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A History of Fine Art in India and Ceylon, from the Earliest Times to the Present Day c15.s8: Section VIII. The Modern Schools

A History of Fine Art in India and Ceylon, from the Earliest Times to the Present Day c15.s8

Language
English

Contents

Section VIII. The Modern Schools

I. Pictures in European Style

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At the Delhi Exhibition of 1902–3 many examples were shown of the oil-paintings and water-colours produced in considerable quantities of late years by students trained in European methods, chiefly at the Government Schools of Art in Calcutta, Bombay, Madras, and Lahore. In Sir George Watt's book Mr. Percy Brown, now (1910) Principal of the Calcutta School of Art, criticizes the Delhi exhibits as follows:—

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‘Until its introduction from Europe, there was no oil painting of any kind practised throughout the country, but the number of pictures executed in the medium shown in the Exhibition reveals the fact that oil picture painting as a branch of study, as well as a means of livelihood, is being taken up seriously by a rapidly increasing class. Some of the work displayed in the Eastern Hall of the Exhibition was remarkably good; in the life studies the modelling and feeling of living flesh being well reproduced, and one or two landscapes showed an atmosphere and a consideration for composition which is [*sic*] worthy of remark. Much, however, of the work shown was of a very ordinary character, the drawing being decidedly defective, and the technique and colouring in most cases crude.’³

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³ *Indian Art at Delhi*, p. 457.

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The most prominent representative of the Europeanized school of Indian artists was the late Rāja Ravi-varma of Travancore, a connexion of the Mahārāja of that State. His works, which are extremely numerous, achieved wide popularity, and have been freely vulgarized by oleographs and other cheap modes of reproduction. The Rāja practised both portrait and landscape painting, and four of the portraits in the Banqueting Hall, Madras, are from his brush.⁴ He was assisted by his relative, Rāja Rāja-varma, and other members of his family. He had received instruction from Theodore Jensen and other European artists who visited Southern India, as well as from Alagri Naidu, a native of Madura, in the Madras Presidency, who was patronized by Swāti Tirumal, Mahārāja of Travancore from 1829 to 1847, and was considered in his day to be the best painter in India after the European fashion. Ravi-varma had a formidable rival in Ramaswamy Naidu, a member of the clan of Nāiks at Madura, who was considered to excel in portrait painting.

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⁴ The four portraits are those of the Duke of Buckingham and Chandos, Sir Arthur Havelock, and the Ladies Mary and Caroline Grenville (Col. H. D. Love, R.E., *Descriptive List of Pictures in Government House and the Banqueting Hall, Madras* (Government Press, Madras, 1903), p. 132. I am indebted to the Government of Madras for a copy of Col. Love’s handsome and scholarly volume.

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Stimulated by the active encouragement of the royal family of Travancore, the Gaikwār of Baroda, and other wealthy patrons, Ravi-varma turned his attention to the illustration of the Hindu legends and epics.

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In his own country his works in that kind are regarded as masterpieces and adequate expressions of Indian feeling. At the hands of recent critics in Europe they have met with a different reception.

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'The art,' writes Mr. Havell, 'which truly reflects the fictitious culture of Indian universities and the teaching of Anglo-Indian art schools, is exhibited in the paintings of Ravi-varma, who is the fashionable painter of modern India for those Indians who do not ignore Indian art altogether.... Certain it is that his pictures invariably manifest a most painful lack of the poetic faculty in illustrating the most imaginative Indian poetry and allegory; and this cardinal sin is not to be atoned for by any kind of technical skill in the execution.'¹

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¹ *Indian Sculpture and Painting*, p. 251.

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Dr. Coomaraswamy, a fellow mystic, is still more severe, and declares that

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'theatrical conceptions, want of imagination, and lack of Indian feeling in the treatment of sacred and epic Indian subjects are Ravi-varma's fatal faults.... His pictures are such as any European student could paint, after perusal of the necessary literature and a superficial study of Indian life.'²

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² *Modern Review* (Allahabad), vol. ii, p. 107.

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In a more recent publication the same author gives his opinion with greater brevity and somewhat less severity to the effect that

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'the late Rāja Ravi-varma was the best known of these painters in a purely European style, but neither he nor any other workers of the pseudo-European school attained to excellence. His work at the best reached a second-rate standard.'

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Probably this last quoted judgement is not far wrong. I have not seen the painter's work, and know it only from coarse prints, among which the portrait of 'Sukēsi, the Beauty of Malabar', seemed to be the most pleasing composition.³

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³ Thirty-five of Ravi-varma's pictures are reproduced in an illustrated collection of Hindī poems, entitled *Kavitā Kalāp* (Allahabad, 1909), edited by Mr. Mahavīra Prasāda Dirvedi, and shown to me by Dr. Grierson. That book also contains prints of pictures in a similar style by Braj Bhūshan Rāi Chaudhri, Bābū Vāmapad Bandhopadhyāya, and Srīyut M. V. Durandhar. The prints are too rough for reproduction, courteously permitted by the editor. A list of Ravi-varma's works and an enthusiastic appreciation of his art will be found in V. Nazam Aiya, *Travancore Manual*, vol. iii, p. 263, a compilation which is a rich mine of information.

II. The Bengali Nationalist School

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‘The work of the modern school of Indian painters in Calcutta,’ Dr. Coomaraswamy writes, ‘is a phase of the National reawakening. Whereas the ambition of the nineteenth-century reformers had been to make India like England, that of the later workers has been to bring back or create a state of society in which the ideals expressed and implied in Indian culture shall be more nearly realized.’

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This new movement on the art side has been enthusiastically supported by Mr. E. B. Havell, late Principal of the Calcutta School of Art, who felt keenly the futility of training Bengālī students on purely foreign methods, alien to their nature, and sought to turn their attention to the productions of the Indo-Persian and eighteenth-century Hindu schools as being more expressive of Indian ideals. With some difficulty Mr. Havell persuaded the authorities to let him have his way, and replace a collection of poor European works by a choice selection of Indian paintings. He found in Mr. Abanindro Nāth Tagore, now Vice-Principal of the School of Art, a willing coadjutor, and a painter of considerable power. Mr. Havell recognized in his colleague a real artist ‘who has come to pick up the broken threads of Indian pictorial tradition’, and credited him with ‘giving us a true interpretation of Indian spirituality, and an insight into that higher world, the fairy land of Eastern poetry and romance, which Eastern thought has suggested’.¹

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¹ *Indian Sculpture and Painting*, pp. 256, 257.

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The critic proceeds to say that ‘if neither Mr. Tagore nor his pupils have yet altogether attained to the splendid technique of the old Indian painters, they have certainly revived the spirit of Indian art, and besides, as every true artist will, invested their work with a charm distinctively their own. For their work is an indication of that happy blending of Eastern and Western thought, from the full realization of which humanity has so much to gain.’

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These rather large claims are founded on a series of small works described in the *Studio* as ‘water-colour drawings’, and very far indeed from having ‘attained to the splendid technique of the old Indian painters’, which they do not attempt to rival. The more sober criticism of Dr. Coomaraswamy is more closely in accordance with the facts.

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‘The subjects chosen by the Calcutta painters,’ he observes, ‘are taken from Indian history, romance, and epic, and from the mythology and religious literature and legends, as well as from the life of the people around them. Their significance lies in their distinctive “Indianness”. They are, however, by no means free from European and Japanese influence. The work is full of refinement and subtlety in colour, and of a deep love of all things Indian; but, contrasted with the Ajaṇṭā and Mughal and Rājput paintings which have in part inspired it, it is frequently lacking in strength. The work should be considered as a promise rather than a fulfilment. So regarded, it has very great significance for the future of Indian Art.’²

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² *Catalogue of the Indian Court, Festival of Empire*, 1911, p. 106.

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Mr. Roger Fry holds a poor opinion of the work of the modern artists. ‘Such pictures as that of "The Siddhas of the Upper Air",' he observes, 'show that, however anxiously these artists strive to adopt the formulae of their ancestors, the spirit that comes to expression is that of the American magazine illustrator. Nothing, indeed, could provide a stronger proof of the profound corruption which contact with European ideas has created in Oriental taste than these well-intentioned but regrettable drawings.'¹

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¹ *Quart. Rev.*, 1910, p. 237.

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The leader of the school, Mr. Abanindro Nāth Tagore, began as a painter in oils, after the European fashion, but soon abandoned the oils medium, and devoted himself to the 'water-colour drawings'. Many works by him and his pupils have been exhibited at meetings of Societies in London, and reproduced in Mr. Havell's book or in periodicals. One specimen, therefore, may suffice—the picture of the 'Exiled Yaksha', or demigod, an illustration of a passage in Kālidāsa's poem, the *Meghadūta*, or 'Cloud Messenger', by Mr. Tagore (Pl. LXXII). Another good picture is 'The Flight of Lakshman Sen' by the late Mr. Surendra Nath Gangooly (Mr. Havell's Pl. LXXVIII). Other pupils of Mr. Tagore deserving mention are Nanda Lal Bose, Ishwari Parshad, a descendant of hereditary painters at Patna, Gogonendra Nath Tagore, brother of Abanindro Nath, Asit Kumār Haldar, and Hakim Muhammad Khan.²

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² See *Studio* for 1902, 1905, 1908; *Modern Review* (Allahabad), May, 1907; Havell, *Indian Sculpture and Painting*, Pl. LXXIII–LXXVIII.

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All well-wishers to India will join in the hope that the promise shown by this new Bengālī school may lead to something more important than the works hitherto produced. Probably all critics will agree that nothing of high worth can be created by men who merely seek to imitate foreign models. If modern India is to evolve a new art of her own it must have its roots in the Indian past and appeal to Indian sentiment. 'L'art dans l'Inde sera indien, ou il ne sera pas'³; but 'to be, or not to be, that is the question' which at present no man can answer.

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³ M. le comte Goblet d'Alviella, *Ce que l'Inde doit à la Grèce* (Paris, 1897), p. 94.

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