A History of Fine Art in India and Ceylon, from the Earliest Times to the Present Day c15.s8.t2: II. The Bengali Nationalist School

A History of Fine Art in India and Ceylon, from the Earliest Times to the Present Day c15.s8.t2

Language: English

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.

Linked texts (1)

Meghadūta — Kālidāsa, Sanskrit