, but clearly lie outside it. Much of this writing on art in Bengal
was concerned more with ' aesthetic value ', with the abstracted idea
of ' art ', than with visuality or the formal structures and represen­
tational codes of the specific works under survey. But it ' concretised '
its reserve of aesthetic values on the basis of the given works of art of
the group of painters it sponsored. The resultant dissonance between
aesthetic assertions and artistic achievements, between ideology and
form, lay at the core of this nationalist art movement, generating
some of the main criticisms against it.

C HA L L ENGES AND C OUNTE R -A S S E R TION S : THE FEED-BA C K

OF DI F FE RING O PINION S ABOUT INDIAN A R T

Even as the new movement closed ranks around the work of

Abanindranath and his school of painters, its claims faced a wave of
criticism and scepticism that swelled from within. I ts exclusiveness

91 Samarendranath Gupta, ' Art and Art Culture ' in The Modern Review, June I 9 I I , p. I 4·
92 The National Value of Art (Calcutta, I 936), pp. I 9-23, 42-46.
93 Roman lngarden, ' Artistic and Aesthetic Values ' , p. 46.
212 The making of a new ' Indian ' art
found itself under attack from others who displayed equally j ealous
concern with issues of tradition and ' Indian-ness ' in art, and with
prospects of national artistic progress. I t was in the wake of criticisms
that the lines were most clearly drawn which separated this
' nationalist ' camp of artists and critics from others around them. At
·

the same time, the debates often threw up a range of co-existing ideas
and insights on art that narrowed down differences and eroded the
exclusive ' nationalist ' premise of the camp. Attacks and counter­
attacks developed, occasionally, into a dialogue over form and style
in art, over whether Academic conventions of anatomy, shading and
perspective could not co-exist with I ndian emotions and imagery, or
over how far literary aesthetics could be transposed on to the visual
arts. These differing lines of aesthetic thought all corresponded to a
general framework of nationalist pride and self-awareness. National­
ism had wide ramifications outside the charmed circle of the Havell­
Abanindranath group, throwing open the cause of I ndian art.
Prior to the rise of Abanindranath, the Bengali intelligentsia had
been captivated by Ravi Varma's mythological paintings. During
the r goos, a continued appreciation and staunch defence of Ravi
Varma drew out many of the continuities in thought and taste, and
led into the heart of the debates. An article in The Modern Review by
an unnamed student of the late artist,94 in its point by point rej oinder
to the criticisms of Coomaraswamy and Nivedita, set out some
counter definitions of ' Indian-ness ' . The ideas of ' classicism ' and
' tradition ' had become polemical weapons in the hands of both
camps. Nivedita, with her Victorian sense of decorum, had squirmed
at the sight of Shakuntala lying on her stomach and of Arj un and
Subadhra wooing each other in public. In reply, the author
underlined the abundance of sensual descriptions and erotic scenes in
Kalidasa's literature and their parallels in classical I ndian sculpture.
Against Coomaraswamy's accusation of the ' theatrical conceptions '
of Ravi Varma, the conventions of the theatre (the Natya- Vedam)
were upheld as an important feature of Hindu aesthetics, applicable
both to the plastic and the performing arts. The tables were
completely turned in support of the sensuality and theatricism of
Ravi Varma's paintings, and the critics held guilty of ' a European
standpoint ' . 95 Notions of the traditional authenticity of Ravi

94 ' The Indian Fine Arts Critics' - The Modern Review, August 1 9 1 0.
95 z'b z'd p. 209.
.,
 The contest over tradition and nationalism 213

Varma's paintings combined uneasily with a firm faith in European

Academic conventions as the highest achievements in visual ' truth ' . 96
Ravi Varma, in taking recourse to Western methods and techniques,
was believed to have evolved in I ndia the best form of ' fine art ' and
to have based it on themes, ideas and feelings that were essentially
and traditionally I ndian.
The main criticism of this article was less against the new school of
painting and more against the partisan and propagandist nature of
art criticism which disguised itself in the name of ' religion, morality
and Swadeshi ' , supporting all kinds of ' shabby drawing ' and
' unnatural figurations ' as I ndian art. 97 Simultaneously, within
Calcutta circles, the Bengali journal, Sahitya, launched a more
sustained and virulent campaign against Abanindranath's school of
painting and its supporters. I n bitingly sarcastic language (which is
very difficult to translate) , the editor, Sureshchandra Samaj pati took
up cudgels against particular paintings reproduced in Prabasi and the
critics' notes on them. I n all its criticisms, Sahitya again upheld the
fundamental value of Academic realism and representational ac­
curacy in art. Repeatedly, what it found most objectionable in the
paintings of Abanindranath and his group was their ' distortion ' of
natural appearances, their ' strange ' stylisations and their ' exag­
gerated, unnatural ' colouring - all of which was j ustified in the name
of ' a fake conception of an I ndian style of painting ' . 98 A frequent
refrain in these slanders was the equation of these paintings with a
pat : with the lowly, unskilled work of an uneducated patua. Even as
folk art was accommodated within the reconstructed image of the
I ndian art tradition, the term pat continued to be used as one of
derogation . 99
If the paintings of Abanindranath or Nandalal were considered
unfit to be termed ' art ' , they were regarded equally unworthy of the
appellation of an ' Indian-style ' , accorded to them by certain
' professional admirers ' of the school. Accusing Prabasi of becoming a
mere canvassing ground for the new school of painters, Sahitya
attacked, with equal vehemence, the vagaries and excesses of the
critics. I t questioned the way Prabasi's notes on paintings tried to
impose all kinds of emotions and ideals on a picture, which left the

96 ibid., p. 2 I 3· 9 7 ibid., p. 2 08.

98 ' Masik Sahitya Samalochana : Prabasi, Chaitra ' Sahitya, Baisakh I 3 I 7 / 1 9 I o, pp. 63-64.
-

99 Sahitya, Baisakh I 3 I 8/ I 9 I I , p. n ; Jaishtha I 3 I 8, p. 1 5 3 ·

2 I4 The making of a new ' Indian ' art
viewer cold and unconvinced. 100 As dismissive of the Pahari
miniature paintings as the work of the modern painters, on the same
grounds of unnatural anatomy drawing and stylised gestures/01
Sahitya, however, reserved strong praise for a copy of an Ajanta
painting, ' Benubadini ', reproduced in Prabasi in I g I o. I mplicit in
this was the idea of Ajanta representing the more genuine and
original face of I ndian art. According to the Sahitya critic, the
' naturalised ' beauty of the Ajanta picture emphasised the weakness
of the new school of ' I ndian-style ' painting vis-a-vis the traditional
achievement . 10 2
' Naturalism ' (swabhavikata) had emerged as a keyword in these
writings in Sahitya. One ofJ. P. Gangooly's romantic scenes of peasant
life was set up as an alternative to the work of Abanindranath's
group, evolving around it a manifesto about the need of rigorous
systematised training in art, and the importance of realistic art
conventions. 103 In keeping with this standpoint, Sahitya, in its
monthly numbers, carried reproductions of the work of the Academic
oil painters of Calcutta - like ] . P. Gangooly, Hitendranath Tagore,
Bhabani Charan Laha, or the late Annada Prasad Bagchi - to
balance the publicity given to the ' new school ' . While it backed these
other non-' I ndian style ' painters, it was also propagating a very
different kind of technical art criticism in its pages. The manner in
which the landscape paintings of Hitendranath Tagore104 were
commented on by the critic provide a good example. While he
admired the atmosphere and mood captured in these landscapes, the
critic's main criteria of evaluation were the formal elements of style
and technique - the structure of composition, the choice and
arrangement of colours, the accuracy of perspective and fore­
shortening, or the suggestion of distance. 1 05 I n opposition to the type
of art criticism that pervaded Prabasi and Bharati, Sahitya's art critic
believed that the theme and mood of a painting should require a
minimum of comment ; the critic's main task was only to assess a
painting in accordance with certain standard rules and con-
100
Sahirya, Jaishtha I 3 I7, pp. I 27-28.
101
Sahirya, Ashar I 3 I 7 , p. 200 ; Bhadra I 3 I 7, p. 343·
102 103
Sahirya, Magh I 3 I 7 I I 9 I I , p. 636. Sahirya, Chaitra I 3 I 7 I I 9 I I .
10 4
Hitendranath Tagore (son of Rabindranath's elder brother, Hemendranath) was a poet,
an oil painter specialising in landscapes, and a pioneer in the process of chromo­
lithography and colour printing. His paintings were posthumously featured in Sahirya
during I 9 I O- I I. See, ' Hitendra-jibani ' in Hita-Granthavali (Calcutta, I 9 I 3) , pp. I-I6.
105
' Chitrashala ' by Manmathanath Chakravarty Sahirya, Kartick I 31 7, pp. 455-58;
-

Jaishtha r 3 I 8, pp. I 2 7-29.

 The contest over tradition and nationalism 215
ventions. 1 0 6 The emphasis, here, was on the existence of a specific
' science ' of painting - of some set conventions of visual represen­
tation, which were seen to be universally applicable to all artists
whether they be European, Japanese or Indian. This definition of
' art ' militated against the dominant constructs of the Orientalist/
nationalist discourse : against the notion of the primacy of the
idea and emotion in a painting, or the idea of the exclusive
' I ndian-ness ' of Indian art.
Outside the pages of Sahitya, these same views on art were being
affirmed in other contemporary Bengali magazines, like Bharata­
varsha. Compared to Sahitya (and certainly to magazines like Prabasi
and Bharati), Bharatavarsha seemed to cater to a wider, less exclusive
readership, carrying a mixed fare of pictures, many by little known,
local painters, that fitted broadly into the popular Ravi Varma or
Bamapada Banerjee model of I ndian painting. An article in
Bharatavarsha on the subject of the inter-relation of art and nature,
also propagated the concept of a ' Science of the Beautiful ' . 1 0 7 Art, it
explained, was not a matter of' producing pleasurable emotions ' , but
a matter of strict and diligent initiation into a ' grammar ' of visual
language, into certain laws of form and colour that constituted this
' Science ' .
Another magazine called Shilpa o Sahitya also emerged as a forum
for asserting the universal importance of Academic training and
conventions in the making of art. I ts editor, Manmathanath
Chakravarty, had founded a private art institution in Calcutta in
1 8g6, the Indian Art School. Havell's reforms within the Calcutta

School of Art, particularly his disposal of the European paintings of

the Art Gallery, elicited strong criticisms from Shilpa o Sahitya in
1 905 . 1 08 Havell's emphasis on technical and ' decorative arts ' , on the
ground that Indian students had the greatest aptitude for and the
most to benefit from such training, was seen to be an insidious way of
obstructing the artistic progress of the country. E . B. Havell, it was
alleged, under the guise of a benefactor and admirer of Indian art,
was depriving Indian students of access to ' high art ' ( uchcha shilpa) .
Given the clear social hierarchy that prevailed between the ' fine '
and the ' decorative ' arts ( which even Havell's scheme of reform

106
Sahitya, Kar tick I 3 I 7, pp. 45 6-5 7 ·
10 7 ' Chitravidya o Prakriti-gyan ' in Bharatavarsha, Magh I 322/ I 9 I 6, p. 338.
108 ' Kolikata Government Art Schooler Abanati ' - Shilpa o Sahitya, Jaishtha I 3 I 2/ I 905, pp.
37-39 ·
216 The making of a new ' Indian ' art
implicitly acknowledged) , this sense of threat was far from un­
founded. It was reflected immediately in the breaking away of a
group of art-school students led by Ranada Prasad Gupta who, in
1 905, set up an independent institution called the Jubilee Art
Academy. A similar sense of discontent over Havell's reforms was also
expressed in Hitendranath Tagore's career. Disappointed at the
neglect of oil painting and the absence of facilities for learning
chromo-lithography in the School of Art under Havell, he left the
school and pursued his own experiments at home. 1 09 The ' higher
arts ', it was felt, to be true to the sense of the term, had to conform to
the ' scientific ' and naturalistic conventions of European painting
and sculpture. To instil into students a proper sense of this ' science '
(especially at a time when ' high art ' was seen to be under grave
threat in the premier art school of the city) , Manmathanath
Chakravarty wrote several serialised articles on accurate obj ect
drawing, on the conventions of light and shade, or on different types
of tinting and shading. 1 1 0
The criticisms ventilated in Sahitya and Shilpa o Sahitya had in them
elements of personal resentments and rivalries. However, the issues
raised in these attacks were also voiced by other more neutral critics,
like U pendrakishore Raychowdhury, 1 1 1 who belonged, broadly to
the same circles of the new school of painters. At this level, the
criticisms generated a more lively debate and dialogue across the
hard-and-fast divide ofcamps. Arguing again for a common universal
' grammar ' of art, whether I ndian or Western, U pendrakishore
reiterated the importance of proper training and the study of nature
for the progress of art in modern l ndia. 1 1 2 Convinced that no ' high '
pictorial art was possible through the rejection of naturalism, he was
equally convinced of the distinct superiority ofEuropean pictorial art
over I ndian. And he saw no real contradiction between these ideas on
art and his self-avowed nationalism.
My nationality consists of a legitimate and affectionate pride in all that is
noble in our national life and tradition, combined with sincere regret for our
shortcomings and eagerness to remove them. I t is this nationality that

109 ' Hitendra Jibani ', pp. I 4- I 5 .

11°
For example, ' Chitra-vigyan ' and ' Alok o Chhaya ' - Shilpa o Sahitya, I 3 I 3/ I go6 ; ' Barna­
Chitran ', ibid., I 3 I 5/ I go8-g.
111 U pendrakishore ( U . Ray) handled all the reproduction of paintings for Prabasi and The
Modern Review through his new three-tone block process, and his own paintings also
appeared in these journals.
112 U . Ray, ' The Study of Pictorial Art in India' - The Modern Review, June I 907.
 The contest over tradition and nationalism '2 I 7

prompts me to advocate the study of European art as a means ofimproving

the Art of my country . 1 1 3

0. C . Gangoly, in his rejoinder to U. Ray and the attacks in Sahitya,

re-emphasised the existence of a specific ' national ' and ' race ' ideal in
all great art, arguing that ' nationalism ' was of far greater value and
significance than ' cosmopolitanism ' in the artistic development of a
country. Art, in his view, was not j ust a matter of mastering a
' language ' or a technique ; it had naturally to take root in the innate
' artistic sense ' and ' national temperament ' of a people. 1 1 4 High­
lighting again the distinction between ' Western realism ' and
' Eastern idealism ', spirituality and an extra-naturalistic symbolism
were held to be the special attributes of the Indian artistic
temperament. What Sahitya attacked as distortions of natural
appearances in Abanindranath's paintings were defended not only as
a sign of the artist's creativity, but as an essential feature of ' Eastern '
literary and visual aesthetics. 11 5
0. C. Gangoly's defence, however, brought on a fresh onslaught of
obj ections - on this occasion fro m Sukumar Ray, son of Upendraki­
shore Raychowdhury. 116 His sarcasm, less malicious than that of the
Sahitya critic, was even more devastating in the way it exposed the
main stylistic stereotypes of the ' new school ' of painting : an
expression of dreamy abstraction on the faces of all heroes and
heroines ; the pervasiveness of haze and mist in the background ; and
spineless gestures and gesticulations of the body. 1 1 7 The main ftaw of
such painting, Sukumar Ray contended, lay in the absence of a
concrete basis in form and structure : what resulted was the extreme
obsession with bhava and the dependence on literary symbols and
metaphors. He was extremely wary about the way in which, along
with ' Westernisms ', all practical issues of skill or technique were
being disposed of, and artist and aesthetes alike were taking recourse
to hollow claims of spirituality. The notion of ' Indian-ness ' was seen
to have become a counter-trap. I t stifled the free and ' natural '
development of a ' great art ' in the country ; and it clouded all

113 ibid., p. 548 .

11 4 0. C. Gangoly, ' The Study of Indian Pictorial Art : A Rejoinder ' - The Modern Review,
September 1907, p. 302.
11 5 0. C. Gangoly, ' Bharatiya Chitrakala : Alochana ' - Prabasi, Ashar 1 3 1 7/ 1 9 1 0, p. 284.
116 Famous for his unique contributions to Bengali nonsense-verse and children's literature.
117 Sukumar Ray, ' Bharatiya Chitrashilpa : Alochana ' - Prabasi, Shravan 1 3 I 7/ 1 9 1 0,
p. 395·
2 18 The making of a new ' Indian ' art
aesthetic thought and j udgement under a smoke-screen of mys­
ticism. 118
As both the painting and the rhetoric of the ' new school ' came
under attack, there emerged another parallel strand of criticism,
which also challenged the authority and exclusiveness of . their
scholarship on I ndian art. The excessive importance attached to the
Orientalists, particularly to E . B. Havell, in the revival and ap­
preciation of Indian art, came to be questioned by writers like
Manmathanath Chakravarty. Responding to newspaper reports of
a lecture on I ndian art given by Havell, he lamented the denational­
ised state of Indians, their continued reliance on European knowledge
in their understanding of their own heritage, and their fawning
adulation of statements made in English by an Englishman. 119 There
were other equally important contribu tions being made towards the
study of Indian art, he alleged, which were being ignored because
they were in Bengali, in more obscure journals, by those who did not
have the standing of a European scholar and Principal of the
Government School of Art.
I t was important for local self-esteem to look to the work of Indian
archaeologists or art historians who were no less committed to the
study and recovery of past traditions. This alternative focus was
defined primarily in reaction to the attention and p ublicity that
surrounded the work of new Orientalist scholars. Two articles written
by Abanindranath, in rapturous praise of Havell's book Indian
Architecture ( I g I I ) 120 provided direct provocation. Both articles
contained a strong attack on the creed of archaeologists and their
fetish for digging out sculptures and art objects without any parallel
aesthetic appreciation of these. Abanindranath echoed Havell's
contention that all archaeological discoveries and scholarly assertions
for Indian art were of little importance, while the descendants of the
traditional artisans and master craftsmen were neglected and left to
perish. 121 And he underlined his countrymen's gratitude to Havell for
making them aware of the beauty and grandeur of their own
traditions of architecture and of the campaign to employ Indian
craftsmen and styles in the building ofNew Delhi. 122 This occasioned
11 8 ' Bharatiya Chitrakala : Alochana ' - Prabasi, Agrahayan 1 3 1 7, pp. 1 93-94.
119
Manmathanath Chakravarty, ' Bharater Shilpa Katha ' - Shilpa o Sahitya, Agrahayan
I 3 r 2/ r 905, pp. r s8-6o.
120 Abanindranath Tagore, ' Pattan ' - Prabasi, Ashvin 1 320/ 1 91 3 ; ' Pranapratishtha ' -
1 21
Bharati, Ashvin I 320. ' Pranapratishtha ' ' pp. sBB-89.
122
' Pat tan ', p. 70 r .
 The contest over tradition and nationalism
immediate interjections from the archaeologist and scholar of Indian
sculpture, Ramaprasad Chanda. In reply to Abanindranath's
diatribe against archaeologists, he referred to the painstaking
researches and excavations carried out by scholars like Akshay
Kumar Maitreya, Rakhaldas Banerjee, Surendrachandra Ray­
chowdhury or Nalinikanta Bhattashali, highlighting their devoted
and selfless quest for knowledge, often in the face of great financial
odds. 123
Ramaprasad Chanda's rejoinder, developed into a full-length
feature on the ancient ' fine arts ' of I ndia/24 stressed, once more, the
dual issue of' naturalism ' and ' tradition ' . Arguing that the greatness
of traditional Indian art lay in the merger of realism with idealism, it
evoked simultaneously the canonical basis of Indian art, with long
references to passages on aesthetic canons in ancient Sanskrit texts,
like the Brihatsamhita or the Matsya Purana . Ajanta paintings or
remnants of Pala stone sculpture in Bengal were admired as much for
their ' natural ' grace, as for their perfect conformity to traditional
textual prescriptions. 125 I t was also from these grounds of authority
on traditional Indian aesthetics that the author launched his critique
of the paintings of Bengal's ' new-wave ' painters. Even scholars well
acquainted with Indian art and traditional Indian aesthetics, he
wrote, failed to discover the virtue or ' Indian-ness ' of these
paintings . 12 6
This counterstand on tradition and authenticity leads directly to
the ideas of Akshay Kumar Maitreya : one of the most powerful
critics of the time, battling against the paintings and aesthetic
formulations of Abanindranath's group. Akshay Maitreya's writings
were operating at many levels. As historian and archaeologist, his
work had been devoted to retrieving the ancient and medieval past of
Bengal. 127 A strident Bengali patriotism surfaced in his more popular
historical writings like Siraj-ud-daulah ( I 8g6) and Mir Kasim ( I g o6 ) .

With the central obj ective of recovering the ' true ' and ' glorious '
story of Bengal's past from the calumny of colonial historiography,
these two much-maligned figures were set out as the last of Bengal's
' independent ' kings - tragic martyrs to the cause of defending their
123 Ramaprasad Chanda, ' Murti Sangraha ' - Prabasi, Kartick I 320/ I 9 I 3, p. 93·
1 24 ' Bharater Prachin Chitrakala ' - Prabasi, Agrahayan I 320.
126 126
t'bt'd. , pp. I95-96 . t'b t'd pp. 20I-2.
.,

12 7
With Ramaprasad Chanda, he instituted the ' Varendra Anusandhan Samiti ' in Rajshahi
in I 9 I o, which pioneered the discovery and study of the archaeological remains of ancient
Gaur and Murshidabad.
�20 The making of a new ' Indian , art
people against the onslaught of British rule. The story of Sirafs
courage and heroism was also accompanied by a general picture of a
,
pre-British ' golden age in Bengal. 128 A historical magazine called
Aitihasik Chitra, which Akshay Maitreya began in r 8gg- r goo,
,
discovered many other ' Hindu heroes in Bengal's medieval history
- Pratapaditya, Kedar Ray, Sitaram Ray, Ramchandra Ray or
Rajballabh Sen now became historical heroes in the same way as
their Rajput, l\11aratha or Sikh counterparts. 129
,
I t was with this same view to restoring the ' real history ofBengaPs
glory, that Akshay Maitreya raised obj ections to a painting by
Surendranath Ganguly, for perpetuating what he believed to be an
ahistorical myth of the flight of Lakshmana Serra, in the face of the
first Muslim invasion of Bengal in 1 r gg AD. Rejecting the evidence
of the Muslim chronicler, Minhaj-us-Siraj as biased and unfounded,
drawing his alternate evidence from ancient archaeological inscrip­
tions, Akshay Maitreya was out to salvage the reputation of
Lakshmana Serra, ' the last Hindu king ofBengal , . 13° Coomaraswamy
defended the painting against these objections, by drawing a clear
, ,
line of distinction between ' history and a ' work of art , arguing for
the creative licence and autonomous merit of the latter. 131 But
Akshay Maitreya's contention was that, even if paintings and poetry
were not intended to be history, they were certainly received as
historical truth - and this placed equal responsibility on the poet or
the painter to be faithful to history.
The lack of historicity came to be one of his main allegations
against both the paintings and the mode of art appreciation of
Abanindranath's group. In his view, I ndian art had lost its basic
language (its ' alphabets ' ) in the hands of the new camp of artists and
, ,
critics. Their rhetoric of ' beauty and ' su blimity had become an
excuse for the lack of history and scholarship in art. 132 Locating the
fundamental language of Indian art in the Silpa Sastras, Akshay
Maitreya believed that the single greatest flaw of ' the new con­
ventions of I ndian painting ' lay in their antipathy to the Shastras ­
in what he sarcastically labelled their ' transgressions and distortions '

2
1 8 Sirajuddaulah ( Calcutta, I 9o8), pp. I -3·
129
For example, see articles on Kedar Ray, Maharaj Rajballabh Sen or Ramchandra Ray in
Aitihasik Chitra, Baishakh, Ashvin I 3 I 4/ I 907, Baishakh I 3 I 5/ I 908.
1 30
Akshay Kumar Maitreya, ' The Flight ofLakshmana Sena ' - The Modern Review, january
I 909, pp. 6 I -63.
1 1
3 Coomaraswamy, ' Art and Archaeology ' - The Modern Review, March I 909, pp. 6 r -63.
1 32
' Bharatshilper Barnaparichay ' , Manasi, Chaitra I 3 I 9/ I 9 I 3 - reprinted in Akshay Kumar
Maitreya, Bharatshilper Katha (Calcutta, 1 982 ) , pp. I o- 1 4.
 The contest over tradition and nationalism 22 1

( atikram-vyatikram) of traditional norms. 133 Dr awing a sharp line of

distinction between what he held to be shastrachar ( a proper
conformity to the Shastras) and swechchhachar (a licence to do as one
pleased or wished ) , he placed most of Abanindranath's paintings and
writings on art in the latter category.
One of Akshay Maitreya's main charges was against the partial
and selective quotation of Sanskrit texts by this camp of writers to suit
their own meaning, while twisting the actual content of the text. He
picked as an example the following phrase that had been picked out of
the fourth verse of the Sukranitisara - ' Lagnamyatra chayasya hrit ' and -

interpreted by Abanindranath to argue a case for individual

preferences and predilections for beauty. Akshay Maitreya quoted
the full verse to provide an ostensible corrective to the meaning,
discovering in it the opposite message of conformity to the Shastras. 134
Clearly, the Sanskrit texts were open to diverse interpretations and
readings. The difference between Abanindranath and Akshay
Maitreya was that between an artist and a historian, an aesthete and
a rigorous textual scholar. But, from his own standpoint, Akshay
Maitreya found Abanindranath's aesthetic ideas to be contrary to
the Indian ' tradition ' and ridden with alien influences.
Akshay Maitreya, in his view of the nature of the Indian art
tradition, was in general agreement with the ideas of the new
Orientalists. He attributed all credit to the writings of Havell and
Coomaraswamy for giving Indian art its due recognition and respect ;
a t the same time, he praised Vincent Smith's History ofFine Art in India
and Ceylon as the first proper ' history ' of the subject. 135 His strictures
were directed only against the ' New School of Indian painting ' and
Abanindranath's interpretation of traditional aesthetic canons. In
quoting the famous letter in The Times of r g r o, where British artists
and critics expressed their admiration for I ndian art, he significantly
omitted the section which praised the work of Abanindranath
Tagore and his group. 136 And the point that neither their painting
nor their aesthetics could be accepted as genuinely ' Indian ' was
repeated most forcefully in an article, ' Bharat Chitra-charcha ' .
Here, taking u p each phrase of the Yashodhara-tika i n the Kamasutra,
he provided a meticulous reinterpretation of Abanindranath's
' Shadanga or Six Limbs of Painting ', drawing greater attention to
technical and representational prescriptions in the code. 137

133 ' Bharatshilpa-charchar Nababidhan ' in Bharatshilper Katha, pp. 15-25.

134 ibid., pp. r 8- r g. 1 3 5 ' Bharat Shilper Itihas' in ibid., pp. 4-5.

13 6 ibid., p. 4· 137 ' Bharat Chitra-charcha ' in ibid., pp. 73-82.

222 The making of a new ' Indian ' art
The publication of ' Bharat Chitra-charcha ' coincided with the
launching of another major debate that year ( 1 92 2 ) , which pointed
to a diametrically opposite spectrum of the criticism against the
aesthetics of the ' new school ' . Akshay Maitreya's had been a zealous
defence of tradition, with his feet firmly grounded in a knowledge. of
the Shastras. From a similar base of scholarship in Sanskrit texts, the
erudite publicist and social scientist, Benoy Kumar Sarkar, provided
an alternative ' modernist ' and internationalist dimension to the
critique of nationalist aesthetics. The Sukranitisara was once again a
focal point ofstudy.1 38 Introducing the text as the best sample of ' The
Positive Background of Hindu Sociology ', Benoy Sarkar explained
that this code of Sukracharya was concerned mainly with issues of
morals (dharma) , interests ( artha) and desires and passions (kama) as
opposed to moksha (salvation) . 1 39 As a positivist, Benoy Sarkar was
using tradition to equally polemical ends, fighting the overriding
emphasis on mysticism and spirituality with a counter model of a
secular, materialist civilisation in ancient India. In a book of essays
on art and art history, he argued that the creation of human
likenesses was a major feature of Hindu art and underlined the
importance in it of both secular imagery and direct and robust
physical representation. Like others before him, he drew his evidence
from the vividly descriptive passages and references to pictorial
representation in Sanskrit plays, primarily Kalidasa's Abhijnana
Shakuntala.140 Along with ' humanism ', he also highlighted the latent
and potential ' modernism ' of ancient Hindu art, tracing the
influence of Hindu art ideals on contemporary European post­
I mpressionist painters like Cezanne, Gaugin or Van Gogh. 141 Benoy
Sarkar's central postulate, once more, concerned the universality of
artistic values and a common world-standard for all art.
A more direct criticism of the current norms of aesthetic appraisal
emerged in a seminal article, ' The Aesthetics of Young I ndia ' .
Writing from Paris, Benoy Sarkar brought to bear i n his criticism a
knowledge and understanding of contemporary European culture,
138
In time these very notions of textuality, tradition and authenticity would be thrown open
to question, as later research proved the Sukranitisara, one of the major texts in question, to
be a nineteenth-century forgery. See, Lallanji Gopal, The Sukraniti : A .Nineteenth-Century
Text (Varanasi, 1 978).
139 The Positive Background of Hindu Sociology, Introduction to Sukraniti (Allahabad 1 9 1 4),
Book I : Non-Political, p. x.
140
Benoy Kumar Sarkar, ' Art-Criticism in Shakoontala ' in Hindu Art : its Humanism and
Modernism (New York, 1 920), pp. 1 3- 1 5 .
141
' Hindu Technique in Post-Impressionism ' i n ibid., pp. 38-39.
 The contest over tradition and nationalism 223

that was quite unique in I ndian aesthetic discourse of the time. His
range of references and analogies carried the clearest message of his
internationalism. Bristling against the insularities and chauvinism
preached by ' the apostles of Indian-ness of the Indian mind ', his
strongest regrets were about the way ' Young India ', in rejecting the
West, had shut itself out from the ' aesthetic revolution ' in modern
Europe. 142
Benoy Sarkar was, for the first time, moving towards a meth­
odology of art appreciation that was concerned purely with the
internal form and structure of a ' work of art ' . Both the ' historical '
and the ' philosophical ' obsessions in prevalent criticism were
dismissed as external to the fundamental nature and logic of a work
of art. Critics like M anmathanath Chakravary, U . Ray or Sukumar
Ray, in their emphasis on a ' universal standard ' of the visual arts, had
inevitably veered towards the standards of Academic realism. Benoy
Sarkar moved beyond the issue of naturalism in identifying his sense
of the ' universal ' language of art with a general ·language of form -
with the vocabulary of mass and volume, magnitude and dimension,
colour and composition. With remarkable insight into the nature of
the visual, he wrote,
The creations of mass in space are problems in themselves. And a ' message '
is immanent in each problem, in each contour, in each coexistence offorms,
in each treatment of colour . . . We do not have to wander away from these
lines, surfaces, curves and densities, in order to discover the ' ideals ' of the
maker. The ideals are right there speaking to my eyes .14 3
To substantiate this point, the author provided his own formal
morphological analysis of works of art as a clue to their essential and
universal rupam. 144
Benoy Sarkar's article was clearly path-breaking in introducing a
new specialised vocabulary of art criticism in India. I t seemed set to
open the doors of Indian art towards modernism and international­
ism. His interest in formal and organic structures had helped to
underline the central flaw in the discourse on Indian aesthetics :
namely, its failure to address the issue of form and the problems of the
working artist. The overriding emphasis on literary analogies and
themes, in both painting and criticism, was seen as a sign of a puerile,
under-developed aesthetic sense, which glossed over the fundamental
demands of the pictorial idiom. On the one hand, Benoy Sarkar was
1
42 ' The Aesthetics of Young India ' - Rupam, January 1 922, pp. g, 1 1 .
143 ibid., p. 19. 144 ibid., pp. 2 1-24.
224 The making of a new ' Indian ' art
rarifying the idea of ' art ' by asserting the notion of a pure and
autonomous aesthetic. 145 At the same time, however, he was bent on
demystifying the language of art appreciation by breaking it down to
certain concrete formal components - by questioning the curren t
romantic notion that the real essence of a work of art defied technical
scrutiny and analysis.
The defence that was put up against Benoy Sarkar's criticisms
watered down some of the chauvinism of the other camp, though the
pith of their ' I ndian ' standpoint remained undeterred. The rejoinder
showed an equal awareness of international developments in art
and staunchly denied the allegations of a boycott of European art
and aesthetics. Nonetheless, it was of the opinion that the time was
not yet ripe for the transition from ' nationalism ' to ' in ternational­
ism ' . To make the exchange of cultures enriching and fruitful, India
had first fully to ' recover her own self' .146 More important was the
critic's unshaken conviction in the supreme value of national and
racial individualities, in the existence of ' an Indian genius in Art ' . 147
A counter accusation of a ' cheap internationalism ' was hurled at
Benoy Sarkar for ignoring the fundamental individualities that
separated an ' Indian ' Nataraja, a ' Greek ' Apollo, or a ' Chinese '
T'ang Buddha. I n another rejoinder, S tella Kramrisch148 took up
Benoy Sarkar's formalist morphological approach to argue that even
the selection of materials, techniques and treatments was tied to the
specific ' aesthetic necessity ' created by the particular age, culture or
nation to which the artist belonged. In her view, all art grew out of
a union of the dual forces of ' intuition ' and ' personality ' - while the
first is ' universal, unlimited and unchangeable ', the latter, ' confined
in temporal, national and individual limits, enables the variety of
visualisations and breeds the peculiarities of design and compo­
sition ' .149 Through all these defences, the idea of the ' Indian-ness ' of
Indian art refused to be surrendered.
The criticisms raised by Benoy Sarkar anticipated the main winds
of change that the I g2os would witness in the sphere of modern
Indian painting. Yet, by I 922, it is clear that the ideology of the

145 l l
'b 'd ., pp. I S-I 6 .
146 Agastya (pseudonym of 0 . C. Gangoly) , ' The Aesthetics of Young India : A Rejoinder ' -
Rupam, January 1 922, pp. 25-26. 147 ibid., p. 27.
4
1 8 This American scholar began her debut in Orientalist scholarship with her discovery and
translation ofthe Sanskrit treatise on painting, the Chitrasutra in Vishnudharmottara ( 1 924) .
Meanwhile, her articles in defence of an exclusive Indian aesthetic began to regularly
feature in Rupam from 1 92 1 .
149 Stella Kramrisch, 'The Aesthetics of Young India : A Rejoinder ' - Rupam, April 1 92 2 .
 The contest over tradition and nationalism
' nationalist ' camp had emerged as the dominant aesthetic of the day
and would continue firmly to hold its ground. National and
international recognition had confirmed the ' Indian ' pedigree of this
art movement, and accorded it i ts exclusive status in the cause of
I ndian art. Thriving on debates and controversies, the contours of its
standpoint became more flexible and expansive, as the j utting edges
were smoothed out and many of the criticisms subsumed within its
folds. The debate around ' The Aesthetics of Young India ' found its
forum in a new, prestigious, lavishly produced art journal, Rupam.
And the launching of this journal in r 920 by 0 . C. Gangoly, under
the auspices of the Indian Society of Oriental Art, was, in itself, the
most powerful affirmation of the consolidated strength and prestige
of the Indian art lobby, of its aesthetics and its paintings.
 CHAPTER 7

Artists and aesthetics : Abanindranath Tagore and

the ( New School of Indian Painting)

The nationalist cause in art in the Swadeshi years had found its focus
in the discovery and definition of a ' New School of I ndian Painting ' .
B y the 1 92 0s, notwithstanding the criticisms and controversies, the
' school ' stood firm in its self-conscious role of a movement which
restored to I ndian art its independence and lost identity. While the
idea of the ' renaissance ' of I ndian art grew and thrived, it veered
away from the issue of formulating a constructive idiom of painting,
as an alternative to the Western Academic style. It is in this context
that the charisma of Abanindranath Tagore's individual ' genius '
loomed large within the movement, as did the idea of the spontaneous
inspiration of the following that grew around him. The artists' sense
of their own achievements in painting tended to be wrapped in the
same rhetoric of ' Indian- ness ' that flooded the vocabulary of art
criticism. The artist's creation became inseparable from the critic's
discourse. The latter nurtured the nationalist self-image of the artists
and their whole sense of participation in a ' movement ' . At the same
time, the form and content of their paintings remained enmeshed in
the ideas and language through which they were received at the time.

A B A N I N D R A N AT H T A G O R E : T H E A R T I S T A N D T H E C U LT­
' '
F I G U R E OF I N D I AN P A I N T I N G

A t the head and centre of this nationalist art movement was the
towering figure of Abanindranath Tagore ( I 8 7 I- I 95 I ) . Havell's
discovery of him in the late 1 8gos dramatically launched the
campaign for Indian art. Abanindranath, in his rejection of his
Western art training and his much publicised option in favour of
' Oriental ' modes of painting, became a public symbol of Swadeshi in
art - his personal choice coinciding with the demands and dictates of
the Swadeshi movement in Bengal. His experiments set the formula
for a ready-made ' Indian-style ' , that was taken up enthusiastically
226
 Abanindranath and the 'New School of Indian Painting ' . '2 '2 7

by a group of committed students. Thus was seen to emerge the first

' real ' artist of British India and, with him, the first modern art
movement. Since then, most studies of modern Indian art have taken
Abanindranath and the Bengal School of painting (whatever be their
archaisms and failings) to be a starting point. 1 Most evaluations of his
contributions have emphasised the originality and innovative talent
of the artist, and his openness to a rich variety of art traditions of the
East and West.2 As the tributes have piled up for the guru, the labels
of a ' revivalist ' or a ' traditionalist ' have been warded off. Influences
from Mughal and Rajput miniatures, Ajanta frescoes, Chinese and
Japanese painting, Pre-Raphaelite and Art Nouveau trends mixed
and merged in a style that was uniquely his own. An important
chronology of Abanindranath's paintings has charted out the
evolution of the artist's styles through these different influences,
highlighting his continuous fund of creativity. 3
My study of Abanindranath focuses on the early years ( r 8gos­
r g 2os) of his long career, and looks at the way the artist, coopted by
the ideology of a ' national art ' , was made to play out his public role
as the leader of an ' Indian artistic renaissance ' . 4 The eclectic and
creative painter was transformed into a cult-figure of ' I ndian-style '
painting. Abanindranath's later writings on art would reject the
notion of such a strait-j acketed role and the idea of tying art to
chauvinistic nationalist aspirations. 5 In thought and in practice, he
would constantly uphold the romantic ideal of the artist as a ' genius ' ,
free of the trammels of education, rules and social demands. The
artist, in his old age, would retreat more and more into a private
sphere of art and play ; but his self-image could never escape the light
of public acclaim and acknowledgement of his position in history.

1 See, for example, P. R. Ramachandra Rao, Modem Indian Painting (Madras, r 953) ; W. G.
Archer, India and Modem Art; or the first issue of Lalit Kala Contempormy (No. I , I g62) devoted
to the study of modern Indian art.
2 For some of the main writings on Abanindranath, sec the works, cited in the bibliography,
of E. B . Havell ( r902, I 908), 0. C. Gangoly ( I 9 I 6) , Benode Behari .Ylukherjce ( 1 942,
r983), Prabadhendranath Tagore,Jaya Appasamy ( 1968) , Ratan Parimoo, Sudhir Kumar
Nandi and K. G. Subramanyan ( 1 978, I 986). Also, see the essays by various writers in the
special Abanindranath numbers of the VBQ, May-October 1942, and JISOA, November
1 96 1 .
3 Benodebehari Mukherjee, ' A Chronology of Abanindranath's paintings' - VBQ, May­
October 1 942.
4 The idea of an 'I ndian artistic renaissance' is pronouncedly stated in a review of one of the
first exhibitions of paintings of the new school in 1908 in Tlze Englishman, 30 ]anuary r9o8.
5 Abanindranath Tagore, 'Shilpa Britti ' in Bageslzwari Slzilpa-prabandlzavali, pp. 187-89.
 The making of a new ' Indian ' art

Early years : the gestation of the 'Indian artist ' , I88os-I902

An investigation of Abaninqranath's early work and career is
inevitably tied up with the artist's own articulated sense of the change
he brought about and the mission he fulfilled as an ' Indian artist '. 6
All developments are seen to converge on a crucial turning point in
his work towards an independent, non-vVestern style. His foremost
duty, he wrote in 1 909, lay in preserving his originality and specific
identity as an ' Indian painter ' . His views on the making of an ' artist '
emerged as an outright reaction against the importance attached to
art-school education : as a conscious antithesis to the current social
image of the artist as a successfully trained professional, with the right
Western skills and techniques at his command. The search for his true
colours as an ' Indian ' meant primarily the discovery of his personal
vocation as an ' artist '. 7
Recounting his past, Abanindranath placed greatest emphasis on
the spontaneous creative atmosphere of the J orasanko household in
which he grew up, and the freedom he enjoyed from the strictures of
formal education. 8 It was an environment where personal fancies and
enthusiasm mattered most and education was only of marginal
importance. Abanindranath, later, would always associate ' art ' with
a romanticised notion of shakh (fancy) as opposed to shiksha
(training) .9 Sons of Gunendranath Tagore (a cousin of Rabin­
dranath) , the three brothers, Abanindranath, Gaganendranath
( r 867- 1 938) and Samarendranath ( r 87o- r g5 r ) belonged to the
parallel branch of the Jorasanko family of the neighbouring baithak­
khana house, built by Dwarakanath Tagore. Drawn into the creative
activities of his two most eminent ' uncles ' , Jyotirindranath and
Rabindranath, the young Abanindranath moved, in phases, between
different interests - vocal and instrumental music ; acting and stage
decor in the plays staged by the Dramatic Club at Jorasanko ; and
poetry and play readings in the informal art club (Kham Kheyali
Sabha) set up by Rabindranath in the r 8gos 1 0 During r 8g5 and .

r 8g6, with Rabindranath's encouragement, he wrote his first two

story books for children with his own illustrations : Shakuntala and

6 The artist's reminiscences, narrated by him and transcribed by Rani Chanda, Gharoa (Visva
Bharati, 1 94 1 ) ; ]orasankor Dhare (Visva Bharati, 1 944) ; Apan-katha (Calcutta, 1 946) .
Compiled in Abanindra Rachanavali, Vol. I (Calcutta, 197 3 ) - all page references are to this
volume. 7 Abanindranath Tagore, Bharat-Shilpa, pp. 1 5 , 8 r-82.
8 Abanindranather Shilpa-charcha Sambandhe Smriti-charana, a hand-written draft - Abanindra­
nath Tagore Papers (Rabindra Bhavan Archives, Santiniketan) .
9 Gharoa, pp. 6 r-62. 10 ibid., pp. 62-66, 1 35-48, 1 5 7-60 .
 Abanindranath and the ' New School of Indian Painting ' 229

Fig. 47 Gunendranath Tagore, Still-life sketch (water-colour, n.d . ) .

Kshirer Putul. This vivacious ' art culture ' ofJ orasanko at the turn of
the century comes alive in the artist's memoirs. Like his o ther various
interests, it also bred his first inclinations towards drawing and
painting.
The Tagore family, like the other gentry households of Calcutta,
had its share of amateur artists, dabbling in oils and water-colours.
vVestern Academic art set their model of achievement. Abanin­
dranath's grandfather, Girindranath Tagore ( I 820-54) is mentioned
as ' the first trained artist ' of the family, painting portraits and
landscapes in oil in a European style. 1 1 In the next generation,
Gunendranath ( I 847- I 88 I ) and jyotirindranath ( I 840- I 92 5 ) were
among the early students of the Calcutta School of Art in the mid
I 86os. J yotirindranath, as one among his many talents in music,
poetry and drama, specialised in an individual genre of portrait
sketches in pencil, producing a gallery of faces of family members and
of the many eminent personalities that would frequent the jorasanko
house. 1 2 Gunendranath developed a more technical interest in
photography, scientific specimen studies and mechanical and archi­
tectural drawing. The few surviving examples of his sketches also
show his practice in realistic drawing and life studies (Figure 4 7) . 1 3
Such activities in drawing and painting continued into Abanin-
11
Mukul Dey, 'Abanindranath Tagore : A survey of the master's life and work ' in VBQ,
:Vfay-October r 942. One of hi s sketches is in the collection of RB:VI.
12 Collection : RBS. 13 Apan-katha, p. 4 7 ; Glzaroa, p. 1 2 2 .
 The making of a new ' Indian ' art
dranath's generation. Gaganendranath combined painting classes at
St. Xavier's school with private tuition in oil painting from Harin­
arayan Bose (who was later appointed to the staff of the art school) ,
with other cousins also attending these classes atjorasanko. While h.e
eagerly watched these sessions in oil painting, Abanindranath also
remembered his other brother, Samarendranath taking up miniature
painting on ivory with a craftsman from Delhi . 14 The predominantly
westernised tastes in visual arts at Jorasanko accommodated frag­
ments of interest in indigenous art work.
The world of pictures and objects, amidst which Abanindranath
spent his childhood years, was more clearly polarised. 15 In keeping
with contemporary fashions, the three-storeyed baithak-khana man­
sion was lavishly decorated with carpets, mirrors, Victorian furniture,
marble statues and huge oil paintings. As a child, Abanindranath
would surreptitiously step out to explore the wonders of this ' outside
world '. But his real place, then, lay indoors : in the andarmahal
inhabited by womenfolk and servants, where a rather different
traditional culture prevailed. Remembering his aunt's room, his
favourite refuge in those days of ' captivity ', a host of other pictures
and images of Hindu gods and goddesses filled Abanindranath's
memories - Kalighat pats, 'Jaipuri ' paintings, small oils, and glossy
prints of various lively scenes from Indian mythology.16 These
pictures, relegated as they were to the inner rooms and their milieu of
rituals and scripture readings, did not qualify as ' works of art ' ; this
status was reserved for the Western oils and marble statues of the
main halls.
So, it was only natural that when the young Abanindranath
showed his aptitude in drawing and painting, he was set to work with
a European art tutor. During I 8g I -g2, weekly private lessons with
the I talian artist, 0. Ghilardi (then, Vice Principal of the Calcutta
School of Art) were spent on still-life studies, portrait painting, and
working with pastels and oils. Apparently, it was over the painstaking
process of learning oil painting that Abanindranath got stuck. The
lessons with Ghilardi coming to a halt within six months, he set up his
own studio atjorasanko in the European style in a north-facing room
with a sky-light.17 Rabindranath, a constant source of encour­
agement, made him to do a set of illustrations for his new play,
Chitrangada ( I 8g2 ) . However, the main fruit of Abanindranath's
14 Jorasankor Dhare, p. 1 5. 15 Apan-katha, pp . 43-50. 16 ibid., pp. 45-46.
17 Jorasankor Dhare, pp. 300- r .
 Abanindranath and the ' New School of Indian Painting ' 23 r

Fig. 48 Abanindranath Tagore, Portrait of the young Rabindranath Tagore

(pastel, c. r 8g r-g5).

Academic training with Ghilardi was to be seen in his output of pastel

portraits of friends and family. His portrait of Rabindranath of this
period ( c. 1 8g 1-95) shows him using a soft, muted blend of colours to
great effect to plunge the face into a mood of dreamy abstraction
(Figure 48) . Growing restless with his pastel work, Abanindranath
had another stint at learning oil painting, working on portraits and
anatomy this time, with an English artist, C. L. Palmer, a teacher
from South Kensington, then working privately in the vicinity of
Jorasanko. However, a ' revolting ' incident of having to draw from a
human skull left him sick and brought an end to these classes . 18
18
ibid., p. 302.
 The making of a new ' Indian ' art

Fig. 49 Abanindranath Tagore, Landscape sketches (water-colour, sketch-book,

I Bg I ) .

The artist would always associate this brief period of formal

training with failures and frustration . Some of Abanindranath's early
sketch books and drawings throw light on these formative years of
effort and experiments. 19 The naive, untrained hand of his first
sketches of houses, gardens, life-models, European statuary and
outdoor landscapes ( Figure 49) acquired in time a greater maturity
and a particular flair for deep, intricate shading. This marks a series
of small pen and ink drawings of this early period, of dancers and
musicians, and of women in various postures, carrying a pitcher at
the hip or adorning themselves before a mirror. The emphasis was
both on realistic drawing and on formulating some ' idealised
postures ' ( adarsha-bhangi) for the figures based on literary descrip­
tions. These bear out Abanindranath's special interest in literary
illustrations from these early years, which gave him his main creative
outlet.
This period of Western training also saw the artist painting
portraits and still lives i n oil, and even mythological compositions in
a realistic ' Ravi Varma ' style. 20 Rabindranath had presented the

19 Collection : Sumitendranath Tagore, RBM, VM, Calcutta.

20 Referred to by the artist's son, Alokendranath Tagore, Clzlzabir Raja Abin Thakur (Calcutta,
r g63), p. 20. One such painting, depicting ' The Birth ofSita ' is still in the family collection,
but is unfortunately in no fit state for reproduction.
 Abanindranath and the ' JVew School of Indian Painting ' 233

aspiring artist with an album of Ravi Varma's pauranic pictures,

along with a biography of 1\!Iichelangelo. 21 In the most dis­
tinguished of opinions, then, Ravi Varma represented the peak of
achievement in modern Indian painting. As he acquired his skills in
oil painting, Abanindranath was naturally inclined to follow his
model : to explore the potentials of visualising scenes from the
Ramayana and Mahabharata, using the taught techniques of life
study and landscape painting.
However, in his reminiscences, the artist remembered his con­
tinuous restlessness and sense of inadequacy with this kind of
painting. 22 I t was a part of the new romantic aesthetic values, that
painting, to Abanindranath, was not merely a perfected mode of
representation ; it also had to be a medium of individual self­
expression. The artist's personal discontent became of central
importance in nationalist perceptions in marking . the break away
from \tVestern Academic methods. I n Abanindranath's career, this
discontent coincided with his encounter with some new kinds of art
that would dramatically change the course of his paintings.
The arrival of an album of hand-painted, ' illuminated ' manu­
scripts, illustrating two Irish ballads of Coleridge and Moore, opened
up for him new avenues in decorative design and literary illus­
tration. 23 The album was a present from Mrs Francis Martindale, an
English acquaintance of Abanindranath's grand-uncle, Nagendra­
nath Tagore, who had herself painted the ' illuminations ' in gold,
decorating each page of ornate calligraphy with gilded borders
encapsulating small illustrations (Figure 50) . Around the same time,
Abanindranath was also presen ted with a portfolio of what appears
to be miniatures of the Delhi qualam. What struck Abanindranath
most about these paintings was the intricacy and splendour of design
(he used the term naksha to refer to these paintings) . 24 It was in this
decorative quality and the fine craftsmanship, that he perceived a
common spirit in both the old European art of book illumination and
the old I ndian art of miniature painting, and found in them a new
definition of ' art ' outside the bounds of realistic oil painting.
I t is likely that this portfolio of miniatures was a product of a
nineteenth-century provincial Mughal school at Delhi, just as the
' I rish illuminations ' of Francis Martindale were a contemporary
work. But i t came to be associated then, and even more in hindsight,

21 Jorasankor Dlzare, p. 305. 22 ibid., pp. 298-gg, 304, 3 I I - I 3.

23 ibid. ' p. 304. 24 ibid., pp. 305-7·
2 34 The making of a new ' Indian ' art

Fig. 50 A page from Francis Martindale's album of ' illuminated ' manuscript,
illustrating a poem by Coleridge (gilt and water-colour, r 8g7)
 Abanindranath and the ' New School of Indian Painting ' 23 5

with Abanindranath 's ' discovery ' of the great traditions of Indian
art. 25 The artist himself fel t that he had found ' the path of I ndian art '
and in it the direction of his own true development. Memories of
previous dissatisfaction with the painting skills he had learnt from his
European tutors added to his sense of elation at the new prospects
before him. 26
Abanindranath's first conscious experiment with an ' Indian style '
was an illustration of a few lines of a Vaishnava padavali by
Govindadas27 (Figure 5 r ) . Though labelled by the artist as his ' first
attempt at Indian painting ', the design and format of the picture,
' Shuklabhisar ' , show more clearly the influence of the European
' illuminated ' manuscripts than that of I ndian miniatures. Far from
satisfied with the picture, he believed that to achieve an ' Indian
style ' he first had to get his grip over indigenous painting techniques.
From a local artisan preparing gilded frames, he set himself to
learning the method of applying ' gold leaf' to paintings.
The outcome was a set of miniatures illustrating passages from
Jayadeva's Gitagovinda (c. r 8g8-gg) , which made abundant use of
' gold leaf' within more detailed and intricately designed composi­
tions (Figure 5 2 ) . While these ' Krishna-leela ' pictures suggest a
closer affinity to the Delhi miniature paintings he had encountered,
the attempt at recreating an ' I ndian-style ' remained uneasily bogged
down in a weak naturalism and in the conventions of English water­
colour painting. The most distinguished feature of these paintings lay
in the delicately patterned gold borders and intricate calligraphy in
red and black - this is what the artist had valued most in the English
book illuminations and I ndian miniatures, and what he most
carefully cultivated . As an example of his early practice of cal­
ligraphy, there exists a full set of his transcripts of verses from
Gitagovinda, where he evolved an ornate Persian-style script for
Devanagari and Bengali. 28 The turning point in Abanindranath's

25 Inspired by this ' discovery ', Balendranath Tagore wrote an essay on these Delhi miniatures
( ' Dillir Chitra-shalika' in Balendra Granthavali (Calcutta, 1907), pp. 4 1 1 -22) where he
highlighted the striking difference in colouring, composition and ' inspiration ' between
these and Western painting. And Alokendranath Tagore (p. 23) would later refer to these
pictures as ' original Mughal paintings '.
26 ]orasankor Dhare, pp. 305-7.
27 There is some ambiguity about the date of this picture - while it has been placed around
1 895 in Benodebehari Mukherjee's ' Chronology ' and in other studies, it is said everywhere
to have followed from the artist's encounter with the portfolio of Delhi miniatures and the
album oflrish ' illuminations ' ; and Francis Martindale's album carries the date, September
1 897. 2 8 Collection : RBM.
 The making of a new ' Indian ' art

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Fig. 5 1 Abanindranath Tagore, ' Shuklabhisar ', illustration of a padavali by

Govindadas (water-colour, c. 1 897)

work was also to be reflected in the kinds of drawings that fill his
sketch books since r 8g8. Along with ornamental calligraphy and
page embellishments there are studies of architectural and costume
designs from classical Indian art, mainly Ajanta paintings. Some of
 Abanindranath and the 'New School of Indian Painting ' 237

Fig. 5 2 Abanindranath Tagore, The Birth of Krishna, Krishna-leela series (water­

colour, c. r 8g8-gg) .
 The making of a new ' Indian ' art

Fig. 53 Abanindranath Tagore, Buddha and Sujata (water-colour, c. r go r ) .

the artist's well-known mythological paintings of this early phase can

also be seen to be growing out of the pages of these sketch books which
contain a number of experimental drawings of figures, using some of
the costumes and postures of medieval miniatures. 29
Figure drawing remained a weak point of the artist, as he tried to
accommodate his fascination with decorative design with the delicate
naturalism and linearity of Mughal miniature painting (which he
soon had the opportunity to study in greater detail ) . I n his reaction
against the Academic conventions of realism and life study, he
appeared to rob his figures of all body and substance. I n the painting
of ' Buddha and Sujata ' small, frail figures of the Buddha and the
,

29 Sketches, r 8g8, r go r-2 - Collection : Sumitendranath Tagore.

 Abanindranath and the ' New School of Indian Painting ' 239

Fig. 54 Abanindranath Tagore, The Traveller and the Lotus, illustration of

Kalidasa's Ritu-samhara (water-colour, c. r goo) . A description of the autumn season,
when the traveller, picking up a lotus from the wayside pond, is filled with memories
of his beloved.
 The making of a new ' Indian ' art

Fig. 55 Abanindranath Tagore, ' Abhisarika ' , illustration ofKalidasa's Ritu-samhara

(water-colour, c. r goo) . A n evocation of the monsoon season, when the lover
(conceived here in the image of Radha as the Abhisarika Nayika) is out on her tryst,
braving the dark and stormy night.
 Abanindranath and the ' JVew School of Indian Painting ' 24 r

devotee Suj ata are lost amidst the vast swirling contours of a banyan
tree which dominate the composition (Figure 53) . It is on the basis of
a painting like this that Ratan Parimoo has drawn attention to the
close parallels between some of Abanindranath's imagery and the
stylisation of forms in late Pre-Raphaelite and Art Nouveau paintings
of Europe. Even as he worked his way towards an ' Indian style ', he
instinctively absorbed the influences of the non-Academic decorative
strands of Victorian painting and book illustration. The voluptuous
curvilinear lines of the banyan tree in ' Buddha and Sujata ' clearly
show this influence, as does the artist's treatment of drapery through
linear folds and fluttering ends. 30
The fusion of influences of Art Nouveau and I ndian miniature
painting seem to have produced the best results in two of his
paintings, illustrating Kalidasa's Ritus-amhara (c . r 8gg- r goo) - ' The
Traveller and the Lotus ' , visualising a passage on the autumn
season ; and the more famous ' Abhisarika ', symbolising the spirit of
the monsoon night ( Figures 54, 55) . Both paintings are marked by a
new reticence and simplicity, the narrative condensed into single
figure images placed in open space, the figures themselves registering
a more distinct presence. Both figures were conceived primarily as
embodiments of a literary mood and ideal - as metaphors of the
romantic emotions of love and separation, hidden desires and
yearnings. 31 The absence of a definite physical locale in the
compositions underlined the primacy of a timeless idea and emotion.
These paintings, as specimens of a new genre of ' Indian ' art, had
arrived at a certain maturity of conception and execution. While it
retained the use of shadow, a blending of soft green tones and a sense
of a receding background, ' The Traveller and the Lotus ' had
absorbed the format of the Mughal miniature. The frail figure of the
Abhisarika, illuminated against the dense, dark night, had not rid
itself quite of a westernised flavour. Yet its combination of a
naturalistic appearance with contoured body lines, elongated finger
tips, gesticulating pose and flowing drapery would set the standard of
the new ' I ndian-style ' painting, augured by Abanindranath . The

30 Ratan Parimoo, pp. 75-77.

31 The idea of the ' Abhisarika ' in Indian literature is laden with romantic symbolism. It is
associated in Vaishnava poetry with the image ofRadha, braving the dark and stormy night
to keep her tryst with Krishna : a symbol of the devotee's intense longing to be one with the
lord. In Kalidasa's poem, Ritusamhara, the image is more generally associated with the mood
of the monsoon season : a season pregnant with the pains of separation and deep intangible
yearnings.
 The making of a new : Indian ' art
image came to figure as the archetypal roman tic Nayika of modern
I ndian art.

The making of an ' Indian-style ' and a ' national art '
Abanindranath came into the limelight in I 902, with Havell's article
in The Studio, where he highlighted Abanindranath's resistance to the
traps and temptations ofWestern art education, and his rej uvenation
of a Mughal style of painting. 32 The publicity coincided with the
artist's growing self-consciousness and commitment to the cause of
I ndian art. In the euphoria that followed the painting of the
' Krishna-leela ' series, he remembered a phase of complete en­
grossment with this new kind of work, when his mind constantly
teemed with lines, forms and colours. Even though traces of Art
Nouveau and Pre-Raphaelite work entered his paintings, Abanin­
dranath talked of the way he consciously insulated himself from all
Western pictures, in fear of ' contamination ' . 33 He felt he was being
swept along by a wave of change . ' As I felt the tug of the wind ', he
later wrote, ' I tore out the ropes and flung myself in ; I let the boat
float in the face of the current. Getting rid ofWestern art, I now took
up I ndian art. '34 During these years, a series of developments - his
coming together with E. B. Havell, his greater exposure to Mughal
paintings, his encounter with Japanese art and artists, and his
involvement with the Swadcshi movement - would place Abanin­
dranath in the full throes of the new artistic mission. I ncreasingly, his
personal endeavours would expand into a public role, to generate a
movement around himself.
I t seems that Abanindranath and Havell first met around I 8g7-g8,
soon after H aveil had taken charge of the Calcutta School of Art, and
Abanindranath had finished painting the ' Krishna-leela ' series.
Even as Abanindranath was breaking away from his Western art
training, he still felt the need for the sanction and encouragement of
his European peers. I t was most likely through Havell's initiative that
some of his paintings of the ' Krishna-leela ' series were exhibited at
the School of Art exhibition of I goo. 35 In the winter of r 902-3, two
new paintings - ' The Building of the Taj ' and ' The Passing of Shah
Jahan ' were sent by Havell to Curzon's Delhi Durbar Exhibition of
32 E. B. Havell, ' Some Notes on Indian Pictorial Art ', pp. 30-3 1 .
33 ]orasankor Dhare, pp. 305-6. 34 Gharoa, p. 74·

35 Report on the exhibition at the Government School of Art, Calcutta - The Indian Daily
News, 22 January r goo.
 Abanindranath and the ' New School of Indian Painting ' 2 43

Indian arts and crafts, where the latter picture was awarded a silver
medal. Curiously, throughout this period, there are often references
to Abanindranath as a ' student ' of the School of Art, participating in
student exhibitions and winning awards.36 Probably, though never
formally enrolled as a student, he was closely drawn into the activities
and circle of the school through his association with Havell.
The paintings exhibited at the Delhi Durbar had been consciously
' Mughal ' in both theme and style. They followed from the
opportunity the artist had of a closer and more extensive perusal of
the Persian and Mughal miniatures, which Havell had begun
accumulating in the Government Art Gallery. Enraptured though
he was by the splendour of the design and workmanship in these
Indo-Persian paintings, Abanindranath found one main ingredient
lacking in them : the element of bhava (emotion) . The traditional
artists, in his view, had treated painting like the creation of puppets,
ravishing all the finesse of their craft on painting doll-like images that
lacked life . As a modern I ndian artist, he felt he had to breathe a new
life and emotional intensity into ' I ndian-style ' paintings. 37 This sense
ofhis artistic intent, purpose and achievement of these years is closely
woven in with the aesthetic discourse that came to surround his
paintings.
To him, ' The Passing of Shah jahan ' (Figure 56) was the painting
which epitomised the infusion of bhava (emotion) into Mughal
pictorial conventions. Painted in oil on wood, but condensed to a
scale similar to the miniatures, it shows a remarkable adaptation of
the oil technique to the delicate details and meticulous workmanship
of the miniature compositions. The architectural fa<;ade which frames
the picture is most obviously Mughal in its painstaking replication of
the rich inlay-work decoration on marble and the intricate railing
patterns. The attention is, however, focused on the two small figures
of the dying emperor and his daughter at his feet ; and, then, drawn
to the tiny image of the Taj Mahal in the distance, through the twist
in the emperor's head and the direction of his gaze. The centrality of
these images is intended, in turn , to convey the central theme of death
and eternal separation, and the symbolism of the transitoriness of life
vis-a-vis the immortality of art. The painting's recreation of a lVIughal
style is as important as its evocation of this poignant and symbolic
moment in Mughal history.
36 ibid. ; Report on the working of the School of Art - AGRPI, Bengal, 1 902-3.
37 ' Shilpa-charcha Sambandhe Smriti-charana '.
244 The making of a new ' Indian ' art

Fig. 56 Abanindranath Tagore, The Passing of Shah jahan (oil on wood, r go2).
 Abanindranath and the ' JVew School of Indian Painting ' 245

Painted in the immediate aftermath of the death of Abanindra­

nath's young daughter in the Calcutta plague of r go2, the painting
introduced a deep personal dimension to the relationship of father
and daughter and the theme of impending separation. This was the
'p ith of the bhava-vyanjana ( the intensity of feeling) which the artist
added to the ' Mughal technique ' of the painting. 38 In his reminis­
cences about this picture, Abanindranath would analyse how his use
of colour and images was intended specially to augment this emotive
quality. He fel t that lines, by defining the boundaries of form, limited
and restricted the meaning of a picture ; but colour, in its bound­
lessness, could convey hidden depths and suggest a range of abstract
ideas and emotions. A painting, he said, may need to be stripped of
its outer trappings of beauty to allow its inner reserve of emotions to
manifest themselves. 39 ' The Passing of Shah J ahan ' was regarded as
the first test case for the manifestation of these ideas in his painting.
Compared to a Mughal, Rajpu t or a Pahari miniature, the painting
was clearly more colouristic than linear in construction. The pure,
bright hues of the miniatures were replaced by mellow subdued
tones, with a murky white foreground converging on a wan grey
night sky. After all his intricate work, Abanindranath fel t he gave his
master touch to the painting in the dull brown shawl he wrapped
around the figure of Shah J ahan.
This painting came to be held as a ' masterpiece ' of modern Indian
art : the silver medal at the Delhi Durbar was followed by a gold
medal at the Congress I ndustrial Exhibition of r go3. I ts appeal lay
lodged in between its obvious resemblance to a Mughal miniature,
and its subtle departures of style and ambience. Although his
emphasis was more on bhava than on technique, Abanindranath is
known to have carefully cultivated the Mughal drawing technique,
making several enlarged copies of heads from M ughal portrait
drawings. 40 This is reflected in the delineation of the profile of Shah
J ahan in another painting of the series called ' The Building of the
Taj ' , also exhibited at the Delhi Durbar of r go2-3 (Figure 5 7 ) , where
notwithstanding the atmospheric colouring of the large expanse of
sky, the artist made use of the traditional miniature technique of
' body colour ' , touched with gold and silver. However, the issue of
' Mughal technique ' in these pictures was, in a sense, tangential to
their main appeal as Nlughal ' history ' paintings. The historian's

38 ibid. 39 ibid. 40 Bcnodebehari Mukherjee ' Chronology ', p. I 26.

 ,
The making of a new ' Indian art

Fig. 5 7 Abanindranath Tagore, The Building of the Taj (water-colour in the

gouache technique, c. r go r ) .

story - Jadunath Sarkar's narrative of events - would be referred to

by the critic to place the image of the dying Shah J ahan within a
factual context.41 Yet history and myth closely overlapped in
paintings, where the story line was subsumed within a flood of
rarified sen tim en ts.
A painting called ' Shah Jahan Dreaming of the Taj ' (the last of
41 Jadunath Sarkar, ' The Passing of Shah jahan ' - The Modem Review, October 1 9 1 5 , pp.
36 1-68.
 Abanindranath and the ' New School of Indian Painting ' 24 7

Fig. 58 Abanindranath Tagore, Shah Jahan dreaming of the Taj (water-colour,

c. r go r -2) .

the Taj trilogy, though thematically the first) carried to a new height
this primacy of emotion ( Figure 58) . Accordingly, the delicate
drawing of the emperor astride his horse disappears within a smoky
thicket of colour, its murky and muted layers characteristic of the
artist's new technique of the ' wash ', and suggestive of the evanescent
 The making of a new ' Indian ' art

Fig. 59 Abanindranath Tagore, Experiments with Japanese-style brush and ink

painting, (sketch- book, 1 903). (a) Bamboo leaves (b) Figure study of Taikan.
 Abanindranath and the ' JVew School of Indian Painting ' 249

quality of Shah Jahan's dream and vision . Colour had become

.Abanindranath's main tool of expression, but it was colour almost
divested of itself. This painting shows the artist's transition from the
intricate design and workmanship of miniature painting to the
emotive nuances of the ' wash ' .
This new ' wash ' technique he had evolved became, i n time, the
chief trademark of the ' Abanindranath style ' of Indian painting. It
points to the other major influence on the artist's work and career
during these early years : the encounter with Japanese painting. The
Japanese connection originated with the first visit of Kakuzo
Okakura during I 902, his stay at the home of Abanindranath's
cousin, Surendranath Tagore, and his involvement with the activities
of the Tagore household . The Pan-Asian aesthetic, so powerfully
propagated by Okakura, was sought to be co�cretised by bringing
into direct contact the new artists of India and Japan. On his return
to Japan, Okakura sent two young artists from his new avant-garde
school to Calcutta to stay with the Tagores - Yokoyama Taikan
( I 868- I 958) and Hishida Shunso ( I 8 74-I 9 I I ) . The trend of painting
which these members of the ' Okakura Tenshin ' group represented
was one of a healthy innovative synthesis of the traditional
conventions of classical scrolls and Chinese ink paintings with the use
of light and space in nineteenth-century Western paintings. The
Japanese ' wash ', as it developed in their paintings, revolved around
a naturalistic and atmospheric blend of colours, in which the contours
of forms, blurred and hazy, would waft to the surface in delicate lines.
A wave of idealism and aestheticism also emerged around this new
school of Japanese painting. Okakura highlighted the idealistic
emotive overtones in the works of these painters : ' the feeling for line,
chiaroscuro as beauty, and colour as the embodiment of emotion '42
- suggesting clear parallels with the style and aesthetics of Abanin­
dranath's paintings.
Taikan and Hishida arrived in Calcutta by the end of I 902 or the
beginning of I 903. A spirit of close camaraderie developed between
them and the Tagores, generating a lively exchange of techniques
and ideas. Abanindranath remembered how Taikan initiated him
into the technique of Japanese brush drawing, showing him the way
of controlling the thickness and flow of lines through a slow steady
movement of the brush.43 A sketch book of I 903 stands as a vivid

42 Okakura, The Ideals of the East, pp. 228-29. 43 Jorasankor Dlzare, pp. 283-84.
 The making of a new ' Indian ' art
testimony to his experiments in Japanese brush and ink painting,
·
under the influence of Taikan ( Figures 59 a,b ) . However, this
style of dexterous brush painting in Chinese ink would not figure very
prominently in Abanindranath's later work. It seemed to have had a
more striking impact on the development of Gaganendranath
Tagore's style, where fluent strokes and rich dark tones of fluid ink
combined to create a prominently 'Japanese ' effect. 44 ( Figure 6o)
Gaganendranath's lively sketches of silhouetted mountains, roof tops
and landscapes, or his illustrations for Rabindranath's autobiogra­
phy, Jeevan Smrili, clearly bear out the influence of Japanese brush
and ink techniques.
For Abanindranath, in the I goos, it was more the soft colouristic
effects in Japanese painting than the workings of brush and ink,
which held a greater attraction. Taikan himself excelled in a
distinctive style of misty wash painting in ink, his mountain studies
reflecting his mastery over this genre.45 He was the archetypal
' romantic ' and ' idealistic ' painter of Meiji Japan, the deep textures
of his wash seen to be the best embodiment of the ' spiritual depths '
of the new nihonga style that was evolved within his group. Both the
aesthetics and the form in Taikan's style would leave its strong
impressions on the work of Abanindranath. The first time he watched
Taikan painting on silk with pale watery ink, he remembered his
disappointment with the strange lack of colour or substance in these
pictures. But, in time, his eyes learnt to appreciate the very subtlety
and sparseness ofJapanese painting. It was through his observations
of Taikan soaking his paintings with water that he evolved his
method of ' wash ' painting.46 After a preliminary drawing, layers of
colour wash would be applied, each coating followed by a dip of the
paper in water and a drying-out, to allow the tones to become darker
and deeper. At the end, the form would be touched up with fine lines
and modelled out through a few highlights.47 But the abstractions of
mood and emotion were conveyed through the very inspecificity of
form and colour.
44 The bulk of these paintings are in the collection of the RBS. The Japanese influence on
Gaganendranath and the chronological evolution of his style is discussed at length in Ratan
Parimoo, pp. 88-gg.
45 Overall, the work of these Nippon Bijitsuin artists, following the model of the two great
nineteenth-century masters, Kano Hogai ( I 828-88) and Hashimoto Gaho ( I 835- I go8) ,
was drawing heavily on what has been termed the ' classical Kano style ' of the seventeenth
century, with its deep tonal washes and delicate line drawing.
46 Jorasankor Dhare, p. 282, 284.
47 Benodebehari Mukherjee, ' Chronology ' , pp. I I g-2 r .
 Abanindranath and the ' New School of Indian Painting ' 25 r

Fig. 6o Gaganendranath Tagore, View of a mosque and skyline (brush and ink,
c. r g r 6- r 8 ) .

While Abanindranath internalised the nuances of the Japanese

' wash ', the Japanese painters, in turn, honed in on their ' Indian '
experience to incorporate new themes and images into their work.
While Abanindranath taught Taikan some aspects of Mughal
technique, the japanese painters took to painting Hindu deities and
episodes from the Ramayana and Mahabharata, following the
specifications and the shastric prescriptions proferred by Abanin­
dranath.48 Such paintings on I ndian themes would be specially
commissioned by the Tagores from these Japanese artists. Taikan's

48 ]orasankor Dhare, pp. 282-84.

 The making of a new ' Indian ' art

Fig. 6 r Scroll painting by Yoshio Katsuta, Rama, Sita and Lakshmana in the forest
(tempera on silk, c. r go6-7) .
 Abanindranath and the ' New School of Indian Painting ' 253

painting of ' Kali ' , His hid a Shunso's painting of ' Saraswati ' ( these
were reproduced in Prabasi, Ashvin, Karitick I 3 I O/ I 903 ) , or a silk
scroll painting depicting Rama, Lakshmana and Sita in the forest,
attributed to the visiting Japanese artist, Yoshio Katsuta49 (Figure
6 I ) , show clearly the synthetic blend of influences that marked the
new ' Oriental ' style. While linear drawing, the conventional
iconographic attribu tes and posturing of deities bear out the ' Indian '
authenticity of the images, the soft, mellow washes of colour were
meant to suffuse the forms with a mood of mystery and transcendence.
With Katsuta, the contact with Japan came to be more firmly
in tegrated within the workings of the new art movement in Calcutta.
In I go6, while Havell was on leave and Abanindranath was holding
the post of Vice Principal, Katsuta was appointed to the staff of the
Government School of Art, ' to give instructions to the teachers . . . in
certain Japanese technical methods of painting ' .50
Abanindranath, himself, did not take up painting on silk in the
Japanese style. I t was left to others like Lala Ishwari Prasad (the
painter of the Patna qualam, whom Havell had drawn into the staff of
the School of Art) to learn the in tricacies of Japanese techniques. 51
The ' master ' remained engrossed in his innovative style of ' wash '
painting which, even as it derived from Japanese influences, created
a new visual idiom that in turn absorbed the Japanese painters within
its folds. Parallels between the paintings ofTaikan, Hishida, Katsuta
and Abanindranath's work of this period ( c. 1 904/ r gos- r o) highlight
this process of mutual participation in the formulation of a new art
language, where the individual markings of I ndian and Japanese
were blurred and recast into a composite unit of a modern ' Oriental '
style. The ' wash ' came to be the core ingredient around which
revolved both the stylistics and the aesthetics of this art language.
Abanindranath's paintings of this ' wash phase ' are typically
swathed in pale, hazy tones, and heavily laden with a mood of
introspection and reverie. Elegant use ofline and space combine with
images that are usually wrapped in a romantic mystique of dreams
and yearnings. vVe find examples in paintings like ' Sita in captivity
in Lanka ' (c. I go6-7) which focuses on a pensive profile, a barred

�9 Katsuta, sent out to Calcutta after Taikan and Hishida's return to Japan, also stayed with
the Tagores. The paintings of Katsuta, like those ofTaikan and Hishida, were reproduced
in Prabasi, Ashar 1 3 1 5/ r goS.
50 BGPjE, Ylarch r go6, Nos. B r82-86 ; AGRPI, Bengal, r gos-6.
51 ' Shilpa-charcha Sam band he Smriti-charana '.
2 54 The making of a new ' Indian ' art

Fig. 62 Abanindranath Tagore, Sita in captivity in Lanka (water-colour,

c. 1 906-7) . This painting was then in the collection of A. K. Coomaraswamy.
 Abanindranath and the ' New School of Indian Painting ' 255

window and some faint swirling lines of waves, leaving the rest of the
composition suggestively blank (Figure 62 ) . More famous is the
image · of ' The Banished Yaksha ' (c. 1 904) of Kalidasa's l'vfeghaduta,
where the atmospheric and mood-intensive effects of deep colour
' washes ' merge with the intricate patterning of miniature painting
(Figure 63) . The painting revolves around a progression from detail
to shadowy depths and vice versa, the willowy figure of the Yaksha
juxtaposed against the dark blend of monsoon skies and forest. Along
with the tactile illusionism of oil painting, Abanindranath rej ected
also the narrative and theatrical structures of Academic painting.
I nstead, as in this painting, stories were condensed into ' mood '
pictures, deliberately deleting details of time and space within an
imagined, ambivalent mental zone. In general, solitary figures
floating in misty undefined space (another example, Figure 64,
' Dewali or The Feast of Lamps ' ) became typical of A�anindranath's
compositions of this phase. At their best, subtle and mellow colour
textures would be harmonised with firm lines, graceful body contours
and slivers of decorative details.
It was this combination which produced one of most important
paintings of the artist in the ' wash ' technique : the picture of
' Bharat-mata c. r 904-5 (Figure 65 ) . More than any other, this
painting firmly fixed the epithet ' nationalist ' to his recreation of an
' Indian-style ' . This image of the motherland, conceived by Abanin­
dranath as ' Banga-mata ' , came to stand as ' Bharat-mata ' encom­
passing the wider entity of the nation. To Nivedita, this painting was
the supreme example of the way the abstract ideal of nationalism
could be metamorphosised into form, and cast into an image that was
both human and divine. 5 2 In each hand, the Mother carries the
blessings of food, clothing, learning and spiritual salvation. Her
multiple arms, the halo around her head and the white lotuses at her
feet emphasise the divinity of the image ; yet Abanindranath wrote
that in painting ' Bharat-mata ' he had in mind the face of his own
daughter. 53 I t was precisely this dual impression of intimate
familiarity and divine transcendence - the role of daughter, mother
and goddess all merged into one - which Nivedita also emphasised,
which seemed to lie at the heart of the appeal of this picture. ' Bharat­
mata ' , visualised as a beau tiful young ascetic, holds no direct

52 Nivedita, ' The Function of Art in Shaping Nationality ' ; ' Notes ' on ' Bharat-mata ' - The
lv/odern Review, February 1 907, p. 22 1 .
53 ' Shilpa-charcha Sam band he Smriti-charana '.
 The making of a new ' Indian ' art

Fig. 63 Abanindranath Tagore, The Banished Yaksha of Kalidasa's i\1/eghaduta ,

(water-colour, c. r go4) .
 Abanindranath and the ' JVew School of Indian Painting ' 25 7

Fig. 64 Abanindranath Tagore, ' Dewali or The Feast of Lamps ' (water-colour,
C. I 904).
 The making of a new ' Indian ' art

Fig. 65 Abanindranath Tagore, ' Bharat Mata ' (water-colour, r go5 ) .

religious association with a deity ; but the image assumes a mythic

quality that is uniquely its own : unique to the idea of a nation and to
that of artistic creation. I n painting it, Abanindranath was conscious
of creating, for the first time, a new ' artistic ' icon for the I ndian
nation. 54
The overtly nationalist and political content of ' Bharat-mata ' is
evident in the very context in which it was painted and received. It
was directly a product of Abanindranath's involvement with the
anti-partition Swadeshi agitation in Bengal during r go4-5· There
54 ibid.
 Abanindranath and the ' JVew School of Indian Painting ' 2 59

are his vivid reminiscences of the Swadeshi fever which gripped the
entire Tagore family, with Rabindranath at the helm steering their
enthusiasm for self-reliance, independent enterprise and constructive
work at the mass level. 55 Abanindranath recounted with great
excitement the patriotic spirit which manifested itself o n issues of
dress and language - their appearance in dhoti, chaddar and open
sandals in anglicised I ndian gatherings, their invitation to all
Congress delegates at the Provincial Conference at Natore in I 897 to
come in this ' national dress ', and especially Rabindranath's passion­
ate campaign at Natore to have all speeches delivered in Bengali.5 6
This wave of Swadeshi enthusiasm culminated in the heady days of
mass fraternity of the autumn of I 905, associated most closely in
Abanindranath's memory with their participation in Rabindranath's
first Rakhi Bandhan Utsav, when they all walked the street barefoot
towards the Ganges, exchanging rakhis with everyone, irrespective of
caste or creed.57 Abanindranath's particular contribution to this
heightened mood of Swadeshi was the image of ' Bharat-mata ' . The
painting, enlarged by a Japanese artist (probably Katsuta) and
transferred on to a silk banner, was used for a brief period in the
Swadeshi fund-raising processions of I 905-6 to the strains of
Rabindranath's patriotic lyrics.
However, the involvement with Swadeshi was soon to wane in the
Tagore household, with Rabindranath's progressive disillusionment
with the forced boycott of British goods and the terrorist activities
that increasingly took hold of the movement after I 907. The
novels Cora ( I 907-8) and Ghare Baire ( I 9 I 6) powerfully express his
reservations and critique of the turn that later Swadeshi activities
took ; particularly, in the latter, the sense of misguided fervour,
political megalomania and defeated idealism is writ large across the
development of the three main characters and the build up of the
narrative. Abanindranath's memoirs also echo the same mood of
alienation and retreat from Swadeshi. Their years of ' Swadeshi '
were over, he wrote ; what remained of it was a certain spirit and
commitment that he gave over fully to the world of painting.58 The
image of ' Bharat-mata ' , itself, suggests a conscious distancing from
the sphere of political activism. For the motherland here is a
pronouncedly ascetic figure and the mood she conveys is one of

55 Gharoa, pp. 66-72. The thrust and spirit of the Swadeshi activities of the Tagores are best
discussed in Sumit Sarkar, pp. 47-9 1 , 287-93. 5 6 Gharoa, pp. 68-70.

57 ibid., pp. 7 1 -72. 5 8 ibid., pp. 73-74·

 The making of a ne-w ' Indian · art

·.

·-· 1.... •.
Fig. 66 Abanindranath Tagore, Kacha and Devayani (fresco on stone-slab,
c. r gos-6 ) . The moment of parting of Kacha, son of Brihaspati, from Devayani,
daughter ofShukra, ' the brahmin of boundless powers ', to whom the Gods had sent
Kacha to learn the secret knowledge of revivification after death.

renunciation and transcendence. The ideal of the nation is sifted out

of the real world and transported to one of myth, allegory and
spiritual revelation. The painting became the essence of the new
nationalist iconography, ' which would replace religion by art '. 59
Even as he spurned Swadeshi activity, Abanindranath had been
firmly cast into his public image of a ' nationalist ' artist. Equally
important, that image was now surrounded by an aesthetic charisma
59 Ratnabali Chatterjee, ' Nationalism and Form in Indian painting' in From the Karkhana to the
Studio.
 Abanindranath and the ' New School of Indian Painting ' 26 r

Fig. 67 Abanindranath Tagore, ' Ganesh janani ' (water-colour, c. r g r o) .

that placed the greatest value o n his originality, his creative talent
and his s tanding as an ' artist '. The artis t and his art were raised to
the same pedestal. Abanindranath's reflections, during these years,
on the characteristics of an ' artis t ', were brimming with the
confidence of an expansive self-image.
 The making of a new ' Indian ' art
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 is an
artist made. Just as there are nine signs of the high lineage of the kulin
Brahmin, so there are multiple signs to mark the pedigree of an artist.60
(author's translation)

This haloed definition of an artist would stride across the entire

gamut of Abanindranath's work over the coming years . By I 907,
Abanindranath was recognised as ' the greatest of Indian living
artists ' , and his art was attributed with qualities that were ' national ' ,
' individual ' and ' distinctively Indian '. 6 1 All that he painted would
be touched and transformed by the magic of this position into a
unique entity of ' Indian ' art. The ' master's ' style, celebrated for its
uniqueness and its individuality, became synonymous with an
' Indian-style ' and a ' national art ' .
Subj ects from classical literature, Hindu mythology and Indian
history had dominated the work of the I 90os, creating a new Indian
iconography with effusive literary and romantic overtones. The
legend ofKacha and Devayani from the Mahabharata, as was retold
in Rabindranath's poem, ' Viday Abhishap ' ( I 894) figured in one of
the artist's rare experiments with the Jaipuri technique of fresco
painting on a stone slab (Figure 66) . The painting of ' Ganesh
Jan ani ' , of Durga carousing with the child Ganesh (also pain ted
around this period) belongs to the more characteristic vein of the
' wash ', where the figure of Durga is naturalistic, yet drawn clearly
from the Pahari miniatures (Figure 6 7 ) . The artist, here, was
attributed with his own ' poetic licence ' in an imaginative and
emotive interpretation of the icon. 62 Another painting of this period,
' Tissarakshita, Queen of Asoka ' (c. I 9 1 o) stands as one of the best
samples of Abanindranath's independent creation of a legend out of
a subject plucked from ancient Indian history (Figure 68) . The story
of Queen Tissarakshita's j ealousy of Asoka's devotion to the Bodhi
tree is enacted in a composition which strikingly combines ' mood '
with a detailed period-flavour - where the emphasis is as much on
the queen's self-consuming anger, as on the intricate patterning of
ornaments and railings with Sanchi motifs. In his children's stories as
in his pictures, Abanindranath had emerged as the master of rupkatha
60
' Art o Artist ' in Bharat-Shilpa, pp. 8 I -82.
61 Review of the ' Exhibition of Oriental Paintings ' in The Englishman, 30 January I go8.
62 ' Chitra-parichay ' - Prabasi, Chaitra I 3 I 7/ I 9 I I , p. 706.
 Abanindranath and the ' New School of Indian Painting ' 263

Fig. 68 Abanindranath Tagore, ' Tissarakshita, Queen of Asoka ' (water-colour,

c. I 9 1 0 ) . Collotype colour prints, made injapan before this painting was bought by
Queen Mary during her India visit of 1 9 I I , can be seen in the collections ofRBS and
the V & A.
 The making of a new ' Indian ' art

Fig. 6g Abanindranath Tagore, Portrait of his mother (water-colour, c. I g I 2- I 3) .

 Abanindranath and the ' New School of Indian Painting ' 265
(fairy tales ) , spinning out his own repertoire of roman tic myths and
legends. The writer's flair for lively narratives and vivid word
pictures63 was transmuted in his paintings into dream-like imagery,
where . details were sublimated within an ambience of mood and
mystery. Over the following years, this quality of myth, allegory and
fantasy would weave itself into whatever theme Abanindranath
painted, even themes from his immediate environment.
In a painting suggestively titled ' The journey's End ' (c. I 9 I 2- I 3 ) ,
an intricate naturalistic study of a weary camel, lowering its burden,
is bathed in a glow of rust and orange and transformed into an
allegory of death. To the artist, the camel became the symbol of the
long-suffering devotee waiting for his union with god.64 A delicate
miniature painting of his aged mother (c. I 9 I 2- I 3) came to be
charged with the magic of an ' inner ' vision, as the artist recalled the
way he suddenly visualised the whole image in his mind's eye soon
after his mother's death65 (Figure 69) . I n both these paintings, the
forms show a close affinity with Mughal miniatures ; but more
importan t were the aesthetic overtones which equated the images
with literary symbolism or subliminal spiritual perception.
The artist's involvement with the Dramatic Club at Jorasanko,
with acting, stage decor and costumes, led him to experiment with a
new genre of ' theatre ' pictures during this period. Abanindranath's
' Open Air Play ' series (c. r 9 I o-I 3) evolved a group of allegorical
characters, in whom humour and caricature blended with an exotic
and romanticised world of make-believe. Another set of paintings
illustrating the performance of Rabindranath's dance drama, Phal­
guni (staged at Jorasanko in I 9 I 6) revolve around images of
Rabindranath as the blind bard of Phalguni, caught in the varying
moods of trance and ecstasy (Figure 70) . These form the high points
of Abanindranath's brand of ' mood ' painting, with deep mono­
chromatic tones swathing the whole composition, rendering the
figures hazy and amorphous.
These years also saw Abanindranath making some of his first
forays into nature and landscape studies : into bird and animal
paintings and ' impressions ' of the sun, the moon and waters. The
Puri-Konarak series of sparse brush and ink sketches, with their tiny

63 Some of the finest examples ofhis art of story-telling a r e his stories from Rajput history, Raj­
kahini ( I gog) or his tale of the birth of Buddha, Nalaka ( I g I 6) .
64 Abanindranath Tagore, ' Shesh Bojha ' - Prabasi Phalgun 1 320/ I 9 I 4.
,

65 Jorasankor Dhare, p. 3 I 2.
 The making of a new ' Indian ' art

Fig. 70 Abanindranath Tagore, Rabindranath in the role of the blind bard of his
dance-drama, Phalguni (water-colour, c. I g I 6).
 Abanindranath and the ' New SchooL of Indian PainLittg '
crawling forms of people, trees and temples, are inevitably associated
with Abanindranath's childhood memories of the ghostly starkness
and loneliness of the coastal scenery that he encountered on his trips
to Konarak and Puri. 66 The most evocative of Abanindranath's
landscapes are those of the Shahaj adpur series, painted during
I 925-26, on their trips to their zamindari estates in East Bengal. The
' wash ' technique is used here with optimum effect : compositions
soaked in water, with blotted images and evanescent blends of blues,
greens and yellows capture the full feel of East Bengal's riverine, rain­
washed environs and its relentless monsoons. At the same time, the
all-pervasive sense of water, rain and mist removes from these
landscapes the specificity of the physical locale and renders them into
dream-pictures.
By the I g2os and gos, Abanindranath's work came to show i ts full
range and versatility. Earlier abstractions of mood and emotion often
gave way to a rich illustrative and narrative flavour in his pictures.
The best examples of this can be seen in his large series of ' Arabian
Nights ' paintings, done during the early 30s, where the story-teller's
craft is merged with the painter's wizardry over line, form and colour,
as story after story spun by Shaharzade are visualised 67 ( Figure 7 I ) .
I n this particular painting of ' The Hunchback of Fishbone ' , we find
the exoticism and fantasy of the world of ' Arabian Nights '
transplanted to the artist's immediate surroundings atJorasanko and
solidly structured around a ' miniature ' style, with a revived emphasis
on elaborate compositional patterns and details of figures, costumes
and architecture. The artist was both returning to earlier styles and
constantly moving off at new tangents.
Towards the end of his artistic career, Abanindranath, the leader
of ' I ndian-style ' painting, had come to claim a pu rely personal and
private stand as an artist. 68 He used the metaphor of a three-storeyed
mansion ( that could well be their Jorasanko home) to construct a
hierarchical structure for art. The lowest storey was a place of work
and laborious preparations, the domain of the craftsman (karigar) ;
the floor above was the baithak-khana, the rooms for leisure and

66 Particularly, pictures of stick-like figures bearing a palanguin across the sands conjure the
identical atmosphere of his spooky tales, Bhutpatrir Deshe ( I n the Land of Ghosts and
Spirits ) , published around the same time ( 1 9 1 5) .
67 This splendid series is analysed by K. G. Subramanyan in ' The Phenomenon of
Abanindranath Tagore ' in Moving Focus (New Delhi, 1 978) .
68
This comes through even in the first of his Bageshwari lectures of 1 92 r-22, ' Shilpe
Anadhikar ' and ' Shilpe Adhikar ' - Bageshwari Shilpa Prabandhavali.
 The making of a new ' Indian ' art

Fig. 7 r Abanindranath Tagore, Arabian Nights series, ' The Hunchback of

· Fishbone ', (water-colour, c. 1 930-33) . The story of the hunch-back jester who died
swallowing a fish-bone and the many inter-related narratives surrounding the
disposal of his corpse is placed, here, within the artist's own setting a t J orasanko -
with its maze ofrooms, houses and rooftops and the sign board of ' Kerr, Tagore and
Co.'

culture, where assembled the artists and cnt 1 cs to exercise their

judgements and share their appreciation of art ; the top floor was the
andarmahal, which, to Abanindranath, was the same as antarmahal ­
an enclosed inner space, where the artist was completely immersed
and wrapped up in the nurture of art. 69 While he admitted that the
69 Gharoa, pp. 75-76.
 Abanindranath and the ' New School of Indian Painting ' 269
'. genius ' could exist on all three levels, Abanindranath clearly saw
himself to be an inmate of that uppermost floor, where his art was a
world unto itself, liberated from effort and endeavour, also from
publicity and fame. Here the artist retreated in his old age,
transforming his art into play, crafting little toys out of pieces of
wood, observing the world from ' the wrong end of the telescope ' .

' ' '

ACOLYTES OF THE MASTER
: THE E M E R G E N C E OF A NEW
'
S C H O O L OF INDIAN PAINTING IN CALCUTTA

Yet, even as Abanindranath sought refuge i n his private domain of

art, the mantle of the guru remained with him. His image in history
is inextricably bound up with the existence of a following whose
identity as a group lay in the epithet, ' Abanpanthi ' (followers of the
path of Abanindranath) . To explore the full · range and variety of
Abanindranath's artistic output is to stray well outside the bounds of
this art movement. But i t helps to underline a certain duality in his
career, between his achieven1ents as an individual creative artist and
his position as the architect of a ' national art ' and the leader of an
' Indian artistic renaissance ' . It was the force of this latter position,
concentrated in time and impact, which made a guru out of the artist
and created a stereotype of a ' new Indian style ' (JVaba Bharatiya
Chitrankan-paddhati) out of some of the main characteristics of his
work.
Abanindranath had assumed his public role as a teacher as early as
r gos. Under the special recommendation ofHavell, he was appointed
to the post of Vice Principal of the Government School of Art,
replacing his old teacher, Ghilardi. 70 Paradoxically, Abanindra­
nath's appointment in August r 905 coincided with the first Swadeshi
call for the boycott of all official schools and colleges, raised in the
immediate wake of the announcement of the partition decision.
Following the resolution taken at a meeting at the Albert Hall,
students trooped out of European colleges, with a special fund placed
at their benefit. But it is likely that Abanindranath's appointment
was, then, looked on as a part of the parallel non-political programme
of ' national education ' , stemming from a different version of
' Constructive Swadeshi ' . 71 vVithin the School of Art, the absorption
of Abanindranath Tagore into the staff was clearly linked to Havell's
policies of reform and l ndianisation of the curriculum. At the same
70 BGP/E, August r go5, B 76-go. 71 Sumit Sarkar, pp. r 4g-8 r .
2 70 The making of a new ' Indian ' art
time, Havell had also drawn into the School of Art a ' traditional '
painter, Lala lshwari Prasad, whose lineage he traced back through
the Patna qualam of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century
to the Mughal court of Muhammad Shah. 7 2 lshwari Prasad was
employed to teach the traditional methods of I ndian painting he was
meant to have inherited from his forefathers. But the hierarchy was
clearly set between the ' artisan ' painter and the modern Indian
artist. While lshwari Prasad was employed for Rs. 75 a month,
Abanindranath was on a salary of Rs. 300 a month. 73 And Abanin­
dranath, as a gentleman of leisure unaccustomed to holding a job,
had to be specially wooed - he accepted the post on the assurance
that he would have the freedom to work independently in his own
studio in the school. 7 4
Within the school, the artist operated in an independent role of a
guru, outside the normal curricula of teaching. He would sit in an
upstairs room working on his own paintings, surrounded by a group
of students who watched him paint, themselves painted and brought
him their work for his views and suggestions. The notion that ' art '
could not be taught, that it had to be spontaneously imbibed and
cultivated through a special disposition, was firmly entrenched in the
new romantic aesthetics. Abanindranath remembered how, under
him, the rigours of formal training were replaced by an informal
atmosphere of camaraderie and shared inspiration, where master
and students would work together. 75
The first two students who came to work with him were
Surendranath Ganguly and Nandalal Bose : both quite typical of the
kind of middle-class boys who joined the art school for a kind of
vocational training. Surendranath Ganguly, from a poor Brahmin
family ofBarisal, was already enrolled in Havell's weaving class in the
school before he began learning painting under Abanindranath. This
change opened up for him the hospitality and support of Abanindra­
nath and 0. C. Gangoly, and the backing of the newly founded
Indian Society of Oriental Art, sustaining his brief artistic career till
his premature death in r gog.76 Nandalal Bose came to the art school
after many unsuccessful attempts at going through a college
education. His interests in art had led him to acquire informal
training in model drawing and still-life painting, to buy colour prints

72 Havel! Papers (Rabindra Bhavan Collection) .

73 BGP/E, April I gos, B 4-6, August I gos, B 76-go.
74 Jorasankor Dhare, pp. 307-8. 75 ibid., pp, 3 I O-I r .
76 U mach a ran Shastri, ' Surendranath Gangopadhyay ' - Bharati, Magh I 3 I 3/ I 907.
 Abanindranath and the ' New School of Indian Painting ' 27 r

Fig. 72 Nandalal Bose, Arj una as a dancer in the court of King Virata, student work
done at the School of Art, Calcutta (unfinished water-colour, c. r gos-7) .

of European and Ravi Varma paintings, and to try his hand at

making copies of Raphael's Madonnas. Yet, despite his debut in
Academic art work, Nandalal appears to have been drawn to the
school mainly by the presence of Abanindranath and the new kind of
painting he was producing. And it was Abanindranath's assurance
that Nandalal could make a livelihood out of art which eventually
made the family acquiesce in his decision to join the art school. 7 7
In their first-year at the School, Nandalal and Surendranath were
admitted to the new advanced design class of Ishwari Prasad, where
the emphasis was on ' original ' compositions, as against the drill of
' copying ' in the other classes. From this design class, they ventured
into the master's studio to watch him paint and to work informally
77 Panchanan :Mandai, Bharatshilpi Nandalal (Bolepur, rg82) pp. 48-63.
 The making of a new ' Indian ' art

Fig. 73 Surendranath Ganguly, Study of a parakeet, student work done at the

School of Art, Calcutta (water-colour, c. r gos-7 ) .

u nder his ·direction. 7 8 Employing a family pandit to recite the

Ramayana and the Mahabharata, Abanindranath would suggest
different themes from the epics for his students to paint. Specimens of
some of the art school work done by Nandalal and Surendranath
around 1 go6-7 show the distinctly ' Oriental ' turn in styles and
themes. 79 For instance, an unfinished mythological composition by
Nandalal, depicting Arjuna at the court of King Virata, is clearly
indicative of the standard type of the ' Indian-style ' inaugurated by
Abanindranath (Figure 7 2 ) . Within the category of ' Nature Study ' ,
too, the work of the advanced design class began to adopt a
7 8 ibid.,pp. 6'2-66.
79 These pictures, which were in the possession of E. B. Havell, came into the collection of the
V & A.
 Abanindranalh and the ' New School of Indian Painting ' 2 73

Fig. 74 Abanindranath Tagore with his first batch of students. Lift to right, back row :
Satyendranath Datta, Abanindranath, Hakim Muhammad Khan, Surendranath
Kar ; middle row : Venkatappa, N andalal Bose ; fi"ont row : Durgesh Chandra Sinha,
Asit Haldar, Sailendranath Dey, Kshitindranath Maj umdar.

decorative, miniature style. A study of a parakeet by Surendranath

Ganguly, for instance, shows a strong influence of the provincial
Patna style ofishwari Prasad (Figure 73 ) . Together, this mix of styles
was producing the new entity of ' I ndian ' painting within the school,
and sharply demarcating it from the general round of Academic
work.
From I gos-6 onwards, a number of other artists who came to form
the ' new school ' around Abanindranath, enrolled as students of the
Government School of Art - among them were Asit Kumar Haldar,
a member of the extended Tagore family (Abanindranath was his
maternal uncle ) , Kshitindranath Majumdar, Sailendranath Dey,
Samarendranath Gupta, Surendranath Kar, S arada Charan Ukil
and K. Venkattapa, a student of the Madras School of Art who was
sponsored to come to Calcu tta by the ruler of Mysore (Figure 74 ) .
Through this first inner circle of students, the semblance of a new art
movement emerged, with an outpouring of paintings which broadly
conformed to the master's formula of an ' Indian-style ' .
Abanindranath continued in the post of Vice Principal a t the
School of Art up to I g I 5· However, it was apparent within the first
2 74 The making of a new ' Indian ' art
few years of his tenure that the real locus of his art movement had
come to lie outside the sphere of the art school - in another parallel
orbit of interest and activity. His years at the art school and the
gathering of a group of students around his cause had brought some
changes to the functioning of the institution. Over r gos-6, with the
appointment of Katsuta, the japanese connection of the Tagores was
brought within the official folds of the art school. The employment of
Ishwari Prasad also introduced a familiarity with traditional
techniques of painting and colour preparation in Abanindranath's
new Indian art class. The report of r gog- r o commented favourably
on Abanindranath's special efforts ' to train students as artists ' ; and
on the admission of students from distant parts, like Madras, Mysore
or Ceylon to study ' Indian fine arts ' . 80 Yet clearly, all through, the
general emphasis of the school remained on providing students with
a basic proficiency in drawing and draughtsmanship, in technical
and industrial art skills, and in maximising their employment
potentials.

Institutions, patronage and promotion of the ( movement '

More than the School of Art, it was the Tagore residence at
Jorasanko which had become the centre of the new art movement.
The art activity of the household concentrated around the famous
dakshiner baranda (south verandah) of the baithak-khana house, where
the three brothers, Abanindranath, Gaganendranath and Samaren­
dranath sat working and meeting people. Here gathered Abanindra­
nath's students, other amateur painters, Japanese artists, European
art critics and connoisseurs, and dealers of Indian art. The dakshiner
baranda became a mecca of Calcutta's art world : a venue for lively
discussions, sharing of ideas and a perusal of the work of the ' master '
and his students. 81 For the critic 0 . C. Gangoly, this was the place
which launched his interests and career in I ndian art. Soon after his
first acquaintance with the Tagores in I 904, he became a regular
visitor here, meeting Okakura, Taikan and Hishida, and others like
Sister Nivedita and Justice Woodroffe, then the most influen tial
champions of the new art movement. 82
Thejorasanko house, in general, had come to exude an ' Oriental '
80
AGRPI, Bengal, r gog- r o.
81
The ambience of the place is beautifully evoked in Mohanlal Gangopadhyay, Dakshiner
Baranda (Visva-bharati, r g8 r ) .
82 0 . C. Gangoly, Bharater Shilpa o Amar Katha, pp. r oo-2.
 Abanindranath and the ' JVew School of Indian Painting ' 2 75

atmosphere. The switch in painting styles was accompanied by a

general overhauling of the interior decoration and furnishing of the
house. All the expensive Victorian furniture was replaced by a new
indigenous range that was personally designed by Abanindranath
and Gaganendranath and made by craftsmen under their super­
vision.83 New ideas for decor were drawn from both classical and folk
art forms : while a replica of a Garuda pillar from the Puri temple
found its way into the baithak khana, the concept of low stools with
cane weaving was partly derived from the kind used in the Ho­
Munda tribal huts which Nandalal saw around Ranchi.84 At the
same time, all the oil paintings of J orasanko (including Abanindra­
nath's own early oils) were disposed of to house, instead, an Oriental
art collection. A medley of Nlughal and provincial miniatures,
Pahari paintings, Tibetan scrolls and manuscripts, a variety of gems,
ivory carvings and sculptures were gleaned together by Abanindra­
nath and Gaganendranath from the art dealers who frequented the
house. 85 The artists prided themselves on their role as connoisseurs
and collectors, on their ability to discern the originality and value of
the objects they acquired. I t was a part of the example of aestheticism
and refined taste for Oriental art which they wished to present,
around the specific example of Abanindranath's ' I ndian-style ' of
painting.
These halls, with their new Oriental decor and art collection
hosted regular art salons at jorasanko, and formed the venue of the
informal Bichitra art club, begun by Abanindranath and Gaganen­
dranath (Figure 75) . Abanindranath's letters to Havell suggest that
by I 9 I I he was seriously contemplating his resignation from the
School of Art in order to devote his time entirely to his new art
movement. He referred to the opening of a little studio within his
house, where N andalal Bose and other boys from the school would
come and work every day. 86 His resignation in I 9 I 5 coincided with
the formalisation of the Bichitra club at Jorasanko. The club's
members included many prominent Bengali litterateurs, artistes and
intellectuals of the time ; and it would host evening gatherings around
talks, poetry readings, dramatic performances or musical soirees.
83 ]orasankor Dhare,pp. 282, 3 I 4·
84 Asit Haldar, Rabi-tirthe (Calcutta, I 958), pp. gs-g6.
85 Much of this art collection, particularly the paintings, were on display during the first ' At
Homes ' and exhibitions hosted by the Tagores during I 907-8.
86 Letter from Abanindranath to Havel!, '2 November I 9 I I - Havel! Papers ( IOLR
Collection).
 The making of a new ' Indian ' art

Fig. 75 Nandalal Bose, The Artists' Studio, Jorasanko (pen and ink, c. r gog- 1 0 ) .
This lively sketch captures the spirit of the Jorasanko art salons, featuring the three
Tagore brothers, Coomaraswamy and the artist, himself.

During the day, however, it would function primarily as an art class

and a studio - here the master and his first batch of students worked
together, spreading an interest in a new pictorial model of ' Indian­
style ' paintings. 8 7 Another visiting Japanese artist, Kampo Arai
participated in these joint painting sessions at Bichitra and gave
lessons in Japanese brush painting. 88
An exhibition organised by the I ndian Society of Oriental Art in
Madras in I g I 6 featured primarily ' the class work ' of the students of
the Bichitra studio - along with several members of the Tagore
household, including women like Sunayani Debi (Abanindranath's
sister) and Pratima Debi (Rabindranath's daughter-in-law ) , it

8 7 Panchanan Mandai, pp. 399-4 1 0 (with extracts from the diary Nandalal kept during these
years of the Bichitra studio).
88
Referred to in a letter from Rabindranath to Gaganendranath, written from Japan, 8
August r g r 6 - Gag an end ra n ath Tagore Papers ( R a bi nd ra Bhavan Archives, Santini­
ketan).
 Abanindranath and the ' New School of Indian Painting ' 277

. involved a number of little-known students who, by subscribing to a

broad formula of an ' Indian-style ' had become a part of this so­
called ' modern school of Indian painting ' . 8 9 The Bichitra studio had
both social prestige and a certain informality and openness that gave
it a wide reach among a middle class which was increasingly drawn
to the vocation of ' art ' and to the model of the new style.
However, more than this art studio atJorasanko, it was the Indian
Society of Oriental Art, established in Calcutta in 1 907, which
provided the movement with its more important and influential
institutional base. The society was very much an Orientalists' art
club : among those most actively involved in its formation and
running were Lord Kitchener, Commander-in-Chief, Sir John
Woodroffe, Chief Justice of the Calcutta High Court, the two
successive Governors ofBengal, Lord Carmichael and Lord Ronalds­
hay, and industrialists and civilians like Norman Blount and
Edward Thornton. A number of eminent Bengal zamindars, among
them the Maharaj as ofBurdwan, Natore and Uttarpara, also became
members of the society. 90 I t was the exh j bi tion of the work of the ' new
school ', organised in the premises of their Landholders' Association,
that first attracted the attention of Justice Woodroffe and Norman
Blount, and brought on the proposal of the formation of a special
Oriental Art Society.
Earlier, under Havell's initiatives, a voluntary art association, the
Bangiya Kala Samsad, had been formed in r 905, with its base once
again atJorasanko. Interestingly, the membership of the organisation
cut across the divide between the Academic and the avant-garde in
Calcutta's art world : Academic oil painters like Annada Prasad
Bagchi, Bamapada Banerj ee, J . P. Gangooly, or Ranada Prasad
Gupta came together with Abanindranath and 0. C . Gangoly
within the Samsad. 9 1 By contrast, the Indian Society of Oriental Art
was born out of a greater sense of exclusiveness and a sharper
demarcation of an ' Indian ' art camp. Within British official circles,
the Orientalists had come to form a clearly separate lobby, defining
their own distinct sphere of priorities in the same way as Havell.
Abanindranath's decision to leave his job at the School of Art had the
full support of the Governor, Lord Carmichael, who looked on the

89 ISOA, Catalogue of the lvfadras Exhibition, February r g r 6.

90 0 . C. Gangoly, Blzarater Shilpa o Amar Katha, pp. r 5 1 -52 ; Abanindranath Tagore, 0 . C.

Gangoly, The Marquis of Zctland, and James Cousins, ' ISOA : Its Early Days ' - JISOA,
November 1 g6 r . 91 Shilpa o Sahitya, Ashvin 1 3 1 2/ 1 905, p. 1 20.
 The making of a new ' Indian ' art
Society of Oriental Art as the main alternative forum for the
functioning of the new art movement. 92
The Society's two chief activities were the organisation of annual .
exhibitions of the work of Abanindranath and his students, and the
holding of periodic talks and discussions on Oriental art. The
collection of specimens of I ndian art from all over the country, the
patronage of ' traditional ' painters and sculptors, the circulation of
various international art journals and books among its members, and
participation in the London I ndia Society's projects for the docu­
mentation of ancient I ndian art were also part of its programme.
Three of Abanindranath's best students, Nandalal Bose, Asi t Haldar
and Samarendranath Gupta, were sponsored by the Society to
accompany Lady Herringham on her tours of the Ajanta caves
during the winters of I 9 I o and I 9 I r . Moving beyond the scope of
Abanindranath's Nlughal, Persian and Japanese techniques, the
Calcutta art movemen t now discovered in the Ajanta paintings a new
stylistic option, and located in it the high-poin t of I ndia's ' classical '
heritage.
An organisation like the Society of Oriental Art underlined the
extent to which the whole phenomenon of' national art ' had come to
rely on the support and accolades of the European Orien talists. I n
the English and Anglo- I ndian press of the time, Abanindranath was
seen as the ' discovery ' of Havell, and i t was Havell who was ascribed
the role of founder and guiding spirit of the new school of painting.
Abanindranath was quite willing to acquiesce in this attribution,
referring to Havell as his guru. 93 The artist found one of his greatest
gratifications in the purchase of his new painting of ' Tissarakshita '
by Queen Mary during the royal visit of I 9 I r . Later, for another
important British patron, Lord Montagu, he undertook to make an
exact copy in water-colours of his famous painting, ' The Passing of
Shah Jahan '.94 Evidently, Abanindranath attached great value to
the judgement and suggestions of European friends and patrons, and
would often wait for the comments of Norman Blount, a frequent
visitor to the dakshiner barandah, before pu tting the final touch to his
paintings. 95
While the artist placed a high premium on Orientalist sanction and
92 ' Shilpa-charcha Sambandhe Smriti-charana '.
93 Letter from Abanindranath to Havell, 20 January, r gog - Havell Papers ( IOLR col­
lection) ; to Rothenstein, 3 July r g r 3 - Rothenstein Papers ( IOLR Collection) .
94 ' Shilpa-charcha Sambandhe Smriti-charana '.
95 0 . C. Gangoly, Bharater Shilpa o Amar Katlza, p p . r o r-2.
 Abanindranath and the ' New School of Indian Painting ' 2 79

approval, the Europeans discovered in his work the signs of ' a truly
national art ', and located in such art the ' safest ' , most acceptable
outlet of Indian nationalism. \tVhat they appreciated most about a
painting like ' Bharat-mata ' was its ' non-political ' quality - what
recommended it most were ' the controlling influences of both art and
religion ' which kep t the artist's nationalism within the safe bounds of
the aesthetic and the spiritual, ridding it of any disruptive political
connotations. 9 6
More than Abanindranath, his following was still more heavily
dependent on this exclusive network of patronage and support of the
Bichitra club and the Society of Oriental Art. The exhibitions
organised by the Society showed a large number of paintings to be on
loan from Abanindranath and Gaganendranath's own collection,
from the Bichitra Gallery Art Committee, and from individuals like
0. C. Gangoly, Rathindranath Tagore, Havell and Coomara­
swamy, Justice and Lady Woodroffe, Lord Carmichael, Blount,
Thornton and another industrialist, W. R. Yule. The trend set by
these buyers infiltrated the collecting pattern of some of the rich
zamindar art patrons, too, for example, J agadindranath Roy of
Natore, Bijoychand Mahtab of Burdwan or P. N. Tagore of the
Pathuriaghata Tagore family.97 But the scale of such purchases
remained rather lirnited . The holding of exhibitions and the
circulation of high-quality reproductions were far more crucial in
spreading the taste for these paintings and in establishing the
consolidated image of the movement.
In the Society's second exhibition of r go8, the English press
identified the emergence of a distinct ' school ' of painting around
Abanindranath and found in it ' the promise . . . of an Indian artistic
renaissance ' . 98 Exhibitions held within the Government School of
Art in I gog and I g I o drew attention in official reports to the
' impressive ' phenomenon of ' Indian-style ' painting in which many
of the students of the school were participating.99 The year r g r o had
marked a climax in the defence and appreciation of Indian art in

96 The Englishman, 30 July r go7.

97 The Burdwan M'iharajas certainly patronised two of the artists of the ' new school ',
classified as ' Modern Moghul ' and ' Modern Bengal ' - Hakim Muhammad Khan and
Rameshwar Prasad. I n contrast to Maharaja Jatindra Mohun Tagore's branch of the
family, which had amassed a vast collection of European art, another branch of the
Pathuriaghata Tagores (that ofRaja Prafullanath Tagore and his sons) patronised the work
of Abanindranath and his young following, right from the start.
98 The Englishman, 30 ]anuary r go8. 99 AGRPI, Bengal, r gog-ro.
 The making of a new ' Indian ' art
Britain. Soon afterwards, in 1 9 1 4, more than two hundred works of
what was termed the ' New Calcutta School ' arrived for their first
international exhibition, first in Paris and then in the Victoria and
Albert Museum in London, followed by displays in Chicag.o and
Tokyo. At the same time, the forging of connections with nationalists,
art critics and connoisseurs in other parts of India brought the
movement widening publicity at home. On the invitation of Annie
Besant and the critic, James Cousins, the Society of Oriental Art
repeated its Calcutta exhibition in Madras in February r g r 6, and
again in Madras and Bangalore in I g I 8. 100 Through this spreading
network of exhibi tions and patronage, mostly European, the move­
ment stood confirmed in its standing as India's most authentic new
' national art ' .
Parallel to the exhibitions ran the other project of issuing
reproductions of the paintings. The aim was to purge public taste by
bringing into play a superior print culture as an alternative to the
oleographs ofRavi Varma and Bamapada Banerjee and the standard
run of book illustrations. The new prints, like the new language of art
criticism, were intended to reach out to a specially cultivated ' art
public ' , to screen them off from the average consumers of cheap
pictures. The two magazines of Ramananda Chatterj ee, Prabasi and
The Modern Review, had already successfully set the trend. The
popularity of these pictures led to the publication of sets of reprints
from The Modern Review office which were sold separately as Chatterjee's
Picture Albums . Ramananda Chatterjee expressedly disavowed any
intention of imposing tastes ; rather, he believed that the aesthetic
education of the public would lie in the exercising of ' independent
powers of appreciation and criticism ', in allowing ' the imaginative
and idealistic force ' of the paintings to appeal to the individual
mind . 101 Yet, all along, there was the fundamental conditioning of
opinion that these pictures were the most superior form of ' art ' on the
market.
Within the circles of the Indian Society of Oriental Art, it was fel t
that U. Ray's technique of colour printing (although the most
advanced in the immediate scenario) could not do full justice to the
subtleties and intricacies of the Abanindranath style. So, the Society
had some of Abanindranath's and Nandalal's paintings sent to Japan
for colour prints to be made from wood blocks ; simultaneously, new
100
ISOA, Catalogue of the Madras Exhibition, I g I 6, pp. 7- I 2 .
10 1 Publisher's Foreword - Chatterjee's Picture Album, No. 1 .
 Abanindranath and the ' New School of Indian Painting ' 28 r

lots of reproductions ( chromo-collotypes, sepia platinotypes and

photogravures) were ordered from the London engraver firms of
Emery Walker and Carl Hentschel, and the photographic firm of
Johnston and Hoffman in Calcutta. A wide range of such prints of
both the ' new school ' of painting and specimens of traditional I ndian
art was put up for sale during the exhibitions. The colour print now
came to acquire almost the same rarified aura as the work of art : it
could fetch as high a price as five rupees for single wood-block
reproductions of paintings. The status of individual ' masters '
achieved by Abanindranath and his foremost pupil, Nandalal, was as
clearly demarcated by the prices of their original work as by the
prices of their prints - equally clear was the prestige that surrounded
the collection of Kangra paintings of Coomaraswamy, the collotype
prints of some of these being priced as high as ten or fifteen rupees
each.102 While the sale of paintings continued to be very restricted,
the wood-block prints of Abanindranath's and Nandalal's paintings
sold out at the Madras exhibition of r g r 6, with orders being placed
for more. The prints, despite their high price vis-a-vis other picture
prints on the market, clearly acted as the main agent in disseminating
a taste for the new ' Indian-style ' in middle-class society.
The aesthetic exclusiveness of this new print culture also entered
the realm of book illustrations. During the I 87os and 8os, the entry
of art-school artists and Western techniques in the field had created
a new tier of illustrated books and magazines that stood mid-way
between the cheap Bat-tala publications and the lavishly produced
art books of European presses. A book like Myths of the Hindus and
Buddhists ( r g r 3 ) , compiled jointly by Coomaraswamy and Nivedita,
used the artists' visualisation of scenes from the Ramayana, 1\!Iahab­
harata and thejatakas (example, Figure 76) as an integral part of the
book's retelling of the stories, to highlight the central place of this
mythology in the I ndian ethos and to proj ect these artists as the most
' appropriate ' interpreters of this collective tradition. 103 Sets of the
thirty-two colour illustrations in the book by Abanindranath,
Nandalal, Kshitindranath Majumdar, Surendranath Kar, Asit
Haldar and K. Venkatappa were sold separately, and must have had
many more buyers than the book. Coomaraswamy's Buddha and the
Gospel of Buddhism ( r g r 6) was again accompanied by Abanindranath
and Nandalal's illustrations on the life of Buddha. And Macmillan's
102 ISOA, Catalogue of the Madras Exhibition, r g r 6.
103 Coomaraswamy and Nivedita, Nfyths of the Hindus and Buddhists (London r g r 3 ) , p. vi.
 The making of a new ' Indian ' art

Fig. 76 K. Venkatappa, ' Bridging over to Lanka ', illustration from the Ramayana
in Coomaraswamy and Nivedita's Myths ofthe Hindus and Buddhists (Calcutta, 1 9 1 3 ) .

first editions ofRabindranath Tagore's The Crescent Moon ( I g i 3 ) ( the

poet's own translation of his anthology of children's poems, Shishu,
and Gitanjali and Fruit Gathering ( I g i g ) (W. B. Yeats' translation)
were also replete with colour illustrations in the new style of painting.
Within the Bengali book market, the main initiative in u tilising the
work of the ' Aban-panthi ' painters as book illustrators was under­
taken, once more, by Ramananda Chatterjee. The Prabasi Karya­
laya, the Kuntaline press, and the colour-printing firm of U. Ray &
Sons had come to represent the cream of Bengali publishing during
these years. A new expurgated edition of the Ramayana (a censored
version of a Bat-tala text) , designed specifically for ' respectable
family reading ', published from these offices in I gog- I o/04 was
illustrated with block-processed prints of the ' superior ' paintings of
modern I ndian artists, drawing on both the Academic school of Ravi
Varma and M . V. Dhu randhar and the Oriental school of Abanin­
dranath and his students. The maximum number of illustrations in
this volume was contributed by Upendrakishore Ray Chowdhury
(U. Ray) : the pioneer print-maker, writer of children's stories and a
104 Ramnanda Chatterjee, ed., Sachitra Krittivas Rachita Saptakanda Ramayana (Calcutta,
I gog- I o) - advertisement in the first edition.
 Abanindranath and the ' New School of Indian Painting ' 283

Fig. 7 7 Upendrakishore Raychowdhury, Illustration to the tale of the Seven Princes

in Hindusthani Upakatha (Calcutta, I g I 2 ) . The scene of the fight between Tasma Shah
and the city-dwelling ogre.

painter working broadly within the folds of the new art movement. 105
His famous collection of tales, Tuntunir Boi, came out in I 9 I O from his
own press, illustrated by the author's sprightly black and white line
pictures. U pendrakishore's illustrations were also the high-point of
the compilation of folk tales, edited and published by Ramananda
Chatterjee, Hindusthani Upakatha ( I 9 I 2 ) . Among his finest work, these
106
For the multi-faceted talents of the man, see - Sukumar Ray, 'The late Mr. U. Ray ' - The
Modem Review, January r g r 6 ; Lila Majumdar, Upendrakishore (Calcutta r g63) .
 The making of a new ' Indian ' art

Fig. 78 Sukumar Ray, Illustration in Sandesh, r g r 6, later used in his book, Abol
Tabol.

illustrations are marked by a lively blend of naturalism and

caricature, pale ' wash ' effects and detailed narrative (Figure 7 7 ) . 1 0 6
The main transformation was occurring in the realm of children's
literature, where the designing of books and the visualisation of fairy
tales became a creative venture in itself, and figured high on the list
of priorities of the artists of the ' new school '. Abanindranath had set
the trend with his first children's books, Shakuntala ( 1 895) and Kshirer
Putul ( I 8g6) , which he illustrated with simple animated drawings,
often showing great stylistic innovatioqs in building up images to
parallel the fantasy narratives. Upendrakishore's daughter, Sukha­
lata Rao followed in the trail of her father and Abanindranath,
combining her talents in painting and illustration with writing and
compiling fairy tales for children. 107 This new wave in illustrated
literature for children crystallised around the publication of the
magazine, Sandesh , rich with stories and pictures, once again from the
press of U . Ray & Sons, in I 9 I 3 . And, perhaps, the finest, most
ingenious illustrations in Bengali children's books, to date, would
come with Sukumar Ray's pictures accompanying his unique
nonsense verse, Abol Tabol ( I 9 2 3 ) (Figure 78) .
106
The paintings for these illustrations are in the collection of :Vfrs Paramita Vishvanathan in
107
Calcutta. See, for example, Sukhalata Rao, Aro Galpo (Calcutta, r g r 6) .
 Abanindranath and the ' JVew School of Indian Painting ' 285

' '
THE FORMULA O F I N D I A N -S T Y L E P A I N T I N G I N C A L C U T TA :
THE MAIN INGREDIENTS O F STYLE AND THEME

The exhibitions and reproductions, the main means of propagation

of the ' new school ', also indicate the kind of work that fell broadly
within its parameters. In its first two decades, the overall picture is
one of a largely collective unit of ' Indian-style ' painting, where
individualised contributions were less important than a set of
common reference points of style, theme and aesthetic ' ideals ' .
Nationalist self-awareness and the example of Abanindranath
Tagore had brought the new exalted attributes of individuality and
creativity to the image of an ' artis t ' . But the making of a movement
demanded that the very issue of independent development be
associated with conformity to a pattern set by the guru and accorded
the status of a new ' national art ' . I n fact, it was its identity as a
collective which made a phenomenon out of the ' new school ' of
painting, and maintained it i n its sense of separateness and seclusion.
Abanindranath, while he had evolved a distinct visual vocabulary of
his own, had been distrustful of laying down any kind of fixed
formulae or grammar for art. 108 Yet, ironically, his following
constructed out of his work a formula of an ' Indian-style ' to counter
the established formula of the \IVestern Academic style.
The breaking away from Western techniques of oil painting and
Academic realism seemed to leave the field open for drawing on a
variety of traditional O riental and I ndian art forms. But, seen as a
whole, it was a tendency towards standardisation rather than
innovation which came to dominate Abanindranath's ' new school '
of painting. I ts sense of distinction vis-a-vis the Ravi Varma brand of
Academic painting was linked as much to the devising of a new
pictorial style as to the emergence of a new language of aesthetic
discourse. The critic's rhetoric found its main substance and
affirmation in the visual form evolved by these painters. There was,
however, a fundamental paradox in this co-relation of form, critical
discourse and nationalist ideology, that limited the scope of this
' Indian ' art movement from the outset. Following the model of
Abanindranath's early experiments, the structure that emerged for
' Indian-style ' painting was in tended to be a conscious vehicle of the
new aesthetics : to impart to the theme its special imaginative,

10 8 ' Shilpa o Bhasha ' in Bageshwari Shilpa-prabandlzavali, pp. so-s t .

 The making of a new ' Indian ' art
idealistic and ' Indian ' dimensions. Yet the nature of art criticism
would mystify the concrete issues of style and technique ; and form in
a painting tended to get crushed under the overbearing weight of
emotions and ideas.
It followed, thus, that a large number of paintings that poured out
under the auspices of Abanindranath's art movement were typecast
into a set stereotype of ' I ndian ' painting. One of the prime
trademarks of this new style was the ' wash ' . Later, in the I g2os,
traditional I ndian techniques like gouache or tempera and the use of
earth pigments would be revived by artists like Nandalal Bose,
particularly in his mural painting projects. But in the first phase of
the movement, painting after painting repeated the technique of the
' wash ' , using either soft, subtle monotones or dense, murky swathes
of colour. Figures, shadowy and evanescent, stood more as expres­
sions of a mood or an idea than suggestions of concrete beings. The
effect of the ' wash ' was often to underplay the story, remove the
specificity of the physical environment, and focus on frail, delicate
figures, wrapped up in the shadows.
The picture which fully epitomised these characteristics was
Nandalal Bose's famous painting of ' Sati ' (c. I 90 7 ) (Figure 7 9) . 1 0 9
Out of a soft blend of rust and glowing orange, emerge the wispy
contours of the woman. To contemporary critics and aesthetes, the
image became a symbol of a glorious ' Hindu ideal of womanhood ',
of its attributes of tranquillity, selflessness and sacrifice. 110 The
painting provided the vital visual reinforcement to the Orientalist
and nationalist discourse, which placed women at the centre of i ts
construct of the spirituality and transcendence of the ' Indian ' ethos.
I ts appeal, particularly to admirers of Indian art in the West, was
closely tied up with Coomaraswamy's rhetorical pamphlets on The
Oriental View of Woman ( I 9 I o) and Sati : A Vindication of the Hindu
Woman ( I 9 I 3) , where the act of Sati was glorified as ' Eternal Love ',
representing the most sacrosanct image of Indian womanhood. 111
Reacting against the colonial reformist declamations that pointed to
the barbarism and cruelty of the act, the projection of the ' real
spiritual essence ' of Sati became synonymous with the assertion of the
109
The image could allude either to Sita's ordeal by fire after her return from captivity ; or to
Parvati as ' Sati ', killing herself when her father Daksha insulted her husband, Shiva. In a
modern nineteenth-century version of the latter story (the ' Kasi Khanda ' of the Skanda
Purana) , Sati is said to have committed herself to fire.
110 Nivedita's notes in The Modern Review, April 1 908, pp. 369-70.
111 Coomaraswamy, Sati : A Vindication of the Hindu Woman (London, 1 9 1 3}, pp. 6-g.
Abanindranath and the ' New School of Indian Painting ' 287

Fig. 79 Nandalal Bose, ' Sati ' (water-colour, c. r go 7 ) .

 The making of a new ' Indian ' art

Fig. 8o Nandalal Bose, ' Gandhari ' (water-colour, c. 1 90 7 ) .

' Oriental ' point of view . Such images of virtue, stoicism and
martyrdom of I ndian women in legend and history would frequent
these paintings, using similar effects of the ' wash ' - as in Nandalal's
portrayal of ' Gandhari ', who is said to have blind-folded herself in
sympathy with her blind husband, Dhritarasthra (Figure 8o) .
The subtleties of colour, more than the intricacies of line, seemed
better equipped to load a painting with ' inner ' meanings. However,
alongside the ' wash ' , an emphasis on a delicate contouring of forms
and a rhythmic flow oflines became another prominent characteristic
of the ' new school ' . This was reflected most strongly in the stylised
drawing of anatomies : in the curved and fluted contours oflimbs and
figures, and in the mannerisms of postures. vVhile the solid structuring
of oil paint was replaced by the lightness of the ' wash the forms ',

retained a more muted sense of volume and a wispy, miniaturised

 Abanindranath and the ' JVew School of Indian Painting ' 289

Fig. 8 r Nandalal Bose, 'Jagai-Madhai ' , the two drunken sinners who were
converted to Vaishnavism (drawing, c. 1 907-8 ) .

variety of ' natural ' appearances. Line and tone blended, often, to
contribute to delicate and supple figure drawing - once again,
Nandalal's provides one of the best examples in his study of 'Jagai­
Madhai ' , which recalls the sharpness and precision of Mughal
miniature drawings (Figure 8 I ) . Such spatial compositions with fine
outlined drawing, detailed ornamentation and highly mannered
postures and expressions became most typical of the paintings of
Kshitindranath Majumdar, as we see in this early picture of Radha
and Krishna (Figure 82) and in his large output oflater paintings on
the life of Chaitanya . 1 1 2
11 2 0 . C. Gangoly, Ll!fodern Indian Artists : Kslzitindranatlz J'vfajumdar ( I SOA, Calcutta, r g2 r )
contains several collotype reproductions of the artist's early work.
 The making of a new ' Indian ' art

Fig. 82 Kshitindranath Maj umdar, Radha and Krishna (water-colour, c. r 920) .

I n most of the paintings of the school, the combined need to impart

to forms both a curvilinear quality and an emotive overtone
converged on certain standardised conventions of facial features,
expressions and gestures. The same formula for the evocation of
bhava-vyanjana recurred in these paintings - the same arching of
 Abanindranath and the ' }lew School of Indian Painting ' 29 r

Fig. 83 Nandalal Bose, Shiva drinking the world's p01son (water-colour,

c. r g r o- r s ) .

eyebrows, the same dreamy expressions i n elongated, heavy-lidded

eyes, the conventional tri- bhanga inflexion of the figure, and the
swaying gesticulations of arms. While some of these conventions
could be classified as traditionally ' I ndian ' , they were also seen to be
essential in the creation of ' introspective images ' that were said to be
the true stuff of ' Indian ' art. Thus, Nandalal's representations of
Shiva, like ' Shiva drinking the World's Poison ', an elegant exercise
in contoured drawing (Figure 83 ) , were said to convey the heights of
' meditative abstraction ' .113 Within more narrative compositions,
similar stylisations of figures tended to freeze the episode around a
rarified mood or a moment. And, only too often, the conceptu­
alisation of figures degenerated into stiff affectations of expression
and demeanour, forcing limbs into contrived postures, dousing the
image in a cloying sentimentality. Abdur Rahman Chughtai's
compositions of the first years, with their recurrent images of
113 0 . C. Gangoly, ' A New Contribution to Shaivite Art ' - Rupam, January 1 92 1 , p. 5·
 The making of a new ' Indian ' art

flickering lamps and swooning women, cannot rise above such crass
mannensms.
The extent to which this reconstruction of an ' Indian-styl e ' drew
its formal vocabulary from traditional schools of I ndian painting and
sculpture is difficult to determine. I n the creation of a new ' national
art ' that was uniquely the work of modern Indian artists, tradition as
embodied in the patterns of mythology and iconography was seen to
provide the essential moorings in an I ndian ' racial ideal ' .114 Thus the
images of Shiva in Nandalal's paintings were equated not directly
with the forms but more vaguely with the same ' ideals of conception '
of the sculpture of Ellora, Elephanta and Mamallapuram.
More specific co-relations of style emerged, at times, between the
' traditional ' and the ' modern ' , particularly in the context of the
influence of Ajanta paintings . Nandalal's reverential attitude towards
Aj anta was a part of the polemics of a ' spiritual ' initiation into
tradition.115 Painted in the immediate wake of the artist's study-tour
of the caves, his experiments with a set of Ramayana paintings in
tempera were directly associated with ' the style of painting of
Ajanta ' . 116 There was clearly a shift in these paintings from the misty,
tonal ambivalences of the ' wash ' to a flat, linear, colour-specific
treatment and a narrative structure. Nandalal's famous painting of
' Parthasarathi ', depicting Krishna as Arjuna's charioteer ( c. I g I 2)
captures more subtly the ambience of Aj anta, even as it repeats the
monotone colouring of the ' wash ' and the delicate outlining of forms
(Figure 84) . The rich texture of earth colours in Aj anta - the
profusion of rusts and browns - mark many of his other paintings of
this period. However, what the tradition of Ajanta seemed to
contribute to the new style was mainly a flow and rhythm oflines and
a set of stylised conventions for facial features and postures. I n time,
the paintings of Ajanta and Bagh would have their most direct
prescriptive impact in establishing a formula for ' Oriental drawing '
in the set of line drawings compiled by Nandalal, called Rupavali.
These set out before students an ' Indian ' model for the drawing of
faces, posturing of bodies, gesticulation of hands and feet, or the
designing of ornaments and hair-dos.
114
t t
'b 'd ., pp. 8-g.
115
Asit Haldar recalled how Nandalal took a formal religious initiation (diksha) from Griffith's
copies of Ajanta, and began painting in that mode - Rabitirthe, p. 34·
11 6
' Chitra-parichay ' - Prabasi, Bhadra I 3 I 8/ 1 9 I I , p. 538.
 Abanindranath and the ' .New School of Indian Painting ' 2 93

Fig. 84 Nandalal Bose, ' Parthasarathi ' (water-colour, c. r g r 2) .

More than Ajanta, what featured with greater prominence and

regularity in exhibitions as examples of ' old Indian art ' were
miniature paintings, mainly of the Nlughal and Pahari schools of the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.117 As in Abanindranath's
work, these miniatures came to provide a main pattern for emulation
in the making of the ' Indian-style ' . In the first years of the movement,
1 17
Such Mughal and Pahari paintings, from the Government Art Gallery and the personal
collection of the Tagores, were abundantly on display in the ISOA exhibitions of 1 907,
1 908 and 1 9 1 0.
2 94 The making of a new ' Indian ' art
the stereotype of ' I ndian ' painting came to be immediately associ­
ated with a reduction in the size and scale of the composition, a
miniaturisation of forms, and an emphasis on intricate, ornamental
details. The bold stylisation or the flatness and brightness of colours .
of early manuscript paintings and medieval Raj asthani miniatures
made little impact on this style : this aspect of the heritage of I ndian
painting was still to be fully discovered and given its proper slot in the
structure that had emerged for Indian art history.118 Rather, certain
selective aspects of Mughal and Pahari painting - the muted tones
and delicate naturalism of the former, combined with the costumes
and typical appearances of Nayikas in the latter - were picked up and
assimilated within the new style. Paintings like Sailendranath Dey's
' Yashoda and Krishna ' (Figure 85) shows a typical example of such
an assimilation, combined with elements of Pre-Raphaelite and Art
Nouveau patterning in the treatment of drapery.
The cross-section of paintings picked out to outline the main
stylistic features of ' Indian ' painting show clearly the preponderance
of mythological and literary themes in such work. The strongly
illustrative orientation of such painting was compounded by the kind
of criticism and aesthetic propaganda that grew around it - which
had its main focus on the themes depicted, and on certain moral and
emotional values gleaned out of the themes. Yet in the propagation
of the movement, the importance of what was painted was seen to be
integrally linked with the way in which it was represented. Outside
the defined bounds of the new style, ' Indian ' themes - subjects from
Hindu epics and myths, classical literature, and local customs and
rituals - pervaded the whole milieu of art activity. However,
nationalist ideology in art created its special equation between
mythology, an ' Indian-style ', and an exclusive notion of artistic
achievement. Highlighting the contrast with Ravi Varma, the new
style was constantly associated with a heightening of the aesthetic
and didactic thrust of the themes - with an infusion of the right
degree of ' reticence ', ' idealism ' and lyric imagination into the
visualisation of Indian ' classical ' subjects.
Couched in the vocabulary of the ' Indian-style ', a range of mythic
and religious themes - episodes from the Ramayana and the
Mahabharata, the lives of Krishna and Buddha, local Bengali
us Coomaraswamy's pioneering study of Rajput painting in 1 9 1 6 was still largely weighted
towards the ' Pahari ' paintings of the Jammu and Kangra valley of the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries. The priority of these over the earlier, more folkish genre ofRajasthani
manuscript illustrations of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries is also borne out in the
range of illustrations used - see, Rajput Painting, Vol. I I (Plates) .
 Abanindranath and the ' New School of Indian Painting ' 2 95

Fig. 85 Sailendranath Dey, Yashoda and Krishna (water-colour, 1 9 1 3 ) .

 The making of a new ' Indian ' art

Fig. 86 Surendranath Kar, ' Hiranmayi bidding farewell to Purandhar ', an

illustration of Bankim Chandra Chatterjee's novel Yugalanguriya (The Two Rings).
An example, also, of an attempt at incorporating the composition of Pahari
miniature paintings, in the architectural setting and the posturing of figures.
 Abanindranath and the ' New School of Indian Painting ' 29 7

legends like that of Behula and Lakshinder, or ancient fables like the
Vetalpanchavimshati (tales of Vikramaditya) - served to create a new
I ndian iconography. The artist, like the critic, was strongly in the
grips of a literary sensibility : the imagery he created drew much of its
substance from the lyrics and descriptions in the contemporary new
literature of Bengal. Some of the paintings by Nandalal and
Surendranath Kar served directly as illustrations of scenes from
Bankimchandra's stories, Indira, Radharani and Yugalanguriya (Figure
86) . 119 While they tapped ancient religious and epic texts, the
paintings often derived more from the contemporary literary
representations of mythic or historical themes. Sukhalata Rao's
painting of' Srimati ' is an example, where the theme was traced back
to the Buddhist text, Avadana Shataka, but associated more directly
with Rabindranath's poem on the subject, called ' Pujarini ' . 120
One of the specialities of artists like Asit Haldar was to work on
poetic metaphors and allegories, linking them frequently with
Rabindranath's lyrics, occasionally investing them with independent
evocative titles. Such paintings left ample room for the critic to
launch elaborate literary expositions on the theme, and on its
abstract philosophical implications, whereby the picture itself came
to be treated like a poem. In some of Asit Haldar's other paintings
illustrating Rabindranath's poems, the image of the poet himself was
used as a visual metaphor and made a part of the lyric iconography
of this ' new school ' of painting. 1 2 1 The imagery of Rabindra-sangeet
also featured prominently in the work of some of the lesser artists of
the school, like Charuchandra Roy. A Cupid-like figure with a bow
and arrow, used as a seasonal allegory for spring, in his painting,
' Phalguni ' , shows the continued intrusion of hybrid Victorian
imagery in the work of these painters (Figure 8 7 ) . However, its
association with lines from a song by Rabindranath provide the
picture with its familiar ' Indian ' content. The appendage of lyrics
from songs and poetry became one of the main ways of exalting the
value of the artist's images, either by locating these within a narrative
or reading into these a range of loaded metaphorical meanings. For
example, couplets from the Rubai'yat of Omar Khayyam conj ured an
atmosphere of Persian exoticism and mystique around Chughtai's
119
These paintings were published with J. D. Anderson's English translation of Bankim-
chandra's stories, Indira and Other Stories (Calcutta, I 9 I 8).
12 0
' Chitra-parichay ' Prabasi, Bhadra I 3 I 7 I I 9 I o, pp. 505-6.
-

121
E .g., two studies of Rabindranath by the artist, with captions from his poems - Prabasi,
Baisakh 1 32 I I I 9 I 4.
 The making of a new ' Indian ' art

Fig. 87 Charuchandra Roy, ' Phalguni ' (Spring ) , (water-colour, c. rg r s- r 6 ) . The

painting was reproduced with the following lines from one of Rabindranath's songs
on spring : ' Gandhay udas hawar mata oray tomar uttari, Kamay tomar krishnachurar manjari '
(Your scarf blows like the wind intoxicated by the scents of spring, and buds of the
krishnachura flowers adorn your ears).
 Abanindranath and the ' New School of Indian Painting ' 299

images of veiled women, fading lamps and scattered petals. It is not

cl�ar though whether the quotations from poems came from the
artists themselves, or whether they were later additions by critics and
editors to help in the propagation of these paintings.
Running through all these themes, the recurrent motif in these
mythic and poetic allegories was the female figure. As in the bulk of
the paintings produced by I ndian artists of the time, women served
as the most potent symbols of myth, religiosity, tradition and ' Indian­
ness ' . However, the switch from the so-called Western Academic to
an ' Indian ' style made for significant transmutations in the form and
content of the imagery. The abhorrence of full-bodied realism meant
a wider negation of physical presence and sexuality, and the creation
of more esoteric, value-loaded images. I n their frail, floating and
mannerised forms, these desexualised figures of ·women became
emblematic, not merely of tradition, but of all the idealistic and
transcendental values construed around the new notion of ' I ndian '
art. The choice of themes from mythology centred largely on certain
ideal feminine types, exemplifying certain ideal ' feminine ' qualities :
like gentleness and dignity, stoicism and self-sacrifice, reticence and
spirituality. The overriding power of devotion to the husband or the
Lord seemed to make female characters such as Sita, Gandhari,
Shakuntala or Srimati the choice subjects for ' art ' , in the heightened
romantic and idealised sense of the term. For their very denial of self
apparently helped project the primacy of the idea and emotion
behind the appearance.
Apart from its repertoire of female images, the ' new school of
I ndian painting ' was also attributed with overtly ' feminine ' quali­
ties. I ts interpretation of mythological or literary episodes converged
more on moods of tenderness, compassion and romantic love than of
high drama or grand spectacle. 122 Outside myth and allegory, so far
as the painters drew on themes from everyday life, they turned mostly
to local Bengali festivals, rituals and village scenes, identifying in
these an atmosphere of unchanging tradition and a pristine ' women's
world ' . N andalal Bose's paintings like ' Paush-Parban ' and ' Shash­
thi-puj a ', or Mukul Dey's painting of women bathing in the river
during a lunar eclipse (Figure 88) provides some typical examples.
Another stereotyped romantic image of a Bengali woman with a
1 22
The emphasis on the ' feminine ' comes through in a debate over Nandalal's painting,
' Ahalya ', in a rejoinder to Nivedita 's criticism that the figure of Rama, here, was too
effeminate - The Modem Review, May 1 9 1 0, pp. 5 1 5, 60 1 -2 .
300 The making of a new ' Indian ' art

Fig. 88 Mukul Dey, ' Tarpan ', vVomen bathing in the river during a lunar eclipse
(etching based on a water-colour, c. 1 9 1 7- I 8 ) .
 A banindranath and the ' New School of Indian Painting ' 30 r

pitcher of water, by Mukul Dey, had the title, 'Jamunar Pathe ' (To
the Yamuna) , weaving in the association ofRadha, the river of whose
destination was the Yamuna ; at the same time, the use of Rabin­
dranath's lyrics also transformed the figure into an auspicious symbol
of goddess Lakshmi, personifying good luck and plenitude. 123
It was also around such mythologised emblems of womanhood
that critics were most prone to construct nationalist interpretations
and analogies. Abanindranath's paintings of the ' Feast of Lamps '
and ' Bharat-mata ' stand as striking instances of the way allegorical
images of the ' feminine ' were made to invoke the idea of the
motherland. In a case of a more contrived interpretation, one of
Chughtai's standardised images of a veiled woman with a flickering
lamp was given the title, ' Amader Jatiya Neta ' (' Our National
Leader ' ) i n the Prabasi reproduction of r g r 8 . Imputing into the
painting a critique of nationalism, Charuchandra Bandopadhyay
interpreted the veiled woman as a symbol of the feebleness and self­
indulgence of India's national leaders : the veil, · an indication of a
shroud of ignorance and inactivity ; the flickering lamp, a metaphor
of the fading light of the nationalist struggle ; and the buzzing fire­
flies, representatives of the worthless people attracted to the
struggle. 124 Once again, what emerges is a social model of femininity,
with the ' feminine ' attributes, here, associated with negative
connotations of self-indulgence rather than self-sacrifice, trivialities
rather than high ideals.

' '
THE CO M MUNITY OF INDIAN A R TISTS : A R T AS A NEW

VOCATION

This turn-over in styles, themes and metaphorical interpretations

came to constitute the essence of the ' new school ' , giving it its
consolidated image. The force of the art movement also lay in
grouping together a broad collective of artists - a conglomeration of
well-known and lesser names, of' modern ' and ' traditional ' painters.
During Abanindranath's tenure at the School of Art, there had
grown around him an immediate inner circle of artists who formed
the main core of the movement. By the second decade of the century,
the circle was considerably widening to include a larger second tier of
painters, many of whom emerged out of the informal art class at the
123
The original painting is in the collection of Sumitendranath Tagore.
124
' Chitra-parichay ' - Prabasi, Bhadra 1 32 5/ r g r S.
30 2 The making of a new ' Indian ' art

Fig. Bg Gaganendranath Tagore, ' A ·wrong Combination : Dance of the

Emancipated Bengalee lady ', caricature from Adbhut Lok (Realm of the Absurd)
(Calcutta, r g r 8) . A caricature of the grossly misfitting demeanour of westernised
Bengali women.
 Abanindranath and the ' }lew School of indian Painting · :)U:3

Bichitra studio. Some like Mukul Dey or Manindra Bhushan Gupta

were products of Rabindranath's Brahmacharya Ashrama school at
Santiniketan, where Asit Haldar was placed in charge of teaching
from r g r r . 1 25 Others like Chughtai, said to belong to a traditional
Persian family of painters and sculptors whose ancestry could be
traced back to the Mughal period, was a student of the Mayo School
of Art, Lahore, where he came to be taught by Samarendranath
Gupta from r g r 8 . 1 2 6 As the circle of students and adherents to the
' school ' expanded, the movement presented an overall picture of
flexibility and widening reach ; it accommodated certain individu­
alist, innovative trends even as it perpetuated a general stan­
dardisation of work. Within its standing as a broadly collective unit,
it is possible to trace the different ends of the spectrum - from the
individual ' masters ' to a new stock of commercial artists and
illustrators, from ' modern ' artists recreating an ' Indian-style ' to
' traditional ' painters contributing their inherited skills to the
demands of the modern movement.
The artist who held his ground most indepen0en tly, though his
work was exhibited and propagated on the same platform as that of
Abanindranath's following, was Gaganendranath Tagore. 12 7 S tudies
of his work have repeatedly emphasised the marked individuality of
his development and his freedom from the pervasive influence of the
Abanindranath style, even though he was closely involved with all
the wider facets and activities of the movement. Interestingly, of all
of Gaganendranath's oeuvre, the pain tings which were on display in
the exhibitions of 1 9 1 4 and 1 9 1 6 were those which conformed most
closely to the set-mould of ' Indian-style ' painting. His series on the
life of Chaitanya (c. r g r o- r 4) , in keeping with the strong devotional
sentiments associated with the theme, succumbed to some of the
typical mannerisms of the ' school ' . They stand contrasted with the
boldness and vigour of his Japanese-style brush paintings of roughly
the same period, where elements of the mysterious are absorbed
within a broadly impressionistic sketching technique based on direct
visual experience - as evident in some of his early portraits, his ink
125
Asit Haldar, ' Shilpaguru Abanindranather Shishya o Nati-shishyabarga ' - Bichitra,
126
I 335/ I 928. Kamal Sarkar, Bharater Bhaskar o Chitrashilpi, p. 6o.
127
On Gaganendranath, see Amina Kar, ' Gaganendranath Tagore ' - Lalit Kala Contemporary,
No. 6, April I g67 ; Ratan Parimoo, (his extensive analysis of Gaganendranath's paintings
is seen by the author to be the chief value of his study of the three Tagores) ; Mohanlal
Gangopadhyay, Gaganendranath (Calcutta, I 973) ; Kamal Sarkar, Rupdaksha Gaganendranath
(Calcutta, I g86).
 The making of a new ' Indian ' art

Fig. go Gaganendranath Tagore, ' The Artist Passing Away into the Other World ' ,
Cubist composition (water-colour, c . 1 920-2 5 ) .

studies of crows, rooftops and street scenes, and his illustrations of

Jorasanko interiors in Rabindranath's Jeevan-Smriti ( 1 9 1 2 ) (Ex­
ample, Figure 6o ) . From 1 9 1 5- 1 6, the artist steadily broke out of
all self-conscious demands of I ndian-ness of styles or themes, moving
into a new lively genre of caricatures that bitingly satirised the
hypocrisies and dissipation of his own society (Figure 8g) . 1 2 8 Soon
afterwards, he began his celebrated experiments with prisms, cubes
and refracted planes of light and colour, evoking a world of
somnambulist fantasy in ' cubist ' compositions ( c . 1 92 0-25) , that
were the most strikingly innovative of all his work and unique in the
I ndian art milieu of the time (Figures go, 92 ) .
More strictly within the bounds of the ' Aban-panthi ' group, an
artist like Nandalal Bose could lay equal claim to an independent
creative status. I t would be as unfair to evaluate Nandalal merely in
128
These caricatures were published in two volumes, Virupa Vajra ( I 9 I 7) and Adbhut Lok or
Realm of the Absurd ( I 9 I 8).
 Abanindranath and the ' New School of Indian Painting ' 30 5

terms of his early work, produced under the demands for a new
' national art ' , as it would be to associate Abanindranath only with
the stylistic stereotype of ' Indian ' painting that grew around him . 12 9
His arrival in Santiniketan for the first time in I 9 I 4, his travels with
Rabindranath through the Bengal countryside ( I 9 I 5 ) and all the
way to Japan ( I 9 I 6) , and his a ppoin tmen t to a permanent teaching
post at Santiniketan in I 920 were seen to mark the conclusive
transformation in Nandalal . Weaned away from Abanindranath and
the rarified hot-house atmosphere of ' Indian ' painting, his work
opened up to a fresh vibrancy of drawing and brush-work, bolder
and brighter colours, and a close interaction with his natural
environment. As K . G. Subramanyan has written, ' no longer did he
feel the need for ancient myth and legend to bring poetry into his
work . . . Thereafter, if myth there was, it grew out of common visual
facts, Krishna from a cowherd, Sabari from a tribal maid or an
Arjuna from a village archer.' 130
Such exceptional individual talents had given the movement its
main shape and direction. Its success, however, relied on the drawing
in of a larger, less distinguished rank and file : a host of middle-class
art students and amateur painters who found in ' Indian ' painting a
new vocation and a hobby. At this end of the spectrum were names
like Durgesh Chandra Sinha, Satyendra Narayan Datta, Bipin
Chandra Dey or Kiranmoy Ghosh, of whom little is known except
that they figured as part of the ' New Calcutta School ' in the
exhibitions held by the Society of Oriental Art. 131 There were others
like Charuchandra Ray and Jatindra Kumar Sen, initially working
mainly on images from poems within the broad framework of the
' Indian-style ' , who later made their careers as cartoonists and
illustrators in Bengali journals. 13 2
At a different level, this art movement also reached out to some
' traditional ' painters, whose lineages were located in old artist
families of the Mughal or provincial imperial courts. This was a part
129
For assessments of Nandalal's overall artistic contributions, see - Visva-Bharati Patrika,
Nandalal Number, 1 982 ; Nandalal Bose Centenmy Volume (Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi,
I 982) ; Nandalal Bose, Centenary Exhibition Volume (NGMA, New Delhi, 1 982).
13° K. G. Subramanyan, 'N andalal Bose : A Biographical Sketch ' - Centenary Exhibition Volume,
NGMA, p. 2 I . 1 3 1 Catalogue of the Madras Exhibition, February 1 9 I 6.

132 Cartoons by Charuchandra Roy began to appear, alongside his paintings, in Prabasi from

I 9 I 9 ; and Jatindra Kumar Sen's caricatures featured regularly in Prabasi, Bharatavarsha,

Masik Basumati and Sachitra Shishir in the I 920s. The career of the latter is discussed in a
satirical autobiographical sketch, ' Khanajanmar Atmakahini ' - Sachitra Shishir, Ashvin
1 33 1 / 1 926.
306 The making of a new ' Indian ' art
of the Indian Society of Oriental Art's intended programme of
searching out descendents of old qualams and encouraging them to
resume ' their special line of work ' :133 In most cases, so-called
' traditional ' skills and conventions were hunted out only to be
absorbed within Abanindranath's new qualam of ' Indian ' painting.
Among the first batch of artists of the movement, Hakim Muhammad
Khan and Sami-uz-zaman of Lucknow were both referred to as
' modern Mughal ' painters, and their paintings (depicting scenes
from Persian and Mughal history) described as ' examples of the
Moghul school carried on to the present day ' .134 Though drawn into
Abanindranath's art movement, there persisted a distinct hiatus
between these ' traditional ' painters and their ' modern ' counterparts
- between the inherited skills of the former, and the exclusive social
and creative status of the latter.
This was specially true of the case of Ishwari Prasad Varma, the
lost descendant of a Mughal court artist, who was rescued by Havell
from his job as a designer in a Manchester piece-goods firm in
Calcutta135 and restored to his ' traditional ' skills. Right from the
start, Ishwari Prasad was participating in the exhibitions of the
school, with paintings such as ' Pardanashin ' , a study of a veiled
woman with shadowy swathes of drapery, which conform to the
standardised formula of the ' wash ' . 136 Another painting of ' Shiva
and Parvati on Mount Kailasa ' , akin to Abanindranath's recreated
miniature-style, is more strongly rooted in the provincial Patna
techniques of flat colouring and decorative treatment ( Figure g 1 ) .
And a portrait he painted of Havell blends a miniature style with a
strong naturalistic likeness ( Figure 45) . Yet, despite this fluid
adaptation of old and new conventions in his work, Ishwari Prasad
was never quite acknowledged to be an ' artist ' . The hierarchy was
firmly set within the movement, whereby the artisan painter was
credited with technical expertise in traditional methods of colour
preparation and painting, but not with ' original ', creative talent. 137
Typecast in his capacity, Ishwari Prasad would revert more and
133 Letter from H avell to member of the society,July I 907 - H avell Papers (Rabindra Bhavan
Collection ) .
134 Nivedita's review of the ISOA exhibition - The Modem Review, April I 9 I o.
135 Catalogue of the V & A Exhibition, April I 9 I 4, p. 6.
1 36 This painting was on display in the first ISOA exhibitions of I 907/8, and re l? roduced in
Prabasi the same year.
137 When Asit Haldar in I 9 I I was faced with the option ofbecoming a teacher at the Calcutta
School of Art, he was warned that he would be reduced to a mere ' copyist ' like Ishwari
Prasad and become incapable of ' original ' work - Rabitirthe, p. 3 I .
 Abanindranath and the ' New School of Indian Painting ' 307

Fig. g r Ishwari Prasad, ' Shiva and Parvati on Mount Kailasa ' (water-colour, n. d . ) .

more to replay of a provincial Patna style and ivory painting, ending

up as a restorer of traditional miniature paintings. 138 The transition
and escalation in status was clearer in the case of his son, Rameshwar
Prasad Varma. Even as he reproduced largely the same Bengal
138 Recalled by Dr Mildred Archer who met him in Patna, while she was working on her book,
Patna Painting in the r 940s.
 The making of a neu; ' Indian · art
School style, he went through an art-school training, became a
protege of the Maharaj a of Burdwan, and was even sent abroad in
the I 930s to the Royal College of Art. 139
The gap between the ' modern '. and the ' traditional ' painter was
never fully bridged within the Calcutta art movement. In a sense,
these subtle gradations between individuals and the wider following, ·

between ' original ' creative artists and the skillful imitators of a given
formula, were woven into the whole texture of the movement. These
distinctions, linked as they were to the changed self-image of the new
I ndian artist, reflected also the increasing value placed on the
cultivation of' art ' within Bengali middle-class society at large. In the
new romanticised notions of ' art ' and ' artis t ' , the question of the
right Indian techniques and methods was far less important than that
of the right ' aesthetic disposition ' . So, even as large numbers of artists
repeated what soon became a sterile formula of ' Indian-style '
painting, their sense of participation in a movement helped to keep
up an elevated image of their standing as artists and of the work they
were producing.
The kind of people drawn into Abanindranath's movement suggest
a definite transformation in the attitude to art as a career. Previously,
in the late nineteenth century, the Art School seemed to have
attracted primarily those students who had either no inclination or
the ability to go in for higher education. But, now, there were the
examples of those like Charuchandra Ray and Bireswar Sen, with
exceptionally bright student careers at Presidency College and
Calcutta U niversity, who turned to art as a serious option.140 The
infusion of a sense of a mission and a vocation into the artist's
profession is also evident in the way the movement (its key figures and
supportive institutions) laid out the career patterns of the main core
of Abanindranath's following. These artists were placed as teachers
in the Bichitra studio, the Society of Oriental Art, the Ashrama
school at Santiniketan, and gradually in art schools all over the
country to keep the flag flying for the new Indian art. It was specially
reflected in the gravitation of artists and students towards the art
centre that Rabindranath set up within his new university at
San tiniketan.
Throughout these years, the vocation of an art teacher was being
exposed to the contrary pulls of working for money and working for
139 Kamal Sarkar, Bharater Bhaskar o Chitrashilpi, pp. r 3 r-32.
140
ibid., pp. 6o, r 43·
 Abanindranath and the ' New School of Indian Painting ' 309

a cause : there was a strong wave of anti-professionalism, most

powerfully represented by Rabindranath and his institution, which
reacted particularly against a job in the Government Art Schools.
Among the options open to Asit Haldar on finishing his course at the
School of Art, it was Rabindranath's invitation to come and work at
Santiniketan which was held in highest esteem. The opportunity was
associated with a high point in nationalistic and aesthetic fulfil­
ment. 141 Asit Haldar's arrival in Santiniketan in I 9 I I to take charge
of the teaching of drawing and painting marked the informal
beginnings of Kala-Bhavan. Following Abanindranath's resignation
in I 9 I S, Asit Haldar came briefly to teach ' I ndian ' painting at the
Calcutta School of Art, but was urgently recalled to Santiniketan by
the end of I 9 I g. N andalal's early career shows, still more clearly, the
play of rival claims i n the body of this art movement : between
Abanindranath and Rabindranath, between the Society of Oriental
Art and the new independent enterprise at Santiniketan. In I g i 8,
with the beginning offormal art classes at the Society of Oriental Art,
Nandalal, along with Kshitindranath Majumdar and Sailendranath
Dey, were appointed teachers here on a monthly salary of Rs. 2 00 .
Simultaneously, the school at Santiniketan was exerting a constant
pull on the talents of Abanindranath's prize pupil. Between I g r 8 and
r g2o, Nandalal was shuttling back and forth between the Society of
Oriental Art and Santiniketan, until he finally settled down as
Principal of the newly founded Kala Bhavan. 142
By I 920, the art centre at Santiniketan had come to define its
position as an alternative both to the Government School of Art, and
to European-sponsored institutions like the Society of Oriental Art.
In letters to Asit Haldar, Rabindranath reacted sharply against the
excessive dependence of Indian artists on British official recognition
and European admirers like Rothenstein. 143 The battle to keep
N andalal exposed the undercurrents of tension, provoking references
in Rabindranath to the ' rival movement in Calcutta ' under the aegis
of British authorities. 144 The formal foundation of Kala Bhavan
during r g2o-2 r coincided with an expansion in the scope and
activities of the Society of Oriental Art. Endowed in I 9 I 9 by a
141
Asit Haldar, Rabitirthe, pp. 30-32 .
142
Panchanan Mandai, pp. 485, 5 I 6- q , 537·
143
Letters from Rabindranath to Asit Haldar, I6 September I 929, I 7 April I 939 - Asit
Haldar Papers (Rab1ndra Bhavan Archives, Santiniketan) .
144
Letter from Rabindranath to Havell, 26 September I 9 I 9 - Havell Papers (Rabindra
Bhavan Collection).
3 IO The making of a new ' Indian ' art
generous and recurring Government grant from the new Governor of
Bengal, Lord Ronaldshay, the Society moved to more spacious
premises, began to hold regular art classes, and also started the
publication, from I 920, of the prestigious art journal, Rupam , under
the editorship of 0 . C. Gangoly. This clearly affirmed the growing ·
strength and success of the Orientalist art lobby within the nationalist
art movement. Yet, increasingly, it was the centre at Santiniketan
which was seen as the main repository of nationalist idealism and the
spirit of self-development, of a free atmosphere most congenial to
artistic creativity. 145 The visits of Lord Carmichael and Ronaldshay
to San tiniketan in I 9 I 5 and I 9�:w brought offers of funds : offers
which Rabindranath firmly resisted in the fear of a sell-out. 14 6 For his
infant art school at Kala Bhavan was a part of a wider, non­
conformist experiment with education which thrived on informality,
the lack of routines and regulations, and the independent, all-round
development of the individual.
Art and music were to figure as an integral part of the curriculum
of the new university of Visva Bharati. 147 The teaching of drawing
and painting at Santiniketan, initially, followed a pattern common to
both the Bichitra Studio and the Society of Oriental Art. While the
teachers worked on their own paintings watched by the students, the
Oriental Drawing Books prepared by Havell provided the stage-by­
stage guidelines for free-hand model drawing and decorative de­
signing. The innovative feature of these Drawing Books had been their
emphasis on linear patterns (linearity being associated with a special
quality of Indian art) , Indo-Saracenic architectural design, and
distinctly ' Oriental ' curvilinear forms of obj ects for model study,
combined with a training in the basics of naturalistic drawing. In
time, the curricula of teaching began to place increasing priority on
spontaneity and close interaction with nature . At the primary level,
drawing and painting became a part and parcel of nature study,
drawing its models from local flowers, foliage and animals and simple
objects · of everyday use ; at more advanced levels, the teaching
worked around three conventional sections of ' Original Work ' ,
' Nature Study ' and ' Traditional Copy ', but constantly shifted
1 45 This idea is most forcefully expressed in Rabindranath's letter to Abanindranath, regarding
the latter's recall of Nandalal from Santiniketan to the Society of Oriental Art, n.d.
(c. 1 9 1 8- 1 9) - Abanindranath Papers (Rabindra Bhavan Archives, Santiniketan) . Quoted
by Benodbehari Mukherjee, Chitra Katha (Calcutta, 1 983) , pp. 2 2 1 -22 .
w Panchanan Mandai, pp. 497-98.
147 Rabindranath's lecture, ' Kala Vidya ' - Santiniketan Patrika, Agrahayan 1 326/ 1 9 1 9.
 Abanindranath and the ' New School of Indian Painting ' 3r r

students between these sections to keep up their creative enthusiasm

for each kind of work and to allow talent for ' original ' work to
grow.I48
Overall, the whole art movement of Abanindranath and his
following appeared to a stand at a cross-roads at Santiniketan in
I 920. If the formation of Kala Bhavan brought winds of change, a
breath of freshness to the stereotype of ' Indian-style ' painting that
had come to prevail, it also marked the more solid institutionalisation
of the movement. Rabindranath's dissatisfaction with the insular and
closeted nature of art activities at Jorasanko find expression in the
letters he wrote to Abanindranath and Gaganendranath from Japan
in I 9 I 6, exhorting them to move out of their dakshiner baranda and see
the world. 149 His critique was implicitly built into the new future he
foresaw for the Indian art movement, in more open interaction with
nature, crafts and day-to-day living, in his ' international ' university
at Santiniketan. With its centre now in Santiniketan and in the
key figure of Nandalal, Abanindranath's ' New School of Indian
Painting ' entered a fresh phase of expansion, its reach stretching
outwards to various other parts of India. While a number of students
from Madras, Malabar, Guj arat and Punjab came to study at Kala
Bhavan, the first inner core of Abanindranath's students moved out
to head art schools in different parts of India, to give the Bengal
School the semblance of an all-India phenomenon.
As he planned to send his students to art schools in Jaipur,
Lucknow and Andhra Pradesh, Abanindranath referred enthusi­
astically to the scattering of the seeds, the fruits of which would be
gathered by future generations.150 The sense of a ' battle ' still
prevailed strongly in him. To add to continuing criticisms and
challenges within Bengal came Bombay's parallel claims to ' the
revival of Indian art ' in the J.J. School of Art, under a new
programme of mural painting launched by Principal Gladstone­
Solomon from I 9 I 8- I 9 I 9. 151 This reinforced the lines of divide, and
the exclusiveness of the category of ' I ndian ' painting that was the
preserve of Abanindranath and his expanding circle. Antagonisms
kept alive the energy and dynamism of the movement, and fuelled its
1 48 Panchanan Mandai, pp. s6 1-74·
149 Letters from Ral::. indranath to Abanindranath and Gaganendranath, 8 August, 1 9 1 6 -
Abanindranath and Gaganendranath Papers (Rabindra Bhavan Archives Santiniketan) .
15 0 Letter from Abanindranath to Havell, 5 September 1 925 - Havell Papers (IOLR
Collection ) .
1 51 See, W. E. Gladstone-Solomon, The Bombay Revival of Indian Art (Bombay, 1 920).
 The making of a new ' Indian ' art
self-identity as the ' avant-garde ', at the forefront of change and
reform. The ethics of the movement were also still dominated by a
spirit of anti-professionalism, by an abhorrence of the materialist
temptations of money and success. However, Rabindranath's reser­
vations about British patronage or jobs in Government Art Schools
did not prevent the outflow of the ' new school ' of artists to top jobs
in art schools all over the country. In fact, the twenties saw the Bengal
School as the emerging new establishment of I ndian art, trying to
supplant the Western Academic system with its alternative structures
of teaching and patronage. 152
While Nandalal held the fort at Santiniketan and Kshitindranath
Majumdar at the Society of Oriental Art, Sailendranath Dey moved
first to the Bharat Kala Bhavan in Benaras and then to the Jaipur
School of Arts. Between 1 92 0 and 1 925, Asit H aldar moved from one
post of Principal to another : from the Santiniketan Kala Bhavan
( I 920-2 3 ) to the jaipur School of Arts ( 1 923-25) and finally to the
Lucknow School of Art. Samarendranath Gupta was appointed
Assistant Principal of the Mayo School of Art, Lahore as early as
I 9 I 4, and went on to become its first I ndian Principal. I n the south,
the Madras School ofArts appointed as Principal in I 928 Debiprasad
Roychowdhury : the realist sculptor and painter of later years, who
then stood broadly within the folds of the ' new school '. Another
student of the Society of Oriental Art, Promode Kumar Chatterjee
was sent by Abanindranath to teach at the newly founded Andhra
Jatiya Kalashala at Masulipatam in I 92 2 . Like the first Government
Art Schools in India, Abanindranath's art movement, with its own
centres of training, had become an alternative supplier of qualified
personnel to man the teaching and pursuit of art in the country. The
spread of the movement in the twenties was quite spectacular, and
carried with it an articulate sense of a ' mission ' . Contemporary
Bengali journals, as they proudly followed the movements and
careers of these ' Neo-Bengal School ' artists across the country, 1 53
evoked the Bengalis' own mission of improvement and national
regeneration, in replacement of the coloniser's mission.
152
The story of the country-wide diffusion of Abanindranath's following is recorded in Asit
Haldar, ' Shilpaguru Abanindranather Shishya o Nati Shishya-barga ' .
153 See, particularly, the articles b y Gyanendra Mohan Das i n Prabasi ( I 926, I 92 7 ) and Bichitra
( I 926), as cited in bibliography.
 Epilogue
The Twenties

The story of the all-India spread of the Bengal School, and the extent
of the transformations that came about in structures of teaching and
painting in other parts of I ndia lies beyond the scope of this study.
However, in the context of such a diffusion, the implied success and
dominance of Abanindranath's art movement calls for scrutiny - as
do the various complexities and limitations that beset this phenom­
enon of ' national art ' and ' Indian-style ' painting within its
immediate home-grounds. Placing the school within the wider
scenario of artists, art-activity and aesthetic ideas that flourished in
Calcutta in the twenties raises crucial questions about the scope and
spread of the movement. Even in the previous decade, the multiplicity
of ideas, opinions and tastes for art in Bengal suggests one important
conclusion : that the Bengal School circle of artists and critics did not
have a monopoly over nationalism or ' Indian-ness ' , either in what
they painted or in what they wrote and propagated about I ndian art.
The ideology of the movement had revolved around a sense of
uniqueness, in intent and achievemen t . The diversities and diver­
gences that marked the Calcutta art scene during the first decades of
the century served to cordon off the school as a closed and rarified
unit - and questioned the exclusiveness or validity of the type of
' Indian ' art it propagated.
What began as an ' avant-garde ' movemenrl had, in the course of
two decades, become a kind of parallel establishment in itself.
Though its aesthetics openly negated such a stand, the Abanindra­
nath camp, by the early twenties, stood most clearly identified by its
lowest common denominator : by its fixed stereotype of ' I ndian-style '
painting. The collective, unfortunately, had come to be defined by

1 Renato Poggioli, Theory of the Avant-Garde (Harvard, r g68) discusses the dynamisms and
activisms that are essential to the concept of a ' movement ' and the ideology of the ' avante­
garde'.
 The making of a new ' Indian ' art
this standardised unit and its patterns of conformity. To counter the
Western Academic style, the Bengal School offered their own formula
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 success. 2 It was, therefore, inevitable that new innovative trends ·

and more self-conscious waves of modernism in I ndian painting

emerged outside the bounds of the school, defying classification under
its set categories of an ' Indian-style ' .
At one level, the school threw up its own avant-garde, opening up
fresh potential and possibilities in the experiments with I ndian
techniques and in the representations of i ndian mythology. The best
evidence of this is to be found in the direction ofNandalal Bose's work
as he took charge of the Santiniketan Kala Bhavan. While, Nandalal
had earlier contributed most effectively to the prototype of ' I ndian­
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 fou nd i ts outlet in the mural painting
projects he undertook in Santiniketan and elsewhere, culminating in
his famous colourful murals on I ndian life for the Haripura Congress
Session of 1 93 7-38 . 3 I n Nandalal, and in the Santiniketan school that
grew under him, ' national art ' would find a new invigorated life-line,
retaining through institutions and alliances a spirit of continuity with
its earlier phase.
By the early twenties, a sharper break manifested itself in the
evolution of a distinctly original and non-illustrative genre of
painting, that more clearly resisted the demands of nationalism and
an ' Indian-style ' . Gaganendranath Tagore, emerging from the same
forum of Jorasanko, the Bichitra Club and the Society of O riental
Art, was at the vanguard of such powerfully individualistic ventures.
Out of the activities of the Bichitra studio came his novel output of
caricatures (example, Figure 8g) . His experiments with stage designs
and costumes during these years combined with a predilection for
Japanese-style brush painting and deep dusky ' nocturnes ' : together
2 Drawing on the ideas of Poggioli, K. G. Subramanyan has elaborated on the distinctions
between a ' movement ' and a ' school ' - ' Modern Art in India and the vVest ' in Moving
Focus.
3 The paintings for these panels are in the collection of the NGMA, New Delhi. Nandalal's
later work is richly illustrated and discussed in the Centenmy Exhibition Volume, NGMA .
 The Twenties

Fig. 92 Gaganendranath Tagore, ' Dwaraka Puri ' , Cubist composition (water­
colour, c. 1 920-25) .

they converged in his series of ' cubis t ' compositions of the 1 g2os, of
haunted interiors, somnambulist landscapes, veiled women and
mystery figures, with their prismic refractions of light and colour
(Figures go, 92 ) . Rejecting any literary or illustrative crutches even
when their titles contained mythic allusions (as in the painting,
' Dwaraka Puri ' , Figure 92 ) , these paintings revelled in their own
personalised world of fantasy, on the play of abstracted forms, shapes
and shadows.
The criticisms of Benoy Sarkar, with their internationalist and
modernist leanings and their emphasis on the formal language ofart,4
would find their parallel in such new trends - first in Gaganendra­
nath's experiments with ' cu bism ' and, later, in Rabindranath
Tagore's unique brand of doodles, drawings and ink paintings.
Rabindranath had always embodied a strong undercurrent of
discontent and restlessness within the nationalist art movement, even
as he shared in ·its excitements and triumphs, and contributed to its

4 Benoy Sarkar, ' The Aesthetics of Young India '.

 The making of a new ' Indian } art

central literary impulses. He stood, enigmatically, both within and

outside the movement. His departures and criticisms found an
institutional form in his conceptualisation of a model art centre at
Santiniketan. I n personal . terms, his break away is more sharply
apparent in the strikingly independent nature ofhis own late ventures
into drawing and painting, from I 928-29 (during the last deccrde of
his life) . As his pictures grew out of doodles and erasures in his
manuscripts, integrating the text within non-figurative designs, they
appeared dramatically to overhaul the whole concept of paintings as
illustrations of words. Beginning with what seemed almost ' non-art '
in its implication, Rabindranath's work created in time its unique
disquieting array of angular shapes, bizarre beasts and landscapes
(Figure 93) - none of which can be classified by any known school or
stylistic genre. 5
' Modern ' art was seen to have arrived in I ndia with Gaganendra­
nath and Rabindranath Tagore. 6 Definitions of ' modernism ' in the
sphere of Indian art, in particular, have tended to focus on the issue
of cosmopolitanism, revolutionary innovations and open-ness to
contemporary European developments. Certainly, the European
Cubist and Futurist movements set the context for Gaganendranath's
experiments with similar construction and splintering of forms. I t is
by the standards of these parallels that Gaganendranath's ' cubist '
paintings have either been discussed as mere decorative stylisations
and weak ' un-Indian ' imitations 7 ; or they have been attributed with
an independent approach to the technique, with their greater interest
in the problems oflight and space, rather than mass and volume. 8 On
the same lines, an appraisal of the poet's pictures has repeatedly
invoked comparisons with Klee, Kandinsky and Munch, 9 and have
highlighted the importance of the rare exhibition of the work of the

5 Rabindranath's drawing and paintings have been reproduced, sometimes with later
additions oflines from his poems, in two albums, Chitralipi I, II (Calcutta, r go4, r g5 r ) . For
an analyses and evaluation of his paintings, see, W. G. Archer, India and Modern Art ; Ratan
Parimoo ; Drawings and Paintings of Rabindranath Tagore, Centenary Volume (Lalit Kala
Akademi, New Delhi, rg6 r ) .
6 For W. G. Archer, Rabindranath, rather than Gaganendranath was the first supreme

example of a ' modern ' Indian artist. Parimoo has attributed both artists with individual,
but equally strong claims to the pioneering of a modern era in Indian art.
7 Archer, India and Modern Art, p. 43·
8 Parimoo, pp. gg- r oo. Extensive visual juxtaposition of Gaganendranath's paintings with
the works of E uropean contemporaries like Delaunay, Feininger, Franz Marc or the Russian
Constructivist, Rodchenko, while underlining his individual variations, have clearly located
his paintings within an international context.
9 Archer, India and Modern Art, pp. 56-6o.
 The Twenties 317

Fig. 93 Rabindranath Tagore, ' Black Bird ' (Calcutta, rg4o) . The picture appears
with these lines of the poet ; ' The dark takes form in the heart of the white, and
reveals it.'
 The making of a new ' Indian ' art
German Bauhaus group to be organised in Calcutta in I 92 2 , under
the initiative of Rabindranath and Gaganendranath. Both artists, it
is believed, were greatly inspired by this first direct exposure they
probably had to the works of Expressionist and Futurist painters like
Feininger, George Muche, Klee and Kandinsky, in this exhibition. 10
Whatever may have been the precise roots and nature of their
' modernisms ', Gaganendranath and Rabindranath's paintings had
clearly opened the door towards a new wave of international
empathies and affinities in Indian art. In doing so, they anticipated
the main course that modern Indian art would take over the
following years : its outright rejection of the narrow, archaic model of
' Indian ' painting of Abanindranath's followers, and its continuing
dilemma of combining Indian and modern sensibilities, nationalist
and universal values.
However, in Calcutta, during the twenties, such modernist
departures constitu ted only one dimension of the scenario around the
Bengal School, creating a new more exclusive layer of ' high art ' . At
a different end of the spectrum, the limits of the phenomenon of
' national art ' would be set more b y strong and stubborn continuities,
than by any radical or non-conformist breaks. At this level, questions
arise as to how far Abanindranath's art movement had created a dent
within the prevailing structure of art education and Academic art
practice. To what extent had its style and aesthetic values spread
significantly outwards to permeate popular taste and the commercial
art market ? Throughout the heyday of the movement, the Govern­
ment School of Art, Calcutta had remained a forum of Academic and
vocational training. Especially since Abanindranath's resignation
from the school in I 9 I 5, art education and ' national art ' in the city
had run distinctly divergent courses. While ' Indian painting ' was
blocked out and marginalised into a side unit run by Ishwari Prasad,
the art $Chool continued, as before, to produce its usual output of oil
painters, portraitists and draughtsmen and to feed the main
requirements of commercial and professional art in Calcutta.
Abanindranath was replaced in the post of Vice-Principal of the
school by ] . P. Gangooly, who provides one of the best examples of
the parallel flourishing strand of Academic oil painting, with its
strong social and professional niche. 11 Gaganendranath and Rabin­
dranath, even in their radical parting of ways from the Bengal

10 Parimoo, pp. r o r-2, Appendix I I (B) .

11
' Chitrakar Jamini Prakash Gangopadhyay ' ; Kamal Sarkar, Bharater Bhaskar o Chitrashilpi,
pp. r6g-7 r .
 The Twenties
School, had epitomised the same differential, romantic image of the
artist which the movement had propagated . Their non-professional
standing and their very lack of formal training added a charismatic
dimension to the image of their talent and creativity. However, even
the art-school-based westernised art of the time showed its own more
mellowed strands of individualisms and sophistication. J. P. Gan­
gooly, for instance, had come to specialise in a genre of dusky,
atmospheric landscapes and riverscapes, and in romantic studies of
peasant and country life, with a distinct resemblance to the works of
French painters like Millet, Courbet or Jules Breton. With his family
connections with the Tagores, J. P. Gangooly and his brand of
melancholy ' mood ' paintings, notwithstanding their Western style
and medium, could stand within the fluid peripheries of the new art
movement. The first ' At Homes ' and exhibitions organised by the
Society of Oriental Art in I 90 7-8 displayed his oils alongside the
paintings of Abanindranath and Nandalal ; and colour prints of his
paintings would feature regularly in Prabasi and The Modern Review
over the following years.
The case of other successful Academic painters of the time, like
Hemendranath Majumdar, Bhabani Charan Laha or the renowned
portrait painter, Atul Bose, reflected stronger elements of opposition
and resistance to the ' Indianising ' trends of the Havell/ Abanindra­
nath camp. In I 905, Havell's attempts to reform the art-school
curriculum had incited a break away among a group of students and
the formation of an alternative school under Ranada Prasad Gupta
that sought jealously to preserve the tenets of Academic training.
Hemen Majumdar and Atul Bose were both products of this private
institution, the Jubilee Art Academy, the latter moving on to
complete his training at the Government School of Art in I g i 8 . Here,
he availed himself of a ' fine arts ' course that provided extensive
instruction in life study, figure compositions and oil painting. 12
Continuing the trend set by the Calcutta Art S tudio in the I 87os,
this new generation of' gentlemen ' artists also straddled the spheres of
' high ' and ' low ' art in the city, providing a supply of cheap prints,
illustrations and mythological pictures for the mass market. Thus
Atul Bose, in I 920, as he tried to establish his career and credentials
as a portrait painter, offered for sale sets of portraits of ' Indian

12
On Hemen Majumdar, see P. Shome, ' Chitrashilpi Hemendranath Majumdar' - Basumati,
Baisakh-Ashvin I 329/ I 922 and the album of his paintings, edited by the same author
(Calcutta, I 924) . I nformation on Atul Bose's early career and access to his student-day
paintings have been provided by his son, Dr Sanjit Bose.
3 �W The making of a new ' Indian ' art

Fig. 94 Hemendranath M aj umdar, Untitled (wash and tempera, n.d . ) .

 The Twenties 32 1

Leaders ' at moderate prices to a wider clientele. 13 And Hemen

Maj umdar advertised the publication of a series called Ramayana in
Pictures, carrying his own colour illustrations, each set costing two
rupees.14 Both he and Bhabani Charan Laha were helping to
perpetuate the popular Ravi Varma/Bamapada Banerjee model of
I ndian painting, covering the same range of religious and mytho­
logical themes, focusing mainly on sentimental and sensual studies of
women (example, Figure 94) . These images of women, in their
varying moods of langour or states of undress, clearly verged on the
pornographic ; yet, through their suggested identities as wives and
mothers/5 and ideal feminine types, they kept up a respectable
veneer and came to occupy ' legitimate ' areas of middle-class taste.
This genre of women studies, which became the hallmark of Bhabani
Laha and Hemen Majumd ar's paintings, fed straight into the widely
prevalent ' calendar art ' stereotype, spreading through prints,
magazine pictures, illustrations and advertisements, repeating itself
through the work of a host of obscure painters.
Abanindranath's new school of painting, as discussed earlier, had
consciously generated its own print-culture and a different trend of
book illustrations. I t attempted to disseminate a new set of visual
codes and to create a more ' artistic ' public taste. But the continued
prevalence and spread of this other standardised commercial type of
I ndian pictures placed clear limits to the success of the Bengal School
enterprise. There were definite gradations in the spectrum of art
magazines and illustrated books and journals that flooded the market
during the twenties. While publications like Prabasi, The Modern
Review or Rupam stood at the exclusive end of the scale, with their
aesthetic preferences clearly defined and propagated, on the other
side flourished a large body of popular magazines like Bharatavarsha,
Basumati, or Sachitra Shishir, which covered a more fluid undefined set
of tastes.
These latter magazines seemed to have been the main promoters of
the work of Academic painters like Bhabani Laha, Hemen Majumdar
and their many lesser counterparts, publishing a mixed range of
primarily mythological and literary illustrations. A magazine like
Bharatavarsha provides an interesting foil to Prabasi or The Modern

13 Advertisement by professional artists - Journal of the Indian Academy of Art, July, October
I 920. 1 4 ibid., January I 92 I .

15 Hemen Majumdar, i t was claimed, usually used his own wife as a model for all his sensual
studies of women.
322 The making of a new ' Indian ' art
Review, in its parallel proj ect of publishing sets of illustrations and
portfolios of prints. Examples can be seen in its circulation ofBhabani
Charan Laha's illustrations of Bankimchandra's novel, Krishnakanter
Will, and of similar varieties of illustrations by other small-time
painters.16 In striking contrast to Abanindranath's celebrated image
of ' Bharat-mata ' , with its reified identity as an ' aesthetic icon ',
Bharatavarsha featured on its covers Bhabani Charan Laha's visu­
alisation of the motherland as a part of the popular religious
iconography of Ganesh J anani and J agaddhatri, which became the
standard fare of calendar pictures. Dwijendralal Ray's patriotic
poems found their visual motif in similar calendar picture images of
the devi as the mother goddess, rising like a phoenix out of the deep
waters of the ocean, to salvage the nation. Highly popular as they
were, colour reprints of such pictures would be on sale at the
Bharatavarsha office and widely distributed among shopkeepers in
particular.
This spectrum of the ' high ' and the ' low ', the ' refined ' and the
' popular ' certainly heightened ' the sense of distinction ' of the camp
of Oriental art. A survey of the art scene in Calcutta in I 920 shows a
polarisation of middle-class taste between (i) the dominant Bengal
School model of ' Indian ' painting, with some of its creative
variations, and (ii) the other ' westernised ' type of Indian painting,
with its markings of Academic realism, its popular underlayers and
its occasional veering towards more romantic or impressionistic
techniques. In I 920, the two fronts stood best represented, on the one
hand, by a highly prestigious art publication like Rupam and, on the
other, by a more modest venture such as the Indian Academy of Art
and its quarterly art magazine. Rupam, as it pioneered a more
s pecialised trend in Orientalist research and appreciation of Indian
art, went a step further than Prabasi or The Modern Review in
propagating the work of Abanindranath and his school of painting,
using the same rhetoric of spirituality and race idealism. In a counter
trend, · the Journal of the Indian Academy of Art (a short-lived venture,
begun under the initiative of Hemen Majumdar in 1 920) became a
forum for the promotion of the work of Academic painters and
sculptors of Calcutta and Bombay, highlighting alternative values of
realism and technique in art. Another platform for the Academic
16 For example, picture books like Chitre Chandrasekhar (another illustration ofBankimchandra's
novel), with glossy coloured illustrations by Naren Sircar, published by the Bharatavarsha
office (Calcutta, I 9 I 4 ) .
 The Twenties
' salon ' artists was provided in I 9 2 I by an organization called the
Society of Fine Arts, set up by Atul Bose and Bhabani Charan Laha,
to rival the activities and exhibitions of the I ndian Society of Oriental
Art.17
Yet, even as the barriers between Oriental and Academic painting
were socially and ideologically perpetuated, the period also witnessed
an occasional overflow and overlapping of categories. The so-called
entity of ' Indian ' painting, with all the prestige and attention it
attracted, would at times spread beyond its defined bounds and
groupings - opening to question the very definition of camps or the
lines of divide. The mutual exclusiveness of styles or types of work was
not always rigidly maintained. Paintings of both broad groups of the
Bengal School and non-Bengal School variety found their way into
popular magazines like Bharatavarsha or Basumati. As becomes evident
from many of the reproductions in Bharatavarsha or the Journal of the
Indian Academy of Art, Academic painters, like Bhabani Laha or J. P.
Gangooly, would occasionally resort to effects of the ' wash ' , to deep
shadows and a misty blend of colours in some of their mythological
compositions (example, Figure 95) . At the same time, there are artists
like Sarada Charan Ukil, from Abanindranath's direct circle of
students who, on moving to Northern India in I 9 I 8, made an initial
career in painting oil portraits of wealthy patrons, before he could
draw on a spreading taste for his ' Indian-style ' paintings among the
Rais and Maharaj as.18
Such a fluid give and take of influences between Oriental and
Academic painting could lead to powerfully independent directions,
as in the case of the artist, J amini Roy. Aother individual ' master ' of
modern Indian art to emerge out of the post- ' nationalist ' era, the
course of his evolution was quite symptomatic of the state of fiux.19 A
product of the Government School of Art, Calcutta during the I 90os,
he had developed a strong hand at oil painting and life study ; but by
I 920 he branched off into a different genre of wistful emotive
compositions of Santhal women, pilgrims and fakirs (similar to those
of J. P. Gangooly) , playing on the soft irridescence of colour and
supple stylisation offigures (Figure g6) . Over the next decade, Jamini
17 Catalogues of the first annual exhibitions of this Soc ie ty ofFine Arts are with Dr Sanj i t Bose.
18 Gyanendra Mohan Das, ' Dilli Prabasi Nabya Bangiya Chitrashilpi Srijukta Sarada Charan
Vkil ' - Prabasi, Agrahayan I 334/ I 92 7 ; interview with the artist's son, Shantanu Ukil, in
November I 983.
19 John Irwin and Bishnu Dey, Jamini Roy (Calcutta, I 94 I ) ; Arc h er, India and Modern Art, pp.
I r o- I s ; Partha Mitter, ' Indian Artists, Western Art and Tradition ', pp. 84-85.
 The making of a new ' Indian ' art

Fig. 95 J . P. Gangooly, The Banished Yaksha of Kalidasa's Meghaduta, ' Indian­

style ' painting (water-colour, c. 1 908) .

Roy went o n to discover a more strongly ' modernist ' and indigenous
idiom in the bold flowing lines, the bright colours, simplified forms
and earthy vigour of Bengal's folk tradition of the pata-chitra , making
these the hallmark of his own famous style.
By the end of the twenties, the paintings of Nandalal Bose and
Jamini Roy had replaced those of the Abanindranath school as the
staple of Bengali middle-class taste and cultural sensibilities : as the
new embodiments of a combined modern and national ethos in art.
The powers of the older construct of ' national art ' were spent, even
as it came to offer a national alternative. Henceforth, notions of
 The Twenties

Fig. g6 Jamini Roy, ' Praying for the child ', a study of a Santhal mother and child
(water-colour, c. 1 9 1 5-20).
 The making of a new ' Indian ' art

artistic genius and creativity would assert themselves in reaction to

the limits and chauvinisms of the movement. And, even if it drew on
the lingering mystique and charisma of the first ' reawakening ' ,
modern Indian art would have constantly to redefine the scope and
ideology of its ' I ndian-ness ' .
 Bibliography

A. A R C H I VA L A N D U N P U B L I S H E D M AT E R I A L

I G O V E R NM E NT P R O C E E D I N GS

India Office Library and Records, London, and West Bengal State A rchives, Calcutta
Bengal Government, General Department, Education Proceedings, I 87o­
I9I7
Bengal Government, I ndustry, Science and Art Proceedings, I 8 7 6- 7 8 .

'2 PRIVATE PAPERS

India Office Library and Records, London

Mss. Eur. B. '2 I 3 · Letters on Indian Art, written to Sir William Rothenstein,
I 9 I 0-45
Mss. E ur. D. 6og . Papers of the Marquis of Zetland (earlier, Earl of
Ronaldsha y, Governor of Bengal)
My Bengal Diary, Vol. I . I 9 I 7- I g i g
Vol. 2 . r g r g- r g2 2
Mss. Eur. D . 7 3 6 . Papers o f E . B . Havell, c . r 8g6- I 934·
Rabindra Bhavan Archives, Santiniketan
Papers of Nandalal Bose
Papers of Asit Kumar Haldar
Papers of E . B. Havell
Papers ofSir \Nilliam Rothenstein, c. I gog-3 I / 3 '2 (xerox copies of papers in
the collection of the Houghton Library, Harvard)
Papers of Abanindranath Tagore
Papers of Gaganendranath Tagore

3 A R T C O L L E CT I O NS

Museums ( U nited Kingdom)

Ashmolean :Nf useum, Oxford
Indian Institute, Oxford
I ndia Office Library, London
Victoria & Albert Museu m , London

3 '2 7
 Bibliography

Museums ( Calcutta and other parts of India)

Academy of Fine Arts, Calcutta
Bangiya Sahitya Parishad, Calcutta
Baroda Museum and Picture Gallery
Birla Academy of Art and Culture, Calcutta
Burdwan University Museum
Indian Museum, Calcutta
J.J. School of Art, Bombay
Laxmi Vilas Palace, Baroda
Maharaja Fateh Singh Museum Trust, Baroda
Nandan Art Gallery, Kala Bhavan, Santiniketan
National Art Gallery, Madras
National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi
Rabindra Bharati Society, Calcutta
Rabindra Bharati University Museum, Calcutta
Sri Chitra Art Gallery, Trivandrum
Victoria Memorial, Calcutta
Private Holdings in Calcutta
Sanjit Bose
N . R. Chakravarty
R . P. Gupta
I. K. and N. K. Kej riwal
M. C. Laha
Lakshmi and Saraswati Laha
Mihir Mitra
Siddhartha Mukherj ee
Hirendra Mullick, ' Marble Palace '
J agad ish Kumar Sinha, ' Belgatchia Villa '
Pranab Nath Tagore
Sumitendranath and Shyamasree Tagore
Paramita Vishwanathan

4 U N P U B L I S H E D P H . D . DISSERTATI ONS A N D PAPERS

Bhagwat, Nalini, Development of Contemporary Art in Western Indian (Ph.D.
dissertation, M . S . University, Baroda, 1 983)
Engels, Dagmar, The Changing Role of Women in Bengal, c. 18gcrc. 1930, with
Special Reference to British and Bengali Discourse on Gender (Ph.D.
dissertation, U niversity of London, I g8 7)
Sarkar, Kamal, ' Calcutta Art Studior Chitrakala ' (unpublished paper,
I 9 78)
Tarapor, Mahrukh, Art and Empire : The Discovery of India in Art and Literature,
I85t:r1947 (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard University, 1 9 7 7 )
 Bibliography 3'2g

B. P U B L I S H E D P R I M A R Y M AT E R I A L S
I OFFI C I A L R E P O RTS

Bengal Government, Education Department - Annual General Reports on

Public Instruction, 1 8g4I95- I g i 5I I 6
Government of India, Education Department - Quinquennial Reviews of
the Progress of Education in India, I 887 I88- I go7
Government School of Art, Calcutta - Quinquennial Report, I g I 2 I I 3-
1 6l r 7
Hunter, Alexander, Correspondence on the subject of the extension of art
education in different parts of India ( Madras, I 867)
Papers related to the maintenance of the Schools of Art as state institutions
(Lahore, I 8g4)

'2 JOURNALS AND SERIAL PUBLICATIONS

English
The Art Journal ( London) c. I 84g-72
Chatterjee's Picture Albums (Calcutta) c. I g i o, Nos. I - I 6
The Englishman (Calcutta) I 8go, I go 7-8
The Hindoo Patriot ( Calcutta) , I 854-55, 1 858
The Indian Daily News ( Calcutta) , I 874, I 87g, I goo
Journal of the Indian Academy of Art ( Calcutta) , I g '20-'2 I
Journal of Indian Art and Industry ( London) c. 1 886-1 goo
The Modern Review (Allahabad, Calcutta) I go 7-20
Rupam (Indian Society of Oriental Art, Calcutta) I g20-30
Technical Art Series (Calcutta) , I 882- I go2 I 3

Bengali
Aitihasik Chitra, I 8gg- I goo, I go 7- I 0
Balak, I 885-6
Basantak, I 874-85
Basumati (Masik) , I g'2'21'23- I g'271'28
Bharati, I 878-c. I g2o
Bharatavarsha, I g I 31 I g I 4-20l2 I
Mukul, I 8g5
Prabasi, I go I -'2 3
Pradip, I 8g7- I go3-4
Sachitra Shishir, I g23l24-26l27
Sadhana, I 8g i - I 8g5
Sahitya, I go I -2 o
Sakha o Sahki, I 8g4
Santiniketan Patrika, I g I g-2 1
Shilpa-pushpanjanli, I 88 5-86
33 0 Bibliography

Shilpa 0 Sahitya, I go 5- I 2
Vividhartha Sangraha, I 85 I -54/55

3 C A T A L O G U E S OF E X H I B I T I O N S A N D C O L L E C T I O N S

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, I g8o)
Catalogue of the Exhibition of Fine Arts at the Government School of Art
and the Government Art Gallery (Calcutta, January I 879)
Catalogue of the Exhibition of Fine Arts at the Indian Museum (Calcutta,
I 874)
Catalogue of the Exhibition ofFine Arts, In ternational Exhibition, Calcutta
( December-] anuary, I 883-84)
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 I 9 I 4)
Catalogue of the Marble Palace Art Gallery (Calcutta, I 9 76)
Catalogue of the Pictures and Sculptures in the Collection of the Maharaja
Tagore (Calcutta, I 905)
Catalogue of the Madras Exhibition, Indian Society of Oriental Art
( February I g I 6)
The Industry of All Nations, I 85 r . Illustrated Catalogue of the Great
Exhibition of I 8S I in London, Special Number of Art Journal, I 8 5 I
Illustrated Catalogue of the International Exhibition of I 862 i n London,
Special N urn ber of the Art Journal ( I 862)
Official Record of the :Melbourne International Exhibition ( I 88o-8 I )

4 BOOKS A N D ARTICLES

English
Ashbee, C. R . , Craftsmanship in Competitive Industry (Campden & London,
I go6)
Binyon, Lawrence, Painting in the Far East ( London, I g I I )
Birdwood, G. C. M . , The Industrial Arts of India ( London, r 88o)
Handbook to the British Indian Section, Paris Universal Exhibition of r 878
(London, I 878)
' To The Temple ' , JIAI, January I 8g8
Burns, Cecil, ' The Function of Art Schools in India ', Journal of the Royal
Society of Arts, May I gog
Campbell, A. Claude, Glimpses of Bengal (Calcutta, I 90 7 )
Cole, H. H . , Calcutta of the Objects ofIndian Art Exhibited in the South Kensington
Museum ( London, I 8 74)
 Bibliography 33 I

Coomaraswamy, A. K . , ' About Pictures ', The Modern Review, November

I g I O.
Art and Swadeshi ( Madras, I g I 2 )
·. Borrowed Plumes ( Colombo, I gos)
' Bharat-Mata ', The lvfodern Review, April I go7
Buddha and the Gospel of Buddhism (New York, I g i 6)
Catalogue of the Indian Collection in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (Boston,
I g24-30)
The Dance of Shiva ( London, I g I 8)
Essays in National Idealism ( Colombo, I gog) ( I st Indian edition, New
Delhi, I g8 I )
History of Indian and Indonesian Art ( London, r g2 7 )
The Indian Craftsman ( London, I gog)
' The Indian Origin of the Buddha I mage ', Journal of American Oriental
Society, Vol. 46, No. 2
(with Sister Nivedita) Myths of the Indus and Buddhists ( London, I g I 3)
' On Mughal and Rajput painting ' , The Modern Review, January I g i I
·

Medieval Sinhalese Art (Broad Campden, I go8)

The Oriental View of Woman (Broad Campden, I g i o)
' The Paintings of N andalal Bose ' , The Modern Review, September I go I
' The Present State of indian Art. I. Painting and Sculpture ', The Modern
Review, August r go7
Rajput Painting, Vols. I and 2 ( London, I g r 6)
Sati : A Vindication of the Hindu Woman ( London, I g I 3)
Selected Examples of Indian Art (Broad Campden, I g I o )
The Transformation of Nature in Art ( Cambridge, Mass., r g34)
Fergusson, James, Archaeology in India, With Special Reference to the Works of
Babu Rajendralal Mitra ( London, I 884)
Hist01J! of Indian and Eastern Architecture ( London, I 876)
On the Study of Indian Architecture ( London, I 86 7)
Fry, Roger, ' Oriental Art ' , The Quarterly Review, 422, January I g i o
Gangoly, 0 . C . , ' The Aesthetics of Young India : A Rejoinde r ' , Rupam,
January r g22
Modern Indian Artists : Kshitindranath Majumdar (Indian Society of Oriental
Art, Calcutta, I g2 I )
' A New Con tri bu tion to Shaivi te Art ', Rupam, January I g2 I
' The New Indian School of Painting ' , JIAI, January I g I 6
' The Value of Tradition in Art ', The Modern Review, October I gog
Ghosh, Aurobindo, The National Value of Art (Calcutta, I g36)
Gladstone-Solomon, W. E., The Bombay Revival ofIndian Art (Bombay, I g2o)
Grunwedel, Albrecht, Buddhist Art in India ( London, I go I )
Gupta, Samarendranath, ' Art and Art Culture ', The Modern Review, June
I gI I
' The Classic Art of Ajanta ', The Modern Review, December I g i 3 , January,
February, r g i 4
332 Bibliography

Havel, E. B . , The Ancient and Medieval Architecture of India ( London, I 9 I S )

' Art Administration in India ' , Journal ojthe Royal Sociery ofArts, February,
Igio
The Basis for Artistic and Industrial Revival in India ( M adras, I g I 2 )
Benaras, The Sacred Ciry - Sketches of Hindu Life and Religion (London,
I gos)
' British Philistinism and Indian Art ' , The Nineteenth Century, February,
I g03
Essays on Indian Art, Industry and Education ( .M adras, I g I o)
A Handbook to Agra and the Taj, Sikandra, Fatehpur Sikri and the Neighbourhood
( London, I go4)
A Handbook of Indian Art (London, I 920)
The History of Aryan Rule in India from Earliest Times to the Death of Akbar
(London, I g I 8)
Indian Architecture : Its Psychology and Structurefrom Muhamaddan Times to the
Present Day ( London, r 9 I I )
The Ideals of Indian Art ( London, I g I I )
Indian Sculpture and Painting (London, I go8 )
' Th e New School of I ndian Painting ' , The Studio, I go8
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April r g2 2
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' An Indian Cubist ' , Rupam, July, I g 2 2
' The Vishnudharmottaram ' , Journal of the Department of Letters, Calcutta
Universiry, Vol. X I , I g2 4
Maitreya, Akshay Kumar, ' The Flight of Lakshmana Sena ', The 1\fodern
Review, January I gog
Mitra, Raj a Rajendralal, The Antiquities of Orissa, Vols. I and I I (Calcutta,
r 8 7 5 , I 88o)
Buddha Gaya, The Hermitage of Sakya Muni (Calcutta, I 8 7 8 )
Indo-Aryans : Contributions towards the Elucidation of their Ancient and Medieval
History, Vols. I and I I ( Calcutta, I 88 I )
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Mukharji , T. N . , The Art Manufactures of India ( Calcutta, I 888)
Sister Nivedita, ' Ch i tore ' , The Modern Review, May I 9 I 2
Complete Works (Calcutta, I g 67)
' The Function of Art in Shaping Nationality ' , The Modern Review,
January I go 7 , February I 907
Kali, the Mother ( London, I goo)
' Notes ' on paintings, The Modern Review, I go7- i 6
' Review of the exhibition of the Indian Society of Oriental Art ' , The
Modern Review, April I g i o
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Okakura, Kakuzo, The Awakening of Japan (London, I go5 )

The Ideals of the East ( London, I go3)
Paul, Kristo Doss, Young Bengal Vindicated (Calcutta, I 856)
' Ravi Varma ' , The Modern Review, January I go7
Ravi Varma : The Indian Artist ( Allaha bad , I go I )
Raychaudhuri, Upendrakishore, ' The Study of Pictoral Art in India ' , The
Modern Review, June I go7
Raz, Ram, Essay on the Architecture of the Hindus (London, I 8 34)
Rothenstein, William, Men and Memories : Recollections of William Rothenstein,
Vols. I and 2 (New York, I g3 2 )
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Modern Painters, Vol. I ( Oxford, I 843)
Sarkar, Benoy Kumar, ' The Aesthetics of Young India ' , Rupam, January
I g2 2
Hindu Art : its Humanism and Modernism (New York, I g2o)
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Smith, Vincent, ' Graeco-Roman Influence on the Civilisation of Ancient
India ' ' Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, Vol. 58, I 88g
A History of Fine Art in India and Ceylon (Oxford, I g I I )
Tagore, Abanindranath, ' Shadanga or Six Limbs of Painting ' , ' Philosophy
of Shadanga ' , The Modern Review, May, June I g i 4
Shadanga or Six Limbs of Painting ( Calcutta, I g 2 3 )
Some Notes on Indian Artistic Anatorrry ( Calcutta, I g I 4)
Tagore, Rabindranath, The Crescent Moon ( London, I g i 3 )
Gitanjali and Fruit Gathering ( London, I 9 I g )
Nationalism ( London, I g i 8)
Tagore, Raj a Sourindro Mohun, The Ten Principal Avataras of the Hindus
(Calcutta, I 88o)
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(Calcutta, I 8g 2 )
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Bengali
Annada Jibani ( Calcutta, I go7)
Bandopadhyay, Charuchandra, ' Chitra Parichay ' , Prabasi, I go7- I g2o,
Bharati, I g I o- I g2o
Bandopadhyay, Srinivas, ' S ri Sashi Kumar Hesh , Pradip, Magh I 306/ I goo
'

Chakravarty, Manmathanath, ' Alok Chhaya ', ' Barna Chitran , Shilpa o '

Sahitya, I 3 I 3 / I go6-7, I 3 I 5/ I go8/g

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' Bhaskarya , Shilpa o Sahitya, Agrahayan, I 3 I 21 I go 5

'

' Chi trash ala ', Sahitya, Kartick I 3 I 7 I I g I O, J aish tha I 3 I 8 I I 9 I I

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' S tha pa tya Shilpa o Sahitya, Agrahayan I 3 I 2 I I go5 ,

',

Chanda, Ramaprasad, ' Bharater Prachin Chitrakala , Prabasi, Agrahayan,

'

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Chatterj ee, Bankim Chandra, Ananada-math (Calcutta, I 88 2 )

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' Chitravidya o Prakriti Gyan , Bharatavarsha, Magh I 3221 I g I 6

'

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' Prabasi Bangalir Katha ' , Prabasi, Ashar I 3 I 41 I go7
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Ghosh, Aurobindo, ' Arter Adhyatmikata ', Prabasi, Ashar I 3 2 3 I I g i 6

Haldar, Asit Kumar, ' Abanindranath Thakur o Bharatiya Chitrankan
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' Banglar Shilpa ' , Prabasi , Jaishtha I 32 2 1 I g i 5
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'

' Bharat Shilper An tar Prakriti , Prabasi, Ashar I 32 I I I g I 4

'

' Chitra shilper Bichar ' , Prabasi, Ashvin I 3231 I g I 6

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M_a itreya, Akshay Kumar, Bharatshilper Katha (Calcutta I g82)
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Majumdar, Dakshinaranj an Mitra, Thakurdadar ]huli (Calcutta, r go8)
Nag, Charuchandra, Chitravidya (Calcutta, r 874)
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Ray, Biharilal, ' Chitravidyar Upoyogita ' , Shilpa-pushpanjali, I 293l I 886
Ray, Sukumar, ' Bharatiya Chitrashilpa : Alochana ', Prabasi, Shravan,
Agrahayan, I 3 I 7 I I g r o
Raychowdhury, Upendrakishore, Chheleder Mahabharat (Calcutta, I gog)
Tuntunir Boi (Calcutta, I g I o)
Samaj pati, Sureschandra, ' Masik Sahitya Samalochana : Prabasi ', Sahitya,
I g ro- I 4
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Shastri, U macharan, ' Surendranath Gangopadhyay ' , Bharati, Magh I 3 I 31
I 907
Shome, P., ' Chitrashilpi Hemendranath M aj umdar ', Basumati, Baishakh-
Ashvin I 3 2gi i 92 2
Srimani, Shyama Charan, Suksha Shilper Utpatti o Arya ]atir Shilpa Chaturi
(Calcutta, I 874)
Swami Vivekanander Bani o Rachana, Vol. g (Calcutta, I g83)
Tagore, Abanindranath, Abanindra Rachanavali, Vols. I -4 (Calcutta, r g74,
I g75, I g 7g)
Apan-Katha (Calcutta, I 946)
Bageshwari Shilpa Prabandhavali (Calcutta, I g4 I , I g83 )
Banglar Brata (Calcutta, I g I g)
Bharat Shilpa ( Calcutta, I gog)
' Bharatir Chhabi ', Bharati, Baishakh I 3231 I g I 6
' Bharate Shadanga ' , Bharati, Ashar, Shravan, I 32 I I I g I 4
Bhutpatrir Deshe (Calcutta, I g I 5 )
' Chi tra parichay : Shesh Boj h a ', Prabasi, Phalgun I 3 20I I g I 4
Gharoa (Visva Bharati, I g4 I )
Jorasankor Dhare (Visva Bharati, I 944)
Kshirer Putul (Calcutta, I 8g6, I g i 5 )
' Murti ' , Prabasi, Paush, Magh, I 3 2ol r g i 3
Nalak (Calcutta, I g i 6)
' Pattan ' , Prabasi, Ashvin, 1 3 20I I g i 3
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Tagore, Balendranath, Balendra Granthavali ( C alcutta, r go 7 )
Chitra o Kavya (Calcutta, I 8g4)
Tagore, Gaganendranath, Adbhut Lok (Calcutta, I g i 8)
Virupa VaJra (Calcutta, I g i 7)
Tagore, Hitendranath, Hila Granthavali (Calcutta, I g I 3 )
Tagore, Rabindranath, A tmashakti ( Calcutta, I go5)
Bharatvarsha (Calcutta, I go 5)
Chitralipi I, II (Calcutta, I g4o, I g5 I )
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Igi7
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Articles and books in English
Abanindra Number, VBQ, May-October I g42
Abanindranath Tagore, JISOA, Golden Jubilee Number, November I g6 I
Abanindranath Tagore, His Early Work, I M (Calcutta, I g64)
Abdel-Malik, Anouar, ' Orientalism in Crisis ', Diogenes 44 (Winter I g63)
Acharya, P. K., A Summary of the Manasara ( London, I g i 8)
A Dictionary of Hindu Architecture ( London, r 92 7)
Anderson, Benedict, Imagined Communities, Reflections on the Origin and Spread of
Nationalism (London, I g85)
Appasamy, Jaya, Abanindranath Tagore and the Art of his Times (New Delhi,
r g68)
The Critical Vision : Selected Writings ( New Delhi, I g85)
' Early Oil Painting in Bengal ', Lalit Kala Contemporary, 32, April r g85
Indian Paintings on Glass (New Delhi, I g8o)
TanJavur Painting of the Maratha Period (New Delhi, I g8o)
Archer, M. , Company Paintings in the India Office Library (London, r g72)
India and British Portraiture 177o-I825 (London, r g 7g)
Indian Popular Paintings in the India Office Library ( London, I g7 7 )
Natural History Drawings in the India Office Library ( London, I g62)
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 Bibliography 337

Archer, vV. G., Bazaar Paintings of Calcutta ( London, I 953)

India and Modem Art ( London, I 959)
Kalighat Paintings ( London, I 9 7 I )
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I 955)
Bagal, J. C., History of the Government College of Arts and Crafts, 1864-1964
( Calcutta, I 966)
Banerj ee, Sumanta, The Parlour and the Streets : Elite and Popular Culture in
Nineteenth-century Calcutta ( Calcutta, I 989)
Barrett, Douglas (and Gray, Basil) , Indian Painting ( Geneva, I 9 78)
Baxandall, Michael, Patterns of Intention : On the Historical Explanation of
Pictures (London, New Haven, I 985)
Bigelow, W. S. (and Lodge, J. E. ) , ' Okakura-Kakuzo ', Ostasiastiche ,Zeit­
shrift, Berlin, I 9 I 3- r 4
Bourdieu, Pierre, Distinction : A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste
(London, I 984)
' Ou tline of a Sociological Theory of Art Perception ' , International Social
Science Journal, 20 (Winter I 968)
Chandra, Pramod, On The Study of Indian Art (Cambridge, Mass., I 983)
Chatterj ee, Partha, Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World : A Derivative
Discourse ? (New Delhi, I 986)
Chatterj ee, Suniti Kumar, ' Abanindranath Tagore : Master Artist and
Renovator ', JISOA, November r 96 r
Chattopadhyay, Ratnabali, ' The Alternative Vision, a Study of Indian
Artistic Response to Orientalism , The Calcutta Historical Journal, July
'

1 986-june 1 98 7
From the Karkhana to the Studio : Changing Social Roles of Artists and Patrons in
Bengal (New Delhi, I 990)
Clark, T. J . , The A bsolute Bourgeois, Artists and Politics in France, 1848-1851
( London, I 982)
Image of the People, Gustave Courbet and the 1848 Revolution ( London, I 982 )
The Painting of Modem Life, Paris in the Art of Manet and his Followers
( London, I 985)
Datta, Sudhindranath, 'Jamini Roy ' , Longman's }vfiscellany ( Calcutta I 943)
Dey, Mukul, ' Drawings and Paintings of Kalighat ', Advance ( Calcutta
1 93 2)
' Abanindranath Tagore : a Survey of the :Wiaster's Life and vVork ', VBQ,
May-October I 942
Drawings and Paintings of Rabindranath Tagore, Centenary Volume, Lalit Kala
Akademi (New Delhi, I 96 r )
Durai Raj a Singam, S . , Homage to Ananda K. Coomaraswamy : A Memorial
Volume (Kuala Lumpur, I 952)
Europe and its Others, Papers from the Essex Conference on the Sociology of
Literature (Colchester, I 985)
Flint, Kate, ' Moral judgement and the Language of English Art Criticism ',
Oxford Art Journal, Vol. 6. No. 2 , I 983
 Bibliography
Foxe, Barbara, Long Journey Home : A Biography of Margaret JVoble (London,
I 97 5 )
Ghose, Ajit, ' Old Bengal Paintings ', Rupam, July-October 1 9 I 7
Ghose, Lokenath, The Modern History of the Indian Chiefs, Rajas, :(amindars etc.
(Calcutta, I 88 I )
Ghosh, Prodyot, Kalighat Pats : Annals and Appraisals ( Calcutta, I 967)
Gombrich, E. H . , In Search of Cultural History (Oxford, I 969)
Norm and Form : Studies in the Art of the Italian Renaissance ( London, I 968)
Gopal, Lallanji, The Sukraniti, A Nineteenth-century Forgery (Varanasi, I 978)
Guha-Thakurta, T., ' Westernisation and Tradition in South Indian
Painting : the Case of Raja Ravi Varma, I 848- r 9o6 ' , Studies in History,
July-December I 986
' Artisans, Artists and Mass Picture Production : The Changing Icon­
ography of Popular Prints ' , South Asia Research, May I 988
' Women as Calendar Art Icons : The Emergence of a Pictorial Stereotype
in Colonial I ndia ' , Economic and Political Weekb, 26 October I 99 I
Gupta, Atul (ed . ) , Studies in the Bengal Renaissance ( Calcutta, I 958)
Harle, J. C . , The Art and A rchitecture of the Indian Subcontinent, The Pelican
History of Art ( Harmondsworth, I 986)
Haskell, Francis, Rediscoveries in Art : Some Aspects of Taste, Fashion and
Collecting in English and France (Oxford, I 980)
Head, Raymond, ' Indian Crafts and Western Design from the Seventeenth
Century to the Presen t ' , Journal ofthe Royal Society of Arts, January I 988
The Indian Style ( London, I 986)
Inden, Ronald, ' Orientalist Constructions of India ', Modern Asian Studies,
20,3, I 986
Kapur, Geeta, ' Ravi Varma : Representational Dilemnas of a Nineteenth­
century I ndian Painter ' , Journal of Arts and Ideas, Nos. I J- I 8, I 990
Kar, Amina, ' Gaganendranath Tagore , Lalit Kala Contemporary, 6, April
'

I 96 7
Kawakita, Michaiki, Modern Currents in Japanese Art (New York, r 9 74)
Knizkova, Hana, The Drawings of the Kalighat Style ( Prague, I 9 75)
Lalit Kala Contemporary, I , June I 962
Lipsey, Roger, Coomaraswamy, Vols. I-3 (Princeton, 1 9 7 7 )
Majumdar, Bimanbehari, Militant JVationalism in India (Calcutta, I 966)
Milford, M. E . , ' A Modern Primitive ' , Horizon ( I 944)
Mitra, Asok, ' The Forces Behind the Modern Art Movement ' , Lalit Kala
Contemporary, I , June I 962
Mitter, Partha, ' Art and Nationalism in India ', History Today , July I 982
' Indian Artists, Western Art and Tradition ' in Ballhatchet, ed . , Changing
South Asia, City and Culture, papers presented at a conference at SOAS
( Hongkong, 1 984)
Much Maligned Monsters : European Reactions to Indian Art (Oxford, I 9 7 7 )
Mookerjee, Aji t, Folk Art of Bengal (Calcutta, I 939)
' Kalighat Folk Painters ' , Horizon ( I 94 I )
Modern Art in India (Calcutta 1 956)
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l\!Iukherjee, Benodbehari, ' The Art of Abanindranath Tagore ', VBQ,

:\'lay-October I 942
' A Chronology of Abanindranath's Painti ngs ', VBQ, :\'lay-October
I 942
Mukherjee, B. N . , ' The Kalighata Style - The Theory ofBritish Influence ',
Indian Museum Bulletin ( I 984)
Nandalal Bose, Centenary Volume, Lalit Kala Akademi (New Delhi, 1 98 2)
Nandalal Bose, Centenary Exhibition Volume, NGMA (New Delhi, I 98 2)
Nandi, Sudhir Kumar, Art and A esthetics of Abanindranath Tagore (Calcutta,
I 983)
Nandy, Ashis, The Intimate Enemy, Loss and Recovery of Self Under Colonialism
(New Delhi, I 983)
Osborne, H., ed ., Aesthetics, Oxford Readings in Philosophy (Oxford, I 979)
Panofsky, E., Idea : A Concept in Art Hist01y (Columbia, I 968)
Parimoo, Ratan, The Painting of the Three Tagores, Abanindranath, Gaganendra-
nath, Rabindranath : Comparative and Chronological Study (Baroda, I 973)
Paul, Asit (ed. ) , Woodcut Prints of Nineteenth-century Calcutta (Calcutta, I 983)
Poggioli, Rena to, The01y of the Avant-Garde (Harvard, I 968)
Pravrajika Atmaprana, Sister Nivedita of Ramakrishna- Vivekananda (Calcutta,
1 96 I )
Ramachandra Rao, P. R . , Modern Indian Painting (Madras, 1 953)
Raychaudhuri, Tapan, Europe Reconsidered, Perceptions ofthe West in JVineteenth-
century Bengal ( New Delhi, 1 988)
Said, E. W., Orientalism ( London, I 985)
Sarkar, Sumit, The Swadeshi Movement in Bengal, 1905-8 (New Delhi, I 973)
Sarkar, Tanika, ' Nationalist Iconography : Images of vVomen in 1 9th
Century Bengali literature ', Economic and Political Week()', 2 I November,
I 98 7
Sinha, Pradip, Calcutta in Urban History ( Calcutta, I 9 78)
Skelton, R., ' Murshidabad Painting ', Afarg, I O, December I 956
Subramanyan, K. G . , 1\!Ioving Focus : Essays on Indian Art (New Delhi, I 978)
The Living Tradition, Perspectives on Modern Indian Art (Calcutta, I 986)
Sutton, T., The Daniells, Artists and Travellers (London I 954)
Tagore, Surendrana, ' Kakuzo Okakura VBQ; August-October, I 936
',

Tarapor, Mahrukh Keki, ' Art Education in Imperial India : the Indian
Schools of Art ' in Ballhatchet, ed . , Changing South Asia ( London, I 984)
'John Lockwood Kipling and British Art Education in India ' , Victorian
Studies, 24, I 98o-8 I
Uberoi, Patricia, ' Feminine Identity and National Ethos in Indian
Calendar Art ' , Economic and Political Week()', 28 April, I 990
Veniyoor, E. i\11. J . , Raja Ravi Varma (Trivandrum, I 98 I )

Articles and books in Bengali and other Indian languages

Bagal, J. C . , Hi'hdu Melar Itibritta (Calcutta, r g68)
' Sej uger Dhatukhodai o Katkhodai Shilpa ', Prabasi, Baishakh I 36 I
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Bandopadhyay, Chitttaranjan (ed . ) , Dui Shataker Bangia Mudran o Prakashan
(Calcutta, I 98 I )
Chakravarty, Shyamali, ' Shilpasandhani Bankimchandra ' Autumn I 98 5
Chowdhury, Satyajit, Abanindra Nandantatva ( Calcutta, I 977)
Nandaiai ( Calcutta, I 988)
Gangopadh yay, Mohanlal, Dakshiner Barandah (Visva Bharati, I 98 I )
Gaganendranath (Calcutta, I 973)
Ghosh, Manmathanath, ' Basantak ', Manasi o Marmabani, Ashvin I 333/
I 926
Majumdar, Kamal Kumar, ' Bangiya Grantha-chitran ', Ekshan, Kartick-
Magh I 3 79/ I 972
Majumdar, Lila, Upendrakishore ( Calcutta, 1 963)
Mandai, Panchanan, Bharatshiipi Nandaiai (Bolepur, I 982)
Mukherjee, Benodebehari, Adhunik Shiipa Shiksha (Visva Bharati, I 97 2 )
Chitra Katha ( Calcutta, I 983)
Nayar, Balakrishna, Raja Ravi Varma (Trivandrum, I 9 5 3 )
Raychaudhuri, Girij ashankar, Sri Aurobindo o Bangiay Swadeshi Yuga (Cal­
cutta, I 9 5 6)
Sarkar, Kamal, Bharater Bhaskar o Chitra-shiipi (Calcutta, I 984)
' Bharati-r Prachchhad , Desh, 6 October I 979
'

' Europe-e Pratham Bangali Shilpi, Rohini Kanto Nag ', Baromas, August
I 978
' Koklater Pratham Chitra-pradarshini ', Desh, I o ]uly, I 982
Rupdaksha Gaganendranath ( Calcutta, I 986)
Shiipi Saptak (Calcutta, I 9 7 7)
Sen, Sukumar, Bat-taiar Chhapa o Chhabi (Calcutta, I 984)
Seth, Harihar, ' Chandanagarer Chitrakala o Geetbadya , Prabartak,
'

Kartick, I 33 I / I 924
Shanta Debi, Bharat-Muktishadhak Ramananda Chattopadhyay o Ardha Shatabdir
Bangia (Calcutta, n.d.)
Shome, Shobhon (and Acharya, Anil) , Bangia Shiipa Samaiochanar Dhara,
Shyama Charan Srimani, Balendranth Tagore, Sukumar Ray (Calcutta, I 986)
Tagore, Alokendranath, Chhabir Raja Abin Thakur ( Calcutta, I 963)
Tagore, Prabadhendranath, Abanindra- Charitam (Calcutta, 1 956)
 Index

' Aban-panthi ' group, 269, 304 Artist's Press, Calcutta, 82, 87
Academic art, 4-6, 46-9, 54- 7, 65, 67, ' Arts and Crafts ' movement, 59, I 48, I 5 I ,
7 I-7, 106, 108, I I I , I 2 5-6, I 32-3, I 59, I 62
I 40- 3, I 54, I 89, 2 J 4, 2 I 6, 229-33, Aryans, I 20-2, I 8 I-2, 203 ; art tradition,
3 I 8-24 I 2 2 , I 26
Academic Realism, 7, 35, 36, 83, 85, go, Ashbee, C. R., I 6o- I
93-6, 99-1 03, I 06, I 24, I 27, I 43> I 73, Asokan pillars, I 2 I
I 78, I 89, I 93, 2 I 3, 2 I 9, 322
Acharya Chowdhury, Maharaja babu-bibi pats, 20
S uryakanta, 74 babus, I g-2 I, 24, 2g
aesthetics, I I 7-I8, I 27, I 32, I35-6, I 39, Bagchi, Annada Prasad, 42, 4 7-8, 70- I, 73,
I 46, I 57, I 59> I 62-3, I 65-7, I 70, I 73, 77, 8 I-2, 8g, I OO, 2 J 4, 27 ?
I 76, I 78, I 83, I 9 I , I 95, I 98, 206, 223, Bageshwari Shilpa Prabhandhabali, 207
3I3 Bagh paintings, 292
Aitihasik Chitra, 220 Balak, go
Ajanta caves, 278 Bandopadhyay, Charuchandra, I g i , 30 I
Ajanta paintings, 67, I 54, I 66, I 73-4, I 8o, Banerjee , Bamapad a , 39, 40, 44, 72, 75 , 77,
I 9g, 205, 209- I O, 2 I 4, 2 I 9, 227, 236, I OO , I I I , I I 4, I I 6, I 45, 2 I 5, 2 7 7 , 280,
292-3 32 1
Albert Temple of Science and School of Banerjee, Rakhaldas, 2 I 8
Technical Arts, Calcutta, 86 Bangiya Kala Samsad, Calcutta, 2 7 7
Alma-Tadema, Lawrence, 54, I 40 Bangiya Sahitya Parishad, Calcutta, I gg
Andhra J atiya Kalashala, 3 I 2 Baroque decoration, 5 I
Anushilan Samiti, I 7 I Basantak, 84-6, g6
Arai, Kampa, 2 76 Bat-tala :
archaeological, archaeology, I 46, I 68, I 76 pictures and picture-trade, I 3 , I 8, 25-35,
Archer, James, 54 3g-4o, 43-4, 78, 83-5, g6, I 27, 1 g3,
architects, 59 202
architecture, I I 9, I 2 2 , I 53, I 6o, I 8 I , I 84 presses, 2 7-8
art : engravers, I 3, 25, 2 7-8, 3 I -5, 40, 78, 84
collections, 5 I-7, 64-6, I66 ' bazaar ' art, 6, I 2- I 3, I 8-44, 68-9, 7 7 ,
criticisms, I 28, I 35, I 38, I 85 , I89-99, 83-4, I 30, 202
2 I 3- I 4, 223-4, 226, 280, 286 ' bazaar' craftsmen, 66 ; engravers and
education, I I - I 2 , 57-67, 69, 9 I , I 23, painters, 5, I 2- I 3, I 6, 35, 40, 42, 44
I 26-7, I 49-53> I 5s-6, 3 I O- I 2 , 3 I 8 Becker, 76
exhibitions, 6, I I , 45-9, 52, 55, 64, 67, Beechey, George, 46
70- I , 76, I I I , I 43, I g8-9, 2 76, � 78-8 I , Belgatchia Villa, 5 I-2
3o5-6, 3 I 8- I 9, 323 Benaras Hindu University, I 66
industries, s8, 6s-6 Bengal School of painting, 3, 5, 6, 8, 10,
artisans, 6, I 2-I 3, 24, 2 7-8, 3 I , 40, 42, 44 , 149, 2 2 7 , 3 I 1 , 3 1 3 - 14, 3 I 8- 1 g , 323
70, I I 8, I 52-3, I 64, 305-6 Besant, Annie, I s8, 280

34 1
342
Bhara t Kala Bha van, Benaras, 3 r 2
Bharati, r ro, 1 28, r gg, 2 1 4- 1 5
Bharatvarsha, 2 r 5 , 32 r -3
Bhattashali, Nalinikanta, 2 r 8
Bhubaneswar temples, 6 r -3, 66, r r g-zo
biblical paintings, r o8
Bichitra art studio, 2 75-7, 303, 308, 3 r o,
314
Bichitra Gallery Art Committee, 279
Bigelow, William Sturgis, r 68
Birdwood, Sir G. C. M . , 75, 1 33, 147, 1 64-5
Biswas, Nobokumar, 8 r , r oo
Black Town, r 8- r g, 40, 83
Blount, Norman, 2 7 7-9
Bombay School of Art, see J.J. School of
Art, Bombay
Banerjee, W. C . , 75
Borobudur sculptures, I So
Bose, Atul, 3 I g, 32 r , 323
Bose, Harinarayan, 8g, 230
Bose, Nandalal, r g r , I 94-6, I gg, 203, 208,
2 1 3, 2 70-2, 2 75> 2 78, 2 8 I -2 , 286,
288-9, 2 9 1 -2 , 297, 299, 304-5, 3 I I - I 2 ,
3 ' 4 ' 3 I 9, 324
Boston Museum of Fine Arts, r 66, r 68
Bourne and Shepherd, 8 I
Bourne, Sir Henry, 46
Brahmanical religion, r 58
Brahmin authorities, I r 8
Breton, Jules, I 93
British Museum, 65
Brush Club, 46
Buddha, 1 64-5
Buddhism, r 70- r , I So, 20 I
Buddhist art and aesthetics, r 20-2, I 62,
I 70 , I 73, I 76-7, I 79-8 1 , 208-g
Burne-Jones, Edward, r go
Burns, Sir Cecil, r 63-4
Byzantine styles, r 65
Calcutta Art Society, 49
Calcutta Art Studio, 34, 40, 44, 79, 8 I-2,
94-6, g g , I O I , 1 03, 1 08, I IO, I 15,
! 27-'-8, r so- r , !87, 3 ' 9
Calcutta School Book Society, 2 7
Calcutta School of Art, see Government
School of Art, Calcutta
Calcutta University, 207, 308
calligraphy, 1 55, 233, 236
Cama, P. B., 48
Cammata tribe, r r 8
Campbell, Sir George, 7 4
Canaletto, Antonio, 46
caricatures, r g-z r , zg-so, 83-5, 302, 304,
3I4
Index
Carlandi, 0., 52
Carmichael, Lord, 2 n-g, 3 I 0
cartoonists, 84-5, 304-5
Central Asia, I 8o
Ceylon, I 6o- r , r 82 , 274
Cezanne, 222
Chakravarty, Gopalchandra, 84
Chakravarty, Manmathanath, 2 1 5- I 6, 2 I 8,
223
chalchitm, 2 I o
Chanda, Ramaprasad, 2 1 8- 1 9
Chandernagore, 36, 42
Chatterjee, Bankim Chandra, go, 92, 1 24,
' 33, ' 96
Chatterjee, Girish Chandra, 47, 72
Chatterjee, Ramananda, 1 33, I 3 7-7, r g r ,
280, 282, 284
Chatterton, Alfred, r 64
Chattopadhyay, Avinash Chandra, 196
chiaruscuro, 40
Chinese art and aesthetics, r 6g-7 I , 206, 22 7
Chinnery, George, 46, 5 r , 54-
Chinsura, 36
Chipping Campden Guild and School of
Handicraft, r 6 I
Chisholm, Robert, r 64
Chitra-Shilpi Company, Calcutta, 83,
! 02-3
Chorebagan Art Studio, Calcutta, 83
Chowdhury, Ashutosh, 55
chromo-lithographs, chromo-lithography,
27, 38, 44, 83, 97-9, IO I-2, 2 1 6 ; see
also lithography
Chugtai, Abdur Rahman, 29 I , 297-g, 30 1 ,
303
classical art traditions and canons :
European, ! 25, I 33, r sg, r62, ! 76
Indian, r r o , r r 8-22, 1 2 7, 1 28-9, 1 32,
r 5 s-9, r so, r 83-4, r 92, I gg, 2 0 2- 7,
209- r o, 2 1 2 , 2 1 9-22, 236, 294
classicism, r 40, 209, 2 r 2
Claxton, Nlarshall, 54
clay models, 47, 66, 70-r
Clive, Lord, r 38
Cole, Henry) 58, I 4 7 ' I 79
colonial historiography, 2 r 9
colonialism, 2
commercial art, 6, 3 r , 79, 82, 86, 93-6
commercialism, r 75
' Company ' draughtsmen and painters, I 2,
I 5 - I 8 , 24, 2 7
' Company ' paintings, 1 2 , 1 4- 1 7, r g, 47, 65
Confucius, r 6g
Congress Industrial Exhibition of r go3,
Calcutta, 245
 Index 3 43

Coomaraswamy, A. K., I 2 I , I 46-9, I59-63, drawing masters, 6, 45, 78, I 5 2

I 65-9, I 74-5, I 7 7-8, 1 80-3, 187, ' Dutch Bengal School ', 36
1 90-2, 195, I 98, 209, 2 1 2, 220- 1 , 2 79, Dutt, Romesh Chandra, 75, Ig6
28 I , 286 Dutta, Satyendra Narayan, 305
copyists, 4> I5 , 16, 55, 57, 59 > 7 I Dyck, Van, 46
Corbyn Dr Frederick, 6o
Courbet, Gustave, 93 Eastlake, Charles, 54
court painters, 5, 1 3- I 4, 305-6 ; see also Elephanta, I 74, I 8o, 292
miniature artists Ellora, I 70, I 74, I 8o, 209, 292
Cousins, James, 280 Elokeshi scandal, 22, 25-6
crafts, 2, s 8, 6s-6, 70, 1 4 7-9, 1 52-3, 1 55 > English Royal Academicians, 46, 54-5,
I6o- I , 1 64, 202 64-5
craftsmanship, 70, I 26, 148-9, 15 I-2, I 56, engravers, 6, I 2 , 27, 3 I , 32, 45, 69, 72, 78,
I 6 I , I 69, 233 83, 86, I 52
craftsmen, I 3, 58, 59, 66, 67, I I 8, I 56, 267 ; Bat-tala, I 3, 25, 2 7-8, 3 I - 5, 40, 44, 78,
see also artisans 8s
' Cubist' compositions, 304, 3 I 5 European, I I , 2 7
' Cubist' paintings, 3 I 6 wood, 25, 2 7 , 34, 59, 86
Curzon, Lord, I 4 7 engravings, r I , 3 I , 52, 68, 82
aquatint, 40
D. Rozario and Co., 5 2 European, I 3, 52
Daniell, Thomas, I 5 , 40, 54 metal and wood, 28, 47, 6 I , 67, 70, 86,
Daniell, William, IS , 40 9<�
Das, Dinanath, 72, 79 see also Bat-tala pictures
Das, E. C., 1 7 European art, I 3, I5 , 46-9, 5 I-5, 64-5, 68,
Das, Krishnahari, 88-9, I 03-4 n, 1 39, I54, I 90- I , 3 1 6, 3 I 8
Das, Priyagopal, 86 Academic style and conventions, I 3, I 6,
Datta, Girindra Kumar, 84-5, 96 35-7, 39-40, 42-5, 57, 59, 65, 93-IOO,
Datta, :\11ichael Madhusudan, 85-6 I 32-3, I 43, I 88-9o, 209, 2 I 3, 226, 229,
Datta, Nrityalal, 29-30, 32 23 1 -2, 285, 299, 3 1 4. , 3 I 8-9, 322-4 ; see
Datta, Prananath, 84 also Academic Realism
Datta, Satyendranath, 2 I o history and neo-classical paintings, 43,
Deb, Sarachandra, 82 46, 52, 54, 64, 99- I O I , I o6, I I I , I40,
Deb, Trailokyanath, 86 1 78
Deccan miniatures, 89 ; see also miniatures ' minor masters ', 64
decorative arts, 59, 64, 66, I 46, I 5 I , I 64, Old :\!lasters, 46, 49, 5 I , 53, I 29, I 40
25 I ; see also crafts, design Prc-Raphaelitcs and Art :"Jouveau,
Delhi, miniature paintings, I 98, 233 ; I 90, 24 I , 294
Durbar Exhibition, 242-3, 245 European art history, I
design, 58-g, 6 I , 67, 83, I 49-53, I 55> 235, European Grand Tour, 1 5 7
238 ; see also decorative arts exhibitions, see art
designers, 59
Dey, Bipin Chandra, 305 Farrington, George, I5
Dey, Gangadhar, 72 Fayrer, Sir Joseph, 7 I
Dey, Mukul, 299, 30I-3 femininity, 3 0 I
Dey, Sailendranath, 2 73, 294, 309, 3 I 2 Fenollosa, Ernest Francisco, I 68
Dhar, Debendranath, 92 Fergusson, James, I I 9, I 2 I , I 47, I 79, I 8 I
,
Dhurandhar, M. V., 39, I 40-3, I 45, 282 ( fine arts , 24, 43, 45-7, 49, 55, 58, 64-7,
drama, Bengali, 85 74> 76, 79, I 2 2-4, I 43> I 46, J 49, I 5 I ,
draughtsmanship, I6, 68, 7 I , 2 74 I 53, I55-6, I 62-3, I 65, I 76, I 78 -9,
draughtsmen, 4, I 2 , I6, 45, 59, 6 I , 67, 72, I 99, 2 1 3, 2 1 9
78, I 5 2 fly-shuttle, I 5 2
drawing, 6o- I , 65-7, 70- I , 229, 2 3 I -2 , 236, folk art, 2 3 , r 66, 202, 207, 2 I 3, 2 75
238, 2 70, 3 r o ; architectural, 42, 229 ; Foucher, Alfred, r 77
Mughal portrait, 245 ' French Bengal School ', 36
344 Index
fresco-paintings, 66-7, I 5 I ; see also Ajanta ' half-tone ' photo engravings, I 37
paintings handicrafts, see crafts, decorative arts
Fry, Roger, I65 handloom weaving, 1 52
Havel!, E. B., 3, g, 52, 92, 1 2 1 , 1 45-g, .
Gandhara art, I 2 I , I 62, q6-7 1 5 1 -g, 1 62- 7, r 6g , 1 74-6, I 78, 1 80-3,
Gangoly, 0. C., I go-I , I g 8, 204-5, 2 I 7, 1 88-g, r g8-20 I , 209, 2 I 2 , 2 I 5, 2 I 6,
225, 270, 2 7 7 , 279 > 3 1 0 2 1 8, 22 I , 226, 242, 243> 253, 26g, 2 70,
Gangooly, J. P., 72-3, I I I , I 32, I 3 7, 2 I 4, 2 77-g, 306, 3 1 0, 3 1 9
2 7 7 , 3 1 8- I g, 323 Hellenistic influence, see Greek art
Ganguly, Surendranath, 2 20, 2 70-3 Hendley, Col. T. H., 1 64
Gaugin, 222 Hentschel, Carl, 28 I
Gayer, Dr, 7 1 Herringham, Lady C . J . , 208, 278
German Bauhaus group, Calcutta Hesh, Sashi, 74-5
exhibition, 3 1 8 Hindu Art Academy, Calcutta, 84, I 02 , I 03
Ghilardi, 0 . , 66, 74, 2 3 I -2, 269 Hindu art and architecture, I I 8-23, I 26,
Chose, Nabinchandra, 79 I 66, I 74, I 77-80, I 84
Ghosh, Aurobindo, I 7 I , I 92-3, 2 I I iconography, I 59, I 79
Ghosh, Hiralal, 79 textual canons, I I 8, 203-7, 2 I g-22
Ghosh, Kalicharan, 24 see also classical art traditions and canons
Ghosh, Kanai Lal, 24 Hindi Central College, Benaras, 1 58
Ghosh, Kiranmoy, 305 Hindu faith and religion, 1 0 2 , I 27 , I 39,
Ghosh, Manmohan, 74, 7 7 I 79, I 89
Ghosh, Nibaran Chandra, 24 Hindu Mela, 82
Ghoshal, Raj a Satyendranath, 64 Hindu metaphysics and spirituality, I 58,
Gita, 1 7 I I 72 ; see also spirituality
Gladstone-Solomon, Principal, 3 I I Hindu mythology, 44, I 02, I 2g, I 32-3,
Gothic style, I 65, I 78 I 4 I -3, I 88 , 23 I , 262, 28 I , 292, 3 I4
gouache, 1 9 Hindu nationalism, I 67, I 72 ; see also
Government Art Gallery, Calcutta, 49, 52, nationalism
I o8, I 5 I , I 53, I 8g, I g8, 243 Hindu philosophy, I 5 7 , I 7 I , I 78-g, I 8g
Government School of Art, Calcutta, 2, Hindu womanhood, ideal of, I 23, I 4 I -2 ,
I I- I 3 , 34-5, 42, 45, 47-9, 52 - 3, 55, 5 7 , I g i -2, 286, 288
60, 65, 67, 72, 74-5, 7 9 , 83, 9 2 , I 19, Hinduism, I 58, I 7 I , 1 73, I 7g-8 r
I 23, I 49, I 52, I 55 , I 88, 2 I 5 , 2 I 8, 229, Hodges, William, I 5 , 46
242, 253, 26g, 273-4> 279 > 309, 3 I 9, Hogg, Sir Stuart, 75
323 Holroyd, Thomas, I 7
Graeco-Roman art, I 1 9, I 65 Hsieh-Ho, 206
Great Exhibition of I 85 I ' London, 58, 59> Hudson, B., 54
I 48 Hume, Allan Octaian, 75
Greek art, I 25, I 40, I 76, 1 78 ; influence on Hunter, Alexander, 59
Indian art, I 2 1 -2, 1 6 2 , 1 73, I 76-7, 20 1 Hunter, W. W., 75
Greenwood, Principal, 1 33
Griffiths, John, 66, 208 iconography, 7, I 3, 2 I , 35, 40, 93, g6, 1 00,
Grunwedel, Albrecht, 1 74 I O I , I 03, I 1 6, I 59> 1 66, I 76-7, I 79,
Guha, Chittaranjan, 1 g6 I 83, 20 I , 260, 262, 292
Gupta, Manindra Bhusan, 303 idealism, I 78, I 88, I 92-4, 2 I g, 249, 294
Gupta, Ranada Prasad, 2 1 6, 2 77, 3 1 9 illusionist style, 35, 93, I I4, 2og ; see also
Gupta, Samarendranath, 209, 2 7 3 , 2 78, Academic Realism
303, 3 1 2 illustrations, 6, 7 I , 73, 79, 83, 84, 86, 92, 96,
Gyanandanandini Debi, go I 03, I r g, I 22 , I 37 , I 52, I 94, 229, 280,
282, 284
Hakim Muhammed Khan, 306 Imperial Archaeological Commission of
Haldar, Asit Kumar, 208- 1 0, 2 73, 2 78, 28 1 , Japan, I 68
297, 303, 309, 3 1 2 Imperial Art Cottage, I 02
Haldar, Harishchandra, 8g, g6 Imperial Art School, Tokyo, I 68
 Index
I mperial University, Tokyo, r68
Impey, Sir Elijah and Lady, r 6
Indian Academy of Art, Calcutta, 322
Indian aesthetic canons, 203-7, 2 1 9-2 2 ; see
also classical art traditions and canons ;
Hindu art and architecture
Indian aesthetic philosophy, 1 58, r67,
r 77-9 ; see also Buddhist art and
aesthetics ; Hindu art and architecture ;
Hindu philosophy
Indian Art Cottage, Calcutta, 92
Indian art history ' l ' 3, ! 59· I 79, r 8o,
!82-3, 20 ! , 20g, 222
Indian Art School, Calcutta, 2 1 5
Indian art tradition, 1 48, r 8 r , r g r , 200,
20 r , 203, 22 r ; see also Buddhist art and
aesthetics ; classical art traditions and
canons ; Hindu art and architecture
Indian motherland, images of, go-2, 1 2 2-3,
1 95-6, 255 · 258-g
Indian Museum, Calcutta, 6 r , 66, 7 1 , 154
Indian National Congress, r 1 I
Indian Sculpture and Painting, 1 58-g, 1 75,
200
India Society, London, 1 65, 2 78
Indian Society of Oriental Art, Calcutta,
r g8, 225, 2 70, 2 76-8o, 306, 30g- r o,
3 1 2, 3 1 4, 3 1 9, 323
' Indian-style' paintings, 1 43, 1 45, 1 46, 1 55,
1 94, r g8, 2 1 3, 226, 227, 24 1 , 243, 262,
267, 275. 2 76, 2 79, 285, 286, 303, 3 1 !
' Krishnanagar, 55 ; clay modellers of, 66, 70
3 1 3- 1 4, 323-4
Indian womanhood, I 4 I -2, 286-8,
299-30 r ; see also Hindu womanhood
Indo-Greek styles, 1 7 7
I ndo-Persian paintings, 243
I ndo-Saracenic architecture, r 8 r , 3 1 o ; see
also architecture
Industrial and Fine Arts Committee,
Calcutta, 82
interior decor, 37, 5 1 , 2 7 5
International Orientalist Conference,
Copenhagen, I 62
internationalism, 223-4
Islam, 1 79
Islamic art and aesthetics, I 2 7 , 1 8o- 1
ivory paintings, 230, 306
J.J. School of Art, Bombay, 47, 6o, 66, 1 33,
1 40, r 88, �o8, 3 1 1
Jain architecture, r 8 r ; see also architecture
J ai pur School of Arts, 3 1 2
Japan, 1 67, 1 70, 1 82, 28 1 , 3 I r
Japanese art and aesthetics, 1 68-70, 206,
2 2 7 , 249> 276
345
Japanese painters in Calcutta, r 6g, 249-53,
2 76
Jobbins, W. H . , 5 1 , 67, 74
Johnston and Hoffman, 54, 281
Jones, Owen, 58, 147
Jones, Sir William, r r 8
Journal of Indian Art and Industry, 1 53
Jubilee Art Academy, Calcutta, 2 1 6, 3 1 9
Kala Bha van, Santiniketan, 309- 1 2 , 3 1 4
Kalidasa, 204, 2 1 2, 222, 24 1
Kalighat paintings, 1 8-27, 29, 3 1 , 39, 43,
84, 1 30, 1 39. 202, 2 1 0, 230
patuas, r 8-2 1 , 23-7, 3 1 , 34, 35, 40, 78,
I 2 7, 2 02 ; see also patuas
Kalighat temple, 1 2
Kansaripara Art Studio, Calcutta, 83, r 02
Kar, Surendranath, 28 1 , 297
Karmakar, Gopal Chandra, 34
Karmakar, Krishna Chandra, 33
Karmakar, Manohar, 32
Karmakar, Panchanan, 27, 32
Katsuta, Yoshio, 253, 2 74
Kayastha Pathsala, Allahabad, 1 33
Kettle, Tilly, 46
Khan, Harish Chandra, 47
Khan, Kheyali Sabha, 228
King, Sir George, 8g
Kipling, John Lockwood, 1 53
Kitchener, Lord, 2 7 7
Kramrisch, Stella, 184, 224
Kuntaline Press, 282
Laha, Bhabani Charan, 2 1 4, 3 1 9, 32 1-3
Landholders' Association, 2 7 7
landscapes, 39, 40, 43, 44, 46, 48, 49, 5 2 ,
54, 82, 8g, go, 93, roo-3, r o8, 2 1 4,
232, 233, 265, 3 1 4
Landseer, 52
Lawrence, 52
Lawson, John, 2 7
' lesser arts ' ' 58
Lewis, F. C., 54
life studies, 42, 47, 49, 8 r , 83, 8g, 94, 1 03,
2 29, 233, 238, 3 1 9 , 324
lithographers, I 2, 24, 45, 59, I 52, 40, 7 I ,
83-4, 94> I O I , 1 ! 5
lithographs, lithography, I I , 34, 40, 44, 47,
6 r , 67-8, 70- 1 , 78, 79, 82, 83-4, 86,
92, 94, r o r , 1 1 5, 1 3 7 ; see also
chromolithographs
lithostone, 94-5
Locke, H. H., 47, 6o, 6g, 7 1 , 75, 8 r
Lucknow, 1 2
 Index
Lucknow School of Art, 3 r 2
Madras School of Arts ; see School of
Industrial Arts, �adras
Mahabharata, 49, 82, 8 7 , r og, r r o, 1 2 7 ,
142 , I 7 I , 233, 2 6 2 , 272, 2 8 1
N1aharaj a of Burdwan, 5 1 , 54, 64, 87, 2 7 7 ,
308 ; see also Mah tab, Bijoychand
Maharaja of Darbhanga, 77
:Ylaharaja of Vizianagram, 48
:Yiaharashtra, Hindu household ceremony
of, 1 4 1 -2
Mahtab, Bijoychand, 2 79
Maitrcya, Akshay Kumar, 2 1 8-22
:Yfajumclar, Hemendranath, 3 r 9, 32 r -2
Majumdar, Kshitindranath, 2 7 3 , 28g, gog,
3!2
Majumdar, Tinkori, 79
Mamallapuram, 292
Marathi, 1 33, 1 42
Marble Palace, 44, 5 r , 52, 54, 56, 72
Martindale, Francis, 233
Mayo School of Arts, Lahore, 6o, 1 53 , gog,
3!2
:Ylcchanics Institute, Calcutta, 6o
:Yleiji ideology, r 68, 250
:Y1hatre, Ganpatrao Kashinath, r 33, r 35,
' 3 7 , 1 4 1-3
:Ylichaelangelo, 68, 233
middle-class, artists, art culture and art
public in Bengal, g, 5-8, I I - 1 2 , 3 7 >
42-6, 59-60, 67-78, 8 I -2, I I 0-1 I , 1 1 7,
1 2 3-8, r g6, 202, 2 70, 2 77, 280- r , 305,
go8-g, 3 1 8-23
miniature artists, 1 2- r g, I j- I 6 ; see also
court painters
miniature paintings, r 5, 53, 1 53-5, r g8,
2 2 7 , 230, 233· 235, 24 1 , 249> 255, 265,
267, 2 73 > 293, 307
Kangra, r g8, 28 I
Mughal, I 3, r 53-4, r 66, I 79-80, r g8-g,
209, 227, 238, 24 1 -3, 245, 275, 289,
293-4
Pahari, 4, r r g, 2 1 4, 245, 262, 275, 293-4
Rajput, r 66, I 8o, r g8, 227, 245, 294
Mistry, Kashinath, 2 7
:Yfitra, Raja Manmathanath, 5 r
Mitra, Nabagopal, 82, I 23
Mitra, Pramathanath, 72, 76
Mitra, Raja Rajendralal, 6 I , 66, 7 1 , 73, 83,
r r g-2 1 , 1 26
Mitra-Majumdar, Dakshina Ranjan, 86
modellers, 55, 59, 59, 72
modelling, 6 r , 66, 67, 70, 1 23 ; see also clay
models
The lvfodem Review, I ro, 1 38, r gg, r 86,
1 90-r , r gg, 2 1 2 , 28o, 3 ' 9
modernisation, 5, r o
modernism, 2 2 2 , 3 14, 3 I 8
' monster ' myths, r 79
:Ylontagu, Lord, 278
Moorland, George, 46
Morris, William, 58, ' 5 ' , I 6o, r 6g
:Yfughal architecture, I 5 7 , r 8o ; see also
architecture
:Yiughal paintings, see miniature paintings
Mughal painters, 154, 305-6
Mukherjee, J aladhi Chandra, 55, 72
Mukhe�ec, Jogendranath, 8 r
Mukherjee, Nilmani, 82
Mukherjee, Shambhu Chandra, 75
Mullick, Debendra, 72
Mullick, Dinendra, 73
Mullick, Nagendra, 72
Mullick, Raj a Rajendra, 5 1
mural decorations, 53
mural paintings, I 75, 286, 3 I I , 3 I 4 ; see also
fresco paintings
Murshidabad, court painting, 5, 1 2, 1 5
mysticism, Hindu, 1 48, 1 78, 2 r 7 , 222 ; see
also Hindu metaphysics and spirituality
' Mytho-pictures ', Calcutta Art Studio, 79,
g6- I og, 1 2 7 , r go-r
mythological paintings and pictures, 35-40,
43-44, 79, 82-g, r o6-r r , 1 28-gg, I g6,
1 40-5, r86, 2 ! 2, 230-g, 236, 2 5 1 -g,
262, 2 7 ! -2 , 28 !-2, 294, 297, 3 ' 4 '
32 1-4
Nag, Charuchandra, 1 2 5
Nag, Rohini Kanta, 75
Naidu, Ramaswami, 48
Naoroji , Dadabhai, 75
Napier , Lord, r o8
' nation building ' , r 7 I , r 86, 2 I o
' national art ', g, 6, 8, 1 46, 1 75 , r8g, 2 1 0,
227, 262, 269, 278-8o, 285, 292, g r g,
g r 8, 326
' national education ' , 269
National Indian Association, 75
National School, Calcutta, 82, 1 23
nationalism, 2-4, r o , r r o, r r 7 , 1 2 1-2, r g8,
J 46, 1 49, 1 59, 1 62-g, ! 67, 1 69, ' 7 ' ·
1 74-5, r 82-6, rgo- r , 1 95-6, r g8, 20 1 ,
2 1 0- 1 1 , 2 I 6- r 7, 224, 255, 2 79, gor , g r g
nationalist art and art movement, 2-g, 6,
r o, 16, r g6, r g8, 2 r r ; see also ' national
art ' , nationalism
nationalist ideology, 5-9, 1 48, I 72-3, I 75,
r 85, r 88-g ; see also nationalism
 Index 34 7

naturalism, 36, 39, 43, 44, 92, r 03, 2 I 4 , Persian exoticism, 299
2 I 6 , 2 r 9, 2 2 3 , 2 3 8 , 294 ;
see also Persian-style script, 235
Academic Realism ; European art perspective, 42, 94, r oo, I 2 7 , 2 I 2 , 2 1 4 ; see
Nawabi Culture, 1 3 also European art
nayika, 2 I , I 4 I , 242, 294 Phidias, 68
nco-Platonic aesthetics, 1 78 ; see also photographic firms, 54, 8 I , 28 I
aesthetics photography, 82, 93, 229
' New School of Indian Painting', 5, I 75, plaster-casts, 4 7, 6 I , 66, 7 r
r 85 , I 89, I 9 I -2 , 208, 2 I O, 2 I 4, 2 1 6, Platonic ideal, r 78, I 8 r
226-3 I 2, 32 I Pompignoli, L., 5 2 , 65
Nippon Bijutsuin, I 68 portrait painters, 4, 6, 48, 54-5, 5 7 , 7 I , 7 2 ,
Nivedita, Sister, I 58, I 67, I 7 0-2, I 74-5, l 5 I ' 32 1
I 8 2 , I 85-7, I 92 , I 95-6, 2 I 2 , 255, 2 74, portraits, portraiture, I I , 33, 46, 48, 49,
28I 52-5, 66, 69, 7 I -3, 75-6, 8 I -2, 93-5,
Northbrook, Lord, 64, 6 5 , 7 3 , I o8 I 05, I I I , 2 3 1-2, 3 2 1 , 324
Pr-abasi, I I O , I 38, 1 39 , I 43, I 45 , I 9o- I , I 99 ,
oil painters, I I , I g , 3 5-6 , 6 7 , 43- 4, 55-7 , 2 I 3- I 5 , 280, 2 8 2 , 30 I , 3 I 9
7 I -8, 8 I , I 05-6, I I I , 1 3 2, I 5 1 , 2 I 4 , Pradip, I 3 7 , I 38
2 2 9 , 2 3 I -2 , g i 8-2 I Pratima Debi, 2 76
oil paintings, 6, I I , I 2, 26, 3 5- 7, 39 -49, 5 I , Presidency College, 308
55-6 , 7 I -3, 75-6, 8 r -2, I r r , r i 4, 2 I 6 , Primitive styles, I 65
229-32, 3 I 9, 324 print-makers, see Bat-tala ; engravers ;
Okakura, Kakuro, 1 67-7 I , I 74-5 , I 82 , 249, lithographers
274 printing presses, Bengali, I 3, 2 7-8, 32-3,
oleographs, oleography, 34, 4-4, 78, 96, I 05 , 78 -87, 92, I 02-3, I 3 7
I 06 , r I I , r I 5, I 2 7 , 280 printing technologies, competition o f new,
Omar Khayyam, 297 24, 2 7 , 44
Opie, John, 54 Puri-Konarak series, 265
Orientalism, 9 I o, I I O,
- I r 8-22 , 1 46-8,
I 55 -70, I 75-84, I 85 , 200-I race theory, I 2o , I 82
Orientalists, I 2 3, I 46, I 59. I 6 3 , I 86-9, Rajput history and legends, I 96
200- I , 2 I 8, 22 I , 2 7 7-80, 309- I O Rajput paintings, see miniature paintings
Orissa, te mpl e architecture, 6 I , 7 I , I I 9- 20 Ramakrishna Math, I s8, I 7 I
Ramayana, 82, 87, 1 03, 1 2 7, I 42, 1 7 1 , 2 3 3 ,
Pahari paintings, see miniature paintings 272, 2 8 I
Pal, Beni Madhab, 43 Rao, Sukhalata, 284, 297
Pal, Bipin chandra, I 72 Raphael, 68, I 39, r 40
Pal, Gopal chandra, 70 Ray, Biharilal, 82
Pal, Jadunath, 55, 70 Ray, Sukumar, 2 I 7, 2 2 3 , 284
Pal, Kalidas, 70, 82 Raychowdhury, Surendra Chandra, 2 I 8
Pal, Krishna Chandra, 8 I Raychowdhury, Upendrakishore (U. Ray) ,
Pal, Motilal, 43, 49 I 3 7 . 2 I 6- I 7 , 2 2 3 , 280, 282-4
Palmer, Charles, 73, I I I , 23 I Raz, Ram, I I 8- I 9
Pan-Asian aesthetics, I 6 7 , 1 69-70, 20 r , 249 ; realism, see Academic Realism
see also aesthetics realistic style, see Academic art ; Academic
Paris Universal Exhibition, I 73 Realism
Pashvabali, 2 7 Redgrave, Richard, 6o
Pathuriaghata Tagore family, 54., 72, 88, religious pictures, 6, I 9, 20, 33, 36-8, 43,
279 78, 82-3, 96, r oo ; see also mythological
Patna, school of painting, 1 2 , I 5 , 2 7 0 paintings
pats, I 9, 26, 2 8 , 34, I 2 7 , 2 0 2 , 2 I 3 , 324 ; see Renaissance art, 53, I 65 ; see also European
also Kalighat paintings art
patuas, I 2 , I 3, I 9, 20, 24, 3 I , 34, 73, 78, I 2 7 , Reni, Guido, 46, 68, 1 40
202, 2 1 3 Reynolds, Sir Joshua, 46, 64, 69, 74
Pederson, H. V . , 54 Roman art, I 7 6
 Index
Romantic art theories, I go Sepoy Mutiny of I 85 7 , 6o
Romney, 52 Serampore, 2 7-8, 33
Ronaldshay, Lord, 2 7 7, 3 I O Shadanga, or six limbs of Indian painting,
Roods, T., 54 205-7, 2 2 [
Rossetti, Dante Gabriel, I go shading, 22, 40, 42, 79, 8g, go, 93-6, 1 03,
Rothenstein, William, I 65, 309 I 26-7, 2 I 2 , 2 I 6, 232 ; see also European
Roy, Charuchandra, 297, 305, 307 art
Roy, Dwijendralal, I g6, 322 Shampukur Mitra household, 54
Roy, Jagadindranath, 279 Shastri, Pandit Sivnath, 7 5
Roy, Jamini, 5, 323-5 Sheikh Muhammad Amir of Karraya,
Royal Academy, London, 46, 54-5, 64-5 I 7- I 8
Rome, 74, 75 ; Munich, 75 Shephard, Joseph, 2 7
Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Shilpa-pushpanjali, 82, 8 7 , 94, g6, I 04, I 26-8,
Ireland, I I 8 I 36
Royal College of Art, London, 308 Shunso, Hishida, I 6g, 249, 253
Royal Lithographic Press, Calcutta, 79 Shyam Sundar, 56
Royal Society of Arts, London, I I g, I 63-5 Silpa Sastras, 204-5, 220
Roychowdhury, Debiprasad, 3 I 2 Sinha, Durgesh Chandra, 305
Rubens, 46 Smith, Vincent, I 76, 22 I
Rupam, 2 25 , 3 1 0, 322 Society for the Promotion of Industrial Art,
Rupavali, 292 Calcutta, 6o
Ruskin, John, I go-3 Society of Fine Arts, Calcutta, 323
South East Asia, I 8o
Sadhana, 92, I 10, I 36 spirituality, I 40, I56, 1 58-g, I 78, 188,
Sahajadpur Series, 267 I 92-3, I 95-6, 2 I I , 2 I 7, 222, 299, 32 :2
Sahitya, 2 I 3-I 7 Srimani, Shyama Charan, 70, 1 2 2-6, 209
Samajpati, Sureschandra, 2 I 3 Standard Pattern Books, I 53
Sami-uz-Zaman, 306 stencilling, 1 5 I
Sanchi motifs, 262 still-life paintings, 2 70
Sandesh, 284 The Studio, I ss-6
Sanskrit aesthetic texts, I I 8, I 26, 20 I , Sunayani Debi, 276
203-7 220-2 Sunkel, 54
'
literature, I o6, I 29, I 36, I 40, 204 ; see also Survey of India, I 53
Kalidasa Swadeshi ideology and movement, 2, 7-9,
Santiniketan, 303, 305, 308- I 2 , 3 I 4, 3 I 6 I 62-3, I 7 I-2, I 82-3, I 85-6, I 88, I g6,
Sarkar, Benoy Kumar, 222-4, 3 I 5 2 1 3, 226, 242, 258-6o, 269
Sarkar, Biharilal, 87 terrorist activities, 259
Sarkar, Jadunath, 246 Swarnakar, Ramdhan, 33
Sati, I 9 r , 287-8
School of Industrial Arts, Calcutta, 59, 68, Tagore, Abanindranath, 3-7, 9-I o , 92, g6,
79, I 25 I 2 7 , I 36, I 38-9, I 43, I 45-6, I 49,
School of Industrial Arts, Madras, 59, 6o, I 54-6, I 63, I 65, I 6 7 , I 6g, I 75,
1 49 > 2 7 3 > 3 I 2 I 85-2o8, 2 I I-2 I , 226-3 I 3, 3 1 8- I g,
Schools of Art and Design, England, I 4 7 32 I-2, 324
scroll paintings, I 8, 19 Tagore, Balendranath, I 2 8-30, I 32-3,
sculpture, European, 5 I , 52, 55 ; ancient I 35-6, I 88
Indian, I 73, I84, 203-4 ; see also Tagore Castle, 5 I-2, 54
Buddhist art ; Hindu art Tagore, Maharshi Debendranath, 75
Sen, Bireswar, 308 Tagore, Dwarakanath, 5 I-2, 95, 228
Sen, Dinesh Chandra, 200 Tagore, Dwijendranath, 75, I 3 7
Sen, Jatindra Kumar, 305 Tagore, Gaganendranath, 4, 84, 89, 228,
Sen, Keshab Chandra, 73 230, 250, 2 74-5, 279 , 3o3, 3 I I , 3 I 4- I 6,
Sen, Narendranath, 7 7 3 I 8- I 9
Sen, Phanibhusan, 7 2 , 8 I , I OO Tagore, Girindranath, 73, 229
Sen, Poresh Nath, 55, 72 Tagore, Gopimohan, 5 I , 52
 Index 3 49

Tagore, Gunendranath, 73, 229 1 00 , 1 05-6, I 08 , I I O, I I I, I I 4- I 6, I 28,

Tagore, Hitendranath, 73, 2 1 4, 2 1 6 1 30, I 3 2 , 1 35-7 > I 39, 1 40, 1 42 - 3,
Tagore, Maharaja jatindra :\llohan, 48, 5 1 , I 45-6, I 8s-8, I 93 , 2 I 2- 1 3 , 2 1 5, 232-3,
52, ss, 64, 7 2 , 77, 8s, 86 2 7 1 ' 280, 282, 285, 294, 32 1
Tagore, Jyotirindranath, 1 28 , 2 2 8 , 2 2 9 Vedanta school of philosophy, I 78
Tagore, Nagendranath, 2 3 3 Vedic Hindu civilisation, I 69 , I 79, I 8 I
Tagore, P. N . , 2 7 9 Venkatappa, K., 203, 273, 2 8 1
Tagore, Rabindranath, 4, 1 1 r , I 32-3, I 3 5 , Vernet, Horace, 5 2 , 54
I 3 7 , I 8 8-9, 2 2 8 , 232, 259, 2 6 2 , 265, Victorian furniture, 5 I , 23 I , 275
282, 297, 3o i -5, 3o8-9, 3 I I - I 2 , Victorian ideals and ethics, I 8 7 , I 90-2, 2 I 2
3 I S- I 6, 3 I 8- I 9 Victorian painters and paintings, 46, 54-5,
Tagore, Rathindranath, 2 7 9 96, I 4G- I , 297
Tagore, Raja Romanath, 48, 7 3 village community, 1 49
Tagore, Samarendranath, 228, 230, 274 Visva Bharati, 3 I O- I 1
Tagore, Satyendranath, 89 Vivekananda, Swami, I 6 7, I 7 I , I 73
Tagore, Raja Sourindra Mohan, 88-9, vocational education, I 2 3
I 03-4
Tagore, Soutindra Mohan, 72 Wacha, Dinshaw, 7 5
Tagore, Surendranath, I 67 , 249 Walker, Emery, 2 8 1
Taikan, Yokoyama, I 69 , 249, 250- I , 253, ' wash ' technique, I 93-4, 2 4 7-55, 286--8 ,
274 292, 306, 323-4
Technical Art Series, I 53 water-colours, 1 9, 2 3 , 38, I O I ; see also
Tekchand Thakur, 84 ' wash ' technique
tempera, I 9, 292 Watts, G. F . , 54, I 40 , I 93
temple architecture, 6 I , I I 8-2 I , I 38, I 77 , West, Benjamin, 46
I 8o- r , I 84 'vVestern Academic style, see Academic
terracotta, architectural d eco ra t ion, 66 Realism ; European art
textiles, I 53 vVestern art, see European art
Theosophical Society, I j8 westernisation, 4-8, r o, I 2, 43, 52
Thornton, Edward, 2 7 7 , 279 Wilkins, Charles, 2 7
three-tone colour blocks, I 38 Wills, Frank A., 56
' trades and casts ', I 2 , 1 5, r 6, 47 womanhood, see Hindu womanhood
Travancore, 48 wood-engraving and wood-cut printing,
27-35, 6 I , 66-7, 86, I 2 7
U. Ray and Sons, 1 38 , 282, 284 Woodroffe, Justice, 274, 2 7 7 , 2 7 9
Ukil, Sarada Charan, 2 7 3 , 323
Yule, W. R., 279
Van Gogh, 222
Varma, Ishwari Prasad, 92, 253, 2 7 0-4, ;:.amindari, art collectors and collections,
306, 3 I 8 43-4, 46-7, 49-57 , 64, 7 4-7 > 279
Varma, Rameshwar Prasad, 307 65, 2 7 7 , 2 7 9
<:,amindars, 37, 49, 52,
Varma, Raj a Ravi, 39, 40, 44, 48, 75, 96, Zoffany, john, 46
 C A M BR I DGE SOUTH AS IAN STUD I E S

These monographs are published by the Syndics of Cambridge University

Press in association with the Cambridge Centre for South Asian Studies.
The following books have been published in this series :

I S. Gopal : British Policy in India, 1858-1905

2 J. A. B . Palmer : The Mutiny Outbreak at Meerut in 1857
3 Ashin Das Gupta : Malabar in Asian Trade, 174�1800
4 Gananath Obeyesekere : Land Tenure in Village Ceylon : A Sociological and
Historical Study
5 H . L . Erdman : The Swatantra Party and Indian Conservation
6 S. N. Mukherj ee : Sir William Jones : A Study in Eighteenth-Century British
Attitudes to India
7 Abdul Majed Khan : The Transition in Bengal, 1756-1755 : A Study ofSaiyid
Muhammad Re<;a Khan
8 Radhe Shyam Rungta : The Rise of Business Corporation in India, 1851-1900
g Pamela Nightingale : Trade and Empire in Western India, 1784-1806
IO Amiya Kumar Bagchi : Private Investment in India 190�1939
II Judith M. Brown : Gandhi's Rise to Power : Indian Politics 1915-1922
I2 Mary C. Carras : Dynamics of Indian Political Factions : A Study of District
Councils in the State of Maharashtra
I3 P. Hardy : The Muslims of British India
I4 Gordon Johnson : Provincial Politics and Indian Nationalism : Bombay and the
Indian National Congress, 188o to 1915
I5 Marguerite S . Robinson : Political Structure in a Changing Sinhalese Village
I6 Francis Robinson : Separation among Indian Muslims : The Politics of the
United Provinces' Muslims, 186�1923
I7 Christopher John Baker : The Politics of South India, 192�1937
I8 D. A. \tVashbrook : The Emergence of Provincial Politics : The Madras
Presidency, 187�1920
I g Deepak N a yyar : India's Exports and Export Policies in the 1960s
20 Mark Holmstrom : South Indian Factory Workers : Their Life and Their
World
2 I S. Ambiraj an : Classical Political Economy and British Policy in India
22 M. Mufakhrul Islam : Bengal Agriculture 192�1946 : A Quantitative Study
 Cambridge South Asian Studies
23 Eric Stokes : The Peasant and the Raj : Studies in Agrarian Society and Peasant
Rebellion in Colonial India
2 4 Michael Roberts : Caste Conflict and Elite Formation : The Rise of Karava Elite
in Sri Lanka, 150o-1931
25 John Toye : Public Expenditure and Indian Development Policy 196o-1970
26 Rashid Amjad : Private Industrial Investment in Pakistan 196o-1970
2 7 Arjun Appadurai : Worship and Conflict under Colonial Rule : a South Indian
Case
28 C. A. Bayly : Rulers, Townsmen and Bazaars : North Indian Society in the Age
of British Expansion, 177o-1870
29 Ian Stone : Canal Irrigation in British India : Perspectives on Technological
Change in a Peasant Economy
30 Rosalind O 'Hanlon : Caste, Conflict, and Ideology : Mahatma ]otirao Phule
and Low Caste Protest in Nineteenth-Century Western India
3 r Ayesha J alal : The Sole Spokesman : ]innah, the Mus lim League and the
Demand for Pakistan
32 Neil Charlesworth : Peasants and Imperial Rule : Agriculture and Agrarian
·

Society in the Bombay Presidency, 185o-1935

33 Claude Markovits : Indian Business and Nationalist Politics 1931-1939 : The
Indigenous Capitalist Class and the Rise of the Congress Party
34 Mick Moore : The State and Peasant Politics in Sri Lanka
35 Gregory C. Kozlowski : Muslim Endowments and Society in British India
36 Sugata Bose : Agrarian Bengal : Economy, Society and Politics, 1919-1947
3 7 Atul Kohli : The State and Poverty in India : The Politics of Reform
38 Franklin A. Presler : Religion Under Bureaucracy : Policy and Administration
for Hindu Temples in South India
39 Nicholas B. Dirks : The Hollow Crown : Ethnohistory of an Indian Kingdom
40 Robert vVade : Village Republics : Economic Conditions for Collective Action in
South India
4 I Laurence \tV. Preston : The Devs of Cincvad : A Lineage and State in
Maharashtra
42 Farzana Shaikh : Community and Consensus in Islam : Muslim Representation in
Colonial India 186o-1947
43 Susan Bayly : Saints, Goddesses and Kings : 1\lfuslims and Christians in South
Indian Society
44 Gyan Prakash : Bonded Histories : Genealogies of Labor Servitude in Colonial
India
45 Sanj ay Subrahmanyam : The Political Economy of Commerce : Southern India
150o-1650
46 Ayesha Jalai : The State of 1\1!artial Rule : The Origins of Pakistan's Political
Economy of Defence
4 7 Bruce Graham : Hindu Nationalism and Indian Politics : The Origins and
Development of the Bharatiya ]ana Sangh
48 Dilesh Jayanntha : Electoral A llegiance in Sri Lanka
35 2 Cambridge South Asian Studies

49 Stephen P. Blake : Shahjahanabad : The Sovereign City in lvlughal India

!639-1739
50 Sarah F. D . Ansari Sufi Saints and State Power : The Pirs of Sind, 1843-1947
5 r Rajnarayan Chandavarkar The Origins of Industrial Capitalism in In:dia :
Business Strategies and the Working Classes in Bombay, I90D-I940
52 Tapati Guha-Thakurta The Making of a New ' Indian ' Art : Artists,
Aesthetics and Nationalism in Bengal c. I85D-1920