A History of Fine Art in India and Ceylon, from the Earliest Times to the Present Day c7.7

c7.7

The question of the propriety of discriminating between Fine Art and the Industrial Arts is of no interest if it be true, as affirmed by authors of repute, that India does not now possess, and never has possessed, anything deserving the name of Fine Art. Sir George Birdwood, the eminent authority on the Industrial Arts, emphatically declares that 'sculpture and painting are unknown as fine arts in India'. That opinion, expressed thirty years ago, has been reaffirmed recently by the declaration that during a life-long experience he has not found in India any examples of 'this "Fine Art", the unfettered and impassioned realization of the ideals kindled within us by the things without us'. A photograph of the Java Buddha (*post*, Chap. VII, Sec. 8), exhibited at the Royal Society of Arts as a favourable specimen of Indian religious fine art, drew from Sir George Birdwood the criticism that 'the senseless similitude, by its immemorial fixed pose, is nothing more than an uninspired brazen image, vacuously squinting down its nose to its thumbs, knees, and toes. A boiled suet pudding would serve equally well as a symbol of passionate purity and serenity of soul.'¹