Abanindranath Known and Unknown The Artist versus the Art of His Times

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MOWNAND

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The Artist versus the Art of HisTimes

Tapati Guha-Thakurta

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ABANINDRANATH , KNOWN AND UNKNOWN: The Artist versus the Art of HisTimes Tapati Guha-Thakurta

September 2009

CENTRE FOR STUDIES IN SOCIALSCIENCES, CALCWA This publication is supported by a grant from Ford Foundation, India

'Ii

Publication September, 2009 Published by Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta R-1, Baishnabghata-PatuliTownship Kolkata-700 094. 0 Tapati Guha-Thakurta

Design &Print Bit Blits Digital Workstation 1/4, Gandhi Colony, Kolkata - 700 040

For copies contact The Registrar Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta R-1, Baishnabghata-PatuliTownship Kolkata-700 094, India Phone: 9 1 33 2462 7252,2462 5794 / 5 Fax: 9 1 33 2462 6183 Website: www.cssscal.org

hmugh the 193k, Abanindranath Tagore

these Into two books, F~oa(H@mdlyTaler) and

1-1951) began to obsessively look back to

Jorasanko~Dhore (Byghe side df&wasanh@, @he

past and recount the course of his own life

published in 1941 and 1944: Abanindra~ath's

d career, alongside the activities of the

memoirs stand as e%emplaryrsamples of a genre

remarkable Jorasanko household to which he

of personal remembrances, where the past is

belonged. The artist was then well past his prime,

reconstructedless as objective history, more as a

withdrawnfrom his public role as the leaderofthe

random flow of recollections, where the

nat~onalistart movement fully immersed in his

veracity of the stories lie enmeshed in the

private world of writing, painting and crafting

flavour in which they are told and heard. At

toys in the famous

the same time, they

southern verandah of

offer an invaluable

his home. (Figure 1) It

source on the social

was from this twilight

and cultural life of

zone of his creative life,

Jorasanko, not least of

that the ageing Aban

all, on Abanindranath's

Thakur wistfully gave

own artistic output

himself over to a world of memories. His main

and self-image. As vignettes of real life

impulse, he wrote, was

stories, these memoirs

notto record or document, but to tell stories.The

have provided art historians with a rich stock of

mind was like a tangled net, full of holes,

material for reconstructing Abanindranath

collectnng some remembrances and allowing

Tagore, young and o l d artist and writer, narrator

others to slip through, letting a few pictures

and dwamer, where his presentendlesslyrecedes

emerge in minute detail and leaving a host of

intoasenseof~asttime~~lacesand~eo~les.

others t o fade.'

Telling stories was what

It is this persona of the old artist, steeped in

AbanindranathTagorealwaysdidbestmoresoin

nostalgia and wrapped in an intensely

this phase of his writing and painting than ever

personalied world of painting and writing, that

before. These kaleidoscopic memoirs, which

forms the starting and ending point of this essay.

would be published as three separate books in

Its main thrust will be to juxtapose the artistic

Bengali, remain the finest examples of the art of

profiles of the nationalistandthe post-nationalist

the master raconteur. The first set of stories,

Abanindranath - t o mark h s passage from public

called Apan Katha (My Story), were the ones he

to an increasingly privatized domain of art and to

wrote himself and published as serialized

pursue his paintings thmugh the 1920s, 30s and

inrtalments in two journals before they came out

40%long after he recedesfromthe centrestage of

asa book in 1946.The others were what hewould

modern Indian art history. The artist's image in

narrate to the young writer, Rani Chanda, who

history can be seen here as his greatest trap and

acted as his faithful scribe and who, under

liability. The terms on which he staged his arrival

Saiuiniktsn epmduced from R slra Kumsc Paitnags of

RabindranathTagore's encouragement, prepared

on the modem Indian art scenewere what would

Prati*rha% MOP).

Figure 1: Pimtqaph of I\banmdnMm Tagweat work vn the d&hmrrI*rmndoh d Jwaranko, 1144 CoUedion' Fabinha Bhachwr.

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*Unntdmnmh m

m lcrmma

form the fulcrum of the story of the unfolding of a new modern era in Indian art Is it possible to mark a similar disavowal and break in Abanindranath's own painting career, that marks out the early from the middleand later phases of his work?There can be no doubt that the narrow label of 'lndian-style' painting is one from which Abanlndranath has remained in great need of emcation. What it obliterates is the versatility and variety of his work of the later years, the interactive development of

h ~ sp~ctorialand literary imagination, and the introspective fashioning of a creative personality thatwasasgifted with words as withvisual images. An assessment of the full body of works of this modern master was long overdue - and has recently been accomplished In a magnificentlyillustratedvolume by R Siva Kumar.'Undertaking a decisively fix his place in the history ofthis artistic

comprehensive documentation of Abanindranath's

field. His name became synonymous with the age

palntlngsofall periods, thisvolume's main intention

of nationalism In modern Indian art and the rrse

has been to draw out from obscurity this

and spread of the movement that took on the

exemplary modernist artist and bring into a public

denom~nationof the Bengal School. The nature of

domain, for the first tlme, his entire oeuvre

this nationalistintervention, its artistic merits and

(especially, the l~ttle-known,best works of the later

weaknesses, and its place ~nmodern Indian art

years). Wh~lethis essay too turns towards this

hlstory, has been thesubject of endless debate.' At

'othet' Abanindranath it also addresses the

the end of the day, the broad consensus has been to grant Abanindranath his place In the early phase of the natlon's passage to modern art, and move ahead to the new modernistvocabularies of succeeding groups of artists. Frozen in time in his Hgum 2 a: Phge fmm Fanor Mafindales album of

fixed dot, Abanindranath could then be dropped

'illummmtd manvscnpr 11145traUngthe paevyofssrnuel

fromthatlaterhistory without any qualms

colendge (sit and waier-c~lwr 1897)-Courtwy, (late)

sumnendranath and shyarnarree~agare

This essay sets out to ask in what ways and on what terms can Abanindwnath be recovered for the modern art history of the post-Swaderhi

FSure2lx Abanindranath Tagore. ThuMabhlsai: llu~tiauon of11neriroma patovab by Goblndadas W r cdout,c 18971(mar!&outat thebsckbylhe art,* axNr'drst a n m p t a t h d ~ wpamt!ngqcaunery. (Iste) Sumliendmnath end ShyamaireeTagore

years. Looklng backto the 1920s,the art historian, Asok Mltra, had proclaimed, "Swadeshi had served its turn, but served better still as it slowly retlred from the s~ene".~ The rejectloh of the Bengal School model of 'Indian' paintlng would

remained the most reliable source for future scholars.' It was largely on the basis of this chronology and his own intimate acquaintance with the master that Abanindranath's student Mukul Dey later compiled the catalogue for the ~ 3: Abanindranath ~ ~ ~ Tagore, L mnrait of his son. Alokedranath Tagore (dry pastel, c 19001- Courtery, (late1 sumitendranath and ShyamarreeTagare. F

entire family collection of Abanindranath's paintings, that t h e artist's eldest son, Alokendranath Tagore, bequeathed in the 1960s t o the newly founded Rabindra Bharati Sociey Trust. The Society came to be located at the site of their famous house on No. 5, Dwarakanath Tagore Lane. In a situation where only a small number of theartist's paintings weresold orgiven awayin his lifetime, the Rabindra Bharati Society

I

inherent difficulties of such a retrieval.

t

7

How

collection became the main institutional

effectively can we pull the artist out of his

repository of Abanindranath's works of all

nationalist past and the folds of the Indian art

periods. Banished into trunks inside the dark

movement and reposition him within the history

offices of the Society, these paintings have

of India's artistic modernisms of the early 20'"

remained in permanent storage, unavailable for

century? Can we script a new role for the latter-

public viewing, just a5 the cyclostyled copy of

day Abanindranath Tagore within the larger

Mukul Dey's catalogue was never t o get

history of modern Indian painting?There is a way

published. Neither exhibited nor reproduced in

in which Abanindranath, from the 19208, willfully

journals in his own time, and stashed away ever

writes himself out of this history to play out his

since, the bulk of Abanindranath's works of his

creative life within a private shell on stubbornly

later years have never entered the public domain,

different terms. One of my concerns here will be

and are known only within a tiny circle of art

to probethenatureofthis retreat and withdrawal,

connoisseurs and scholars in Bengal - among

to see how it both constitutes the essence of his modern artistic persona and, at the same time, pushes against the grain ofthe institutional and professional worlds of modern art activity in the country of this period. Strictly speaking, Abanindranath's workofthe laterdecadescannot be said t o be completely 'unknown'. On the occasion of the artist's seventieth birthday, there was a full chronology and list of all the main series of his paintings prepared by Benode Behari Mukherjee, that has

r i g u n 4: Abanindranath Tagore, Sketch af Yakqama Tailcan (brush andink rketchbmk of 1902) -coumry, [lael Sumitendranathand ShyamarreeTagore.

art of these decades. The subtitle of the essay takes off from the title of one of the first English monographs on the artist - Jaya Appasamy had called her 1968 book Abanindranath Tagore and the ortofhis times. Sketching the contours of the "Bengal Renaissance" and the "Bengal School" of art that Abanindranath had founded, she proceeded from a survey of the main characteristics of his style to quick entries on Nandalal Bose, Kshitindranath Majumdar, K.Venkatappa, A.R.Chughtai,

Benode Behari

Mukherjee, Ramkinkar Baij, Gaganendranath Tagore, Rabindranath Tagore, Amrita Sher Gil and Jamini Roy, marking out the last four as "important individualist^."^ The implication was that all these artists, in more or less direct ways, followed out of a founding history laid out by AbanindranathTagore. There was no setting apart of those who belonged to the lineage of 'Indianstyle' painting from those like Benode Behari and Ramkinkar who came out of the sharply different pedagogy and aesthetics of Santiniketan, nor any whom, K.G.SubramanyanSandR.Siva Kumar have

analysis of why the last four artists were singled

long argued that the true measure of

out as individualists, and how they could be

AbanindranathTagore's talent is to be found in his work of the 19205,30s and 40s, little of which came to public attention. If Abanindranath increasingly shut himself in, into the cocoon of his fading aristocratic life style and its leisure past times, a subsequent history of institutional apathy and obduracy have conspired to push his legacy into deeperoblivion. Figure 5: Abanindranath Tagore. 'The Banirhed ~aksha"of Kalidara'r Meghodum (watercaiour, r. 1904)- Courtesy. Rabindra Bhsnti Saclec,, Calmna. and the visual atchive

today in recovering this later Abanindranath from

olcsssc.

always the art historical of presenting the full

~ ~ ~ ~ . 6 ; Tagore, ~ b ~ 'The Building of theTqi^ (gouache on pper. 1902)Courtesfi Pabindla Bharati Society, calcuna, and the visual archive of CSSSC.

But we also need to ask - what is at stake oblivion and giving him his artistic due? There is master. My interest, ~development i ~ d ~ ~ of~ an ~ individual ~ h though, lies less in the revelation of the 'genius', more in positioning his persona and practice within the surrounding scenario of modernIndian

placed in this line that issued fmm Abanindranath. In the years that have

I

intemened, art history has radically reworked our sense of this period, its artists, movements and institutions My reason here for referring to this early study of Jaya Appasamy is t o interrogate the additive 'and' with which she freely linked Abanindranath with the art of the period, and replace it with a conjunction that suggests a dissonance and complexity in this connection. My contention is that Abanindranath, having spawned a following and a movement dur~ngthe first two decades of the 20h century, continues in thesubsequent decades to work in modes and idioms that stand in theway of hisabsorptionwith thelarger narrative of the modem art history of theseyears. Ourdifficultieswith naming

-

his art of this time opens up a larger

solitary and whimsical course, stands at an

issue of what came to form the dominant

oblique angle, vis-a-vis both the continuing

languages of artistic modernisms of the post-

history of the Bengal School and the new histories

Bengal School phase, and of what the story

that were being charted out by the Sant~niketan

excluded and marginalized.

artists, or by figures like Rabindranath Tagore,

I n what follows, Iwill first recapitulate the

AmritaSherGilorJamini ROY?

early history of Abanindranath Tagore to outline

The making of the 'master'

the bmad contours of his brand of nationalistart

Abanindranath remembered how the spirit of

and to lay outthe public domain it inhabited. This

Swadeshi arrived at the Jorasanko house like a

will allow me to pose the question of how and

powerful gust of wind, sweeping them all along in

from when we can track the shift to a later, post-

its path. "As I felt the tug of the wind: he recalled,

Swadeshi era of his art practice. The second part

"I tore free the ropes and flung myself in; Iset the

will address the fuzziness of such boundaries and

boatafloat in thecourse ofthecurrent Getting rid

breaks, as it chronologically maps a series of

of Western art, Inow took up Indian art"= The

paintings he produced from 1913-14 to 1940-41.

wave had brought with it a frenetic bunt of

One of my key concerns will be to extricate the

activities, spearheaded by Rabindranath

image of a modernist out of the practices of the

setting up of a 'Swadeshi Bhandar' to manufacture

miniaturist, illustrator and story-teller, and to

Swadeshi cosmetics, soap and even shoes; the

RBbmddm Blurah Son* CaIcutt4 and f h e v i ~ ~ l m h n r e

show how the artist's modernisms, in their

pouring in of funds from babus and wage

ofassc

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%ore? Abanmdremthlagorp, 'The Paslng dShah &henn Iml MI bard 1902) COu*,

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labaufers into the National

painting and realistic mythological compositions

&a,, +he.:proliferation of

of the 'Ravi Varma' kind, t o gradually proceed

d a g e welfare and plague

towards the mastery of what he would connote as his "Indian-style" of painting." Of huge polemical

latiggpg and

value at the time, such hard and fast binaries of 'Western'and 'Indian' paintingdissolve on a closer scrutiny of styles and exchanges.

His artistic

reorientation, he tells us, came out of an encounter not only with an album of miniatures of latore; the spinning of andioom by the women ~f the household; the losing of kitchens to mark he black day of the artition of Bengal; not ?astof all, Rabindranath's brainwave of the Rakhi Bandhan Utsav as another anti-Partition ritual, when they all took to the streets of Chitpur to tie

rakhis on the wrists of their Muslim neighbourn.= While he participated in many of these ventures, often with bemused trepidation, Abanindranath stepped aside to invest the full force of Swadeshi in his paintings. In the artist's reminiscences, and in art history, his nationalism is always staged as a straight-forward choice between 'Western' and 'Indian' art

- between

the sterile drill of the

Academic training he had imbibed from his private European art tutors, and his urge to seek out an alternative pictorial idiom in the fiwb Abanindmmh Tagom, .shshlrhanomrn,ng ofthe TW Wr-mlour, c 1903)

-courtery, lndlrn ~ureum

warn.

ornamental design and calligraphy. The timing of this choice historically precedes the outburst of the Swadeshi agitation of 1905, but is clearly

*

Rgun mkcyarna Talkan.

.,d wh* M-S .. a.~ on silk 1904). example of wrC tm the eaHy mmml style repmduced horn mlkm-Hu .G-

-

,wM,wPorn-

indigenous traditions of miniature painting,

nl(lowNatlml

Mureurn csta~ogu+ 2002).

driven by the period's rising tide of 'extremist' nationalism. By about 1900, Abanindranath seemed to have decisively turned his back on the practice of life study, outdoor sketches, oil

the provincial Delhi court, but also a handpainted 'illuminated' manuscript of lr~shballads by a certain Francis Martindale that had been presented to thefamily. (Figures 2 a, b) What drew him to both were the common qualities of fine craftsmanship and decorative des~gn. As he experimented with an alternative non-Academic style of painting, scholars have traced in hisworka medley of influences of Mughal and Rajput miniatures, of Japanese wash and Chinese ink painting, and equally of Engl~shPre-Raphaelite and Art Nouveau trends. In varying combinations

and degrees,thesestylistic influences shapedthe

traditional schools of Indian art, more for its

trajectory of the entire body of his early works."

capacity to embody a romantic and spiritual

Even the encounter with Western Academic art

aesthetic that critics now singled out as the

cannot be written off in wholly negative

unique endowment of the nation's art. The

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'Indian-ness' of Abanindranath's style was

Abanindranath's early training can be seen to

construed in polemical contrast to the allegedly

have left its lasting imprint in the naturalismof his

'debased' and 'Westernized' genre of

miniaturized figures, and in his considerable

mythologicalpaintings ofthe likesof Ravi Varma."

output of pastel portraits of family members that

Such oppositions also became crucial to the

he continued to produce through these years.

artist's fashioning of his own persona and

(Figure3)

practice. As against the commissioned work and

terms, as the artist would have us believe

We would have to turn to the th~ckrhetoric

commercial successes of Ravi Varma's career, he

of Orientalist and nationalist art criticism that

upheld the ideal of the artist as a pure genius, free

surrounded the artist to understand how such

of the trammels of education and training, free

work could make for a cognizable category of

also of the demands of a profession and

'nat~onalistart' and 'Indian-style' painting. The

livelihood. All along his career, Abanindranath

artist's productionsbecame inseparablefrom the

would constantly associate art with a

critics' discourse. Abanindranath's new style

romanticized notion of shakh (pleasurable fancy)

came to bevalorized less for its genericlinkswith

as against shiksha (training).'6 Ifthis was the

Figun. 10a, b: Abanindranath Tagom, "Abhirarika' and "the Traveller and the Lotus" (watecolour r 1904 - C o u W , Indian Mureurn Calcutta.

work at their Jorasanko house. (Figure 4) After a preliminary drawing, layers of colourwash would be applied, dipping thewhole paper in water after each coating to let the tones get denser and darkerand sublimate the drawing. The technique offered him a way of accommodating the inbuilt naturalism of his forms with an atmosphere of mist and shadow, of enveloping his delicately delineated figures in a smoky evanescent haze. Such a style, it was then widely belkved, served as the most appropriate vehicle for the new 'spiritual' and 'transcendental' -aesthetics of Indian art. (Figure 5) Abanindranath would, during these years, draw a fine line of distinction between what he termed 'rupatmaka' and 'bhovatmaka' paintings. One was dominated by the skilled workmanship

privilegeof hisaristocraticlineage and his leisured class, t h ~ salso became the pith of a new modern notion ofart asa personalized creativevocation. What went hand in hand with this notion was the idea of a painting as a space for deep reverieand contemplation. While the illusionistoil painter laboured to capture the tactile presence of persons and objects on canvas, Abanindranath rejected the demands of realist simulations along with the whole medium of oil painting and evolved a counter-style that deliberately underscored the materiality and tangibility of the painted image.

Under this new dispensation,

painting was not so much about the mastery of technique or the staging of characters and events as about the invocation of mood and feeling. Rgurs 12: Abanindranath Tagore, 'Bharat-Maw (watercolour. 1901) Courtesy. Rabindra Bharati Society. Calcutta,and thevisual archive

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oicsssc.

Abanindranath used as his main stylistic device the new technique of 'wash' painting that he had evo ved warching rhe two visiring .apanese panrers. Yokoyama Takan and Hshida Sn~nso, at

as an illustrator, his earliest published drawings b e ~ n gthose that accompanied poems by Dwuendranath and Rabindranath Tagore in the journal, Sadhano, in 1891-92, and those that accompan~edhis own two ch~ldren's stones, Shakuntola and Kshirer Putul (1895-96). The artist's subsequent self-initiation in the styles of manuscript, miniature and wash painting, continued t o be tied to the work of illustration. His first avowedly 'Indian-style' painting, titled "Shuklabhisar" illustrated a stanza from Govindadas'spadovoli (Figure 2b); his next series on "Krishna-leela" was appended to manifesto of a 'Japanese' art movement), Taikan

transcriptsof verses from jayadevams~ i r ~ .

and Shunso, on much the Same terms as

Govindo; the following most mature products of

Abanindranath, made a strong defence of their

his L~ndian-style' [paintings like y,bhisarikan, 8 , ~ h e

lineless, colourist paintings as minimizing the

~

influence of Chinese art and expressing a deep

~

emotional essence and spiritual sensibility that

Upper ,t+ri"

they felt to be quintessentially Japanese.=(Figure

Ritusomhora and Meghaduta. Side by side, he

9) We can trace here the clear contours of a new modernist aesthetic - one that highlighted emotion over skilland virtuosityand talked of the deep interiortty of the work of art, of the invisible depth of feeling that surged beneath the surface of the image. A near-identical language of art criticism resonated during these years across these select art circles of 'Nihonga' and 'IndianFigure 14: Photograph of Abanindranath Tagore with his first batch of students at the Govemmenf Schwl of A n Calcutta,r 19W Abanindraoath iP seated in the iart raw, second fmm the Id-reproduced from VirwBhomri Qooneriy(v~a), Abanindra Nurnbei 1941.

style' painting, setting out the same binaries between the Academic realist art of the West and the spirituallidealist art of the East. Subtlety, suggestiveness and a mood-intensive aura: these emerge as the prime tropes of a common aesthetic of anti-realism and a common trope of

Figure 1% Example of clarr room work in indian-rhjw painting. done under the guidance of Abanindranath Tagore - Nandaial Bore, "Ajuna as a dancer in the court of king Virata"(wateri0iour. c 1907) Courtesy, Victoria &Alben Museum, London.

romantic modernism in the new Japanese and Indian art movements. I n Abanindranath's art, this aesthetic had to contend with a parallel thrust towards narration and story-telling. The artist had begun his career

~

~ and the ~

~( ~

t ~ 10~ ~a, b), i ~, l, ~~ h~ ~l

~yaksham i ~( h

~~5) and d i nsiddhas ~ ofthe ~

drew their themes from e lid^^^'^

~

,~

I

F

produced paintings for a prestigious circle of

painters of the Persian and Mughal courts.

Orientalist literary publications- his "Buddha and

Enraptured by the splendour of design and

Sujata", with its pronouncedly Art Oeco look,

workmanship in Mughal miniature paintings, he

found its way into one of the editions of Edwin

found them lacking in one crucial element: the

Arnold's celebrated epic, The LightofAsia, while a set of paintings illustrating couplets from the

element of bhava (feeling). His charge as a modern artist was to infuse this missing

Ruba'iyot of Omar Khanam and steeped in the

emotional intensity into the appropriated format

dark evanescent tones of the 'wash' (Figure 11).

of the miniature. This was where Abanindranath

appeared in an edition of Edward Fitzgerald's

turned compulsively to the stylistics and

translationofthe text.

aesthetics of the 'wash', as a means of

Experimenting with ornamental calligraphy,

transcending the work of illustration and

evolving a Penian-style letteringfor his signature

transporting his painted image into a desired

and for the verses in Devanagari and Bengali that

zone of 'spiritual' affect. This was how he

he would add to many of these paintings,

reconfigured his identity from mere illustrator to

Abanindranath cast himself in the mould of a

master artist - the figures of Radha on her lonely

medieval min~aturistand folio painter. At the

nocturnal tryst in search for Krishna, Kalidasa's

same time, he was categorical about what

Yaksha in exile in the monsoon forest, or the

distinguished his art from that of the ustad

estranged lovers of Omar Khayyam were

Rgun 16: ~ a n d a l a l m "The . Arurtr'Studio.ioraranko' (pen and ink. 1910)-npmduced tmmlovml~hdion societyaf O r k n l a l M fJlSOni, Abnindm T a g o ~Number. 1961.

allegories - as in his painting, "Dewali or Feast of Lamps", where critics interpreted the image of the -c?man as the spirit of the motherland trying t o pel the darkness in which the nation was plunged (Figure 13); or in his image of a camel lowering its burden in the red glow of a sunset sky, which he himself titled "Shesh Bojha" ("The Last Burden") and likened to a pilgrim who had arrived attheend of life'sjourney.

"~erhapingof a publicsphere ~heseyears, Abanindranath's influence as

YY8;~IY

the pioneer of 'Indian-style' painting would, of drse, crucially devolve on the positioning of his ~ r kin the public domain. However much the

., .ist disavowed the world of professional art, it is important that we address the ways in which anindranathTagore moved out of the informal family milieu of the cultural activities of Joransanko to inhabit a public sphere of art practice. In fact, I would make the case that what frozen embodiments of the poetic moods of love, longing and separation. Pluckedfrom the literary imaginations of the poets of the past, they could claim their status as modern artisticcreations. There would also be a significant makeover from illustration t o allegory within Abanindranath's paintings of this first phase, where he begins toevolve hisown symbolicforms and literary and historical iconographies. The classic instance is t o be found in his painting of

Figure 17: Abanindmnafh

Tagoie, 71~sarakrhifa,Jealous Queen of Asota' (water-cotour. 1910)- Royal Coliwtion, Windroicaitle, England.

Figure 18: Illurlration by Abanindranam Tagom in Rabindranath Tagom's The CRRO~Moan [Calcutta: Macmillan, 19131.

we may call the early, nationalist phase of his career is best demarcated by the time-frames and the main spaces ofthe public engagements of his art. Therewere, to begin with, the exhibitions and the first awards and publicitythatthey gained for the artist. It was through his encounter with the reformist art teacher and

ideologue.

E.B.Havell, then Principal o f t h e Government

"Bharat-Mata", where the significance of the

School of Art, Calcutta,

image,onecan argue, lies not so much in its life as

t h a t the amateur

a nationalist icon, more in its new stature as an

painter and

'artistic' icon - goddess-like, yet distinct from any

amateurish experiments

known deity of the Hindu pantheon, the image is

with an 'Indian-style'

invested with a sacred and spiritual aura that is

first found themselves

unique to the idea of the nation and of artistic

i n public limelight."

creation. (Figure 12)In the years thatfollowed, we

Havell'sarticleon him in

can mark out a series of the artist's other pictorial

the English art journal.

his

@ gruC,Io,

in $m&@pgM th$

.@@/

sense of a non-official Orientalist and nationalist

jwe@'~@pm~$&~,paiflta~frrnna9iamlenvironment that could temporarily flourish i~mitii&f$J pubJi~'@#~ ,Duiihg his tmw

r 1i89f;rn6jpH w l l

in

within the government institution around his

also, a q u i i d a

class of Tndian' painting. Yet, however alternative

dectiQn d AWndranath's early VYO* !

@ w a dArt Qllery- whi&

the milieu, there is no denying that it was in this formal capacity as an art-school teacher that

rin%elarg~t:p.ubtk,C91ie.cti6n~@Oheem .. Abanindranath could most effectivelygarner his ,

@;*&~wlfif,i* . ....~ mmF

1 N& c;tme~nindranath'~fq.~@l stint as sZ

I

first, most important band of student-followers (Figure 14)-and that itwas within theclass rooms

teecher, with hk btdwh b y W J in

ofthe art school thattheentity of 'Indian' painting

'%hap& .&Vice Pfinaipal of the :khonl,ofl~rtfEreaM%m.mh

became a teachable and impartable genre.

%G

(Figurel5)Themaster's inspirationand aesthetics

m 'in,mc~unii@,Mespeklalstature he

-alongside the training in indigenous methods of

he vvas

colour preparation and painting imparted by the

@ Rijm:* ~@~l~lrteadrh-ig curriwlq and

'Company' painter, Ishwari Prasad (whom Have11

&.Withl~ t%Schob.t, &thef&~m

had also brought into the school), and the $~a~Ma~6i@~~-withlnMkhew oM

~ ~ , ~ ~ h e d & y a n d w t ~ h i n g : a w e rtraining g . d in techniques of Japanese painting.given . painter at sblished a

-

.

.

r,W.h@y$dztof

is *d ,~ ~dfeg& ., WifiMt3 this j

model of Indian art pedagogy that was crucial to the making ofthe movementn

Fipnls: Gaganenedranath Tagore 'The Corning of the Princess., 'Cubirt' series (water colovr and gold, 19Zq rerimdueedfmrnJlSO4 GaganendrannhPgore Numbel; 1960.

exclusive circle of connoisseurs, collectors and critics, they thrived on a spirit of informality and camaraderie that gave them theirwide reach among a middle class that was increasingly drawn t o the model of 'Indian-style' painting and to art as a creative vocation. Together, they functioned as the earllest examples of avant-garde art salons in India, as a powerful Orientalist

I

and nationalist alternative to their exlsting colonial counterparts, providing the Indian art movement

With Aban~ndranath'sresignation from the

with its main institutional forum. It is withln this

art school around 1915, this pedagogy would be

forum that weonce againsee Abanindranath'sart

relocated in the precincts of the Indian Society of

winning the approbation of and being bought by

Oriental Art (that had been set up in 1907) and the

European official patrons

new Bichitra Sabha that was formed withln the

"Tissarkshita, The Jealous Queen of Asoka"

Jorasanko home. Among the Society's main

(F~gure17) was bought for Queen Mary dur~ng

activities were the holding of art classes by two of

the royal visit of 1911, and a duplicate in

Abanindranath's main students, Nandaial Bose

watercolour of h ~ sprize-winning picture, "The

and Kshitindranath Mazumdar, the organization

Pass~ngof Shah Jahan" was produced on order for

of annual exhibitions of the work of the group,

the Governor, Lord Montagu.

along with talks and discussions on Oriental art, the sponsoring of artists to go on study tours to sites like Ajanta, and the publication of an exclusive art journal, Rupom, that later took on the name of Journal of the Indian Society of Oriental A r t Continuing in the tradition of the !agursz@. Rnabindramth Tagore, Untitled (coloured ink on papec c 1934-coll&~

Rabindm Ehsvsm, Santinikian. reproduced fmm T h a h r M ChiWhrla (Calcutta: RPG and Dey's PubIi3hing. 1990.

!3gurr21; Aban8ndraMh Tagore,%cha o M y a n , ' (illurtmboo oiRab8ndnnath Tagore's poem;BldayAbhh$hap. (fnw on stone. c 1990Courtesy. Gwernment College of A r t Calcutta, and thewrual

a ~ w de csssc

cultural clubs at Jorasanko, hosting evening gatherings around poetry readings, plays and musical performances, the Bichitra Sabha would function during the day as a regular art studio, where Abanindranath and ha team worked together to disseminate their new art style. (Figure 16) As elite culture clubs, the Society and the Sabha were spaces that were as open as they were closeted - even as they marked out their

-

his painting of

More than orders and purchases, and more &an exhibitions, it was reproduction in books, doumals and art albums that was to sustain the main public profile of Abanindranath's paintings, in tandem with the works of the whole group. Taking centre stage in this history were a new wop of high-brow illustrated periodicals and art magazines, and the advancing technologies of colour reproduction. The lead players here were the two remarkable Bengali and English miscellanies, edited by Ramananda Chatterjee, Prabosi and The Modern Review (one began circulation in 1901, the other in 19071, and the special technology of three-tone block printing

plates of the pa~ntingsof Abanindranath and his

that was pioneered by U.Ray & Sons. During the

group. (Figure 18) Exhibitions of the works of the

firsttwo decadesoftheZO'%entury, suchjournals

group organized by the Indian Society of Oriental

and the full page colour plates of paintings that

art were also occasions for the publications of

they circulated played a founding role in

folios of high quality art prints, where the colour

propagating the cause of 'Indian-style' painting,

print, in the kind of prices it could command

in defining both the inner circle and the larger

within a select public, acquired the stature of a

~ollectiveof artists that made up the movement

work of art The success of Abanindranath's art

and in making these works available, regionally

movement, it can be amply demonstrated,

and nationally, to a growing middle class

crucially hinged on the cultivation of this new

readership. The period also saw a boom in a

exclusivecultureof art prints.

special genre of expensive and exclusive books,

Ihave laid out this public field of location of

which chose to illustrate its stories and poems

the paintings of Abanindranath Tagore and his

through the work; of the new school of 'Indian '

group in some detail to underscore two main

painting. To cite only a few examples,

points. Firstly, I would like to argue that the real

Coomaraswamy and Nivedita's Myths of the

significance of this art movement lies, less in the

Hindus and Buddhists (1913) carried thirty two

formula it laid out for 'Indian-style' painting, far

~olourplates of the works of the new school,

more in the new ideology it offered of a modern

vdhich were also said to have sold separately as a

artisticvocation and in these new institutional sites

folio of prints; Coomaraswamy'sBuddha and the

it opened up for modem art activity in the country.

bspelofBuddhism (1916) was accompanied by a

With the Bengal School, we encounter the R n t

qeciaily commissioned set of illustrations by

sample of an artistic avant-garde in India, a

Shanindranath and Nandalal Bose on the life of

'movement' that later loses its momentum to trail

Buddha; and different Macmillan editions of

off intoa'school'. With this fintmovement, arrives

'K<nslations of Rabindranath's poems, The

a new exclusive circle of art journals, critics and

Moon (1913) and Gitonjali and Fruit

connoisseuffi, a new middle dass art-public, a new

,gathering (1919) were distinguished by their art

premium on the cultivation of tastes and initiation

'&scent

FTgwe22Ahmindnnmh 1 mmakofAbdul Wale*. arl dealer on P a r k w e t Wats+wlmr, c 1906)C ~ , m d i a Museum n

Calcutta.

school of 'Indian' painting scaled its greatest heights of success and influence, and when Abanindranath's role as guru was most actively in place. Throughout the writings of this period, as also in my account here, the reference is continuously to the master and his following and to the whole group as Aban-panthis (adherents of the path of Abanindranath). While such designations clearly obfuscate the variations in styles and aspirations among individual artists of the collective, and the complex story of the inner rankings and workings of the group,"

~t

nonetheless reaffirms for us the power and persistenceduring these years of Abanindranath's image as the cult-figure of this movement and his conscious acquiescence in this role. It was his gradual self-release from this public role and marked withdrawal from this circuit of art classes, exhibitions and publications that serve to best into art, and new forums for exhibiting and

map the later, more matureand versatile trajectory

viewing.- With it is inaugurated a freshly

of his artistic output. Within expert circles, it is

empowered role of art writing and art reproductions, as the interface between a select world of modern art and its equally select public. Together, these lay out the critical new social space for modern art practice in India, establishing it as both an autonomous and exclusive domain, outside colonial institutions, well above the milieu of mass picture-production. Subsequent modern trends in Indian art, even as they overtly abandoned the constricted formula of Indian' painting, remained firmly grounded in this institutionalsite. Secondly, I would like to highlight the importance of this public institutional domain in defining and demarcating the first phase of Ffgura 23 a, b: Abanindnnath Tagore'Rati. ~ ~ d d of - LOM~, 'Kama~GodofLove"~"openAir VlW rerier (water-mbur. 1914)- Courtesy. Rabindra Bharau SocieW Calcutta, and

thenrualarch~vedcsssc

Abanindranath's career, especially in propagating his status as the founder of the nationalist art movement.The broadtime-frame here are the first two decades of the 20' century, when the new

I

1

and 1920 showthe pull of conflicting loyalt~esand rival claims within the body of the Indian art movement, and opens out to a new history where

the Santiniketan Kala Bhavan would emerge under his leadership as the new dynamic locus of

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ thembdthebhdb~lofh~s dalued~ama.Pholgunl (waterC O ~ O U ~ 191~.)-~0urtery.~ Rsbtndra BharatlSclciey, Calc~andthearualarchNe of CSSX.

~

artistic nationalism and modernism, boldly breaking free of the earlier formulae of 'Indian'

FLlun2L.nindanam

painting."

~ ~ ~ a $ - ~ , " ~ : " ~ n ~ ,

This was also the time when

Abanindranath's first batch of students fanned out as art teachers to institutions all over India, a

inkc."m-coum. Rabinda Bharati Sod*, CalcuM.and meuiruaierchii dCSSSC

spread that began with the master's own resignation from the Government School of Art, Calcutta. Samarendranath Gupta was appointed Vice Principal of ihe MayoSchoolof Art, Lahore, as early as 1914; soon afterwards. Sailendranath Dey joined the Bharat Kala Bhavan in Benaras and eed that the best of AbanindranathTagoreis

thereafter the Jaipur School of Arts; between

be discovered and savoured in his works of

1920-25, Asit Kumar Haldar moved from

jilitterphase:'whenlronicallytheartiststeps

Santiniketan Kala Bhavan to the Jaipur School of

re and more out of the given frames of

Arts to the Lucknow School of Art: down south,

dern Indian art history. Let me now turn to

Manindra Bhushan Gupta went to teach at the art

claimsand paradoxesofthisconfiguration.

school in Colombo, Promod Kumar Chatterjee to

e stepping out of history i s hard to produce an exact chronological

..

h of this shift in Abanindranath's selfioning and styles of work. We could think

.the time around 1919-1920 as signalling a i n a break. The most momentous lopment of these years was the move of nindranath's favourite pupil, Nandalal from his teaching activities at the Bichitra p and the Society of Oriental Art to the

on of Principal of the newly established Bhavan in Santiniketan. Rabindranath

re's efforts to wean away the master's disciple from what he saw as the 'hotenclaves of Jorasanko and the Oriental Dciety to the alternative art institution he 'oned in Santiniketan was an emotionally

bt affair. Nandalal Bose's move back and :between these institutions between 1918

1'

of the Santiniketan Kala Bhavan, not least of all in RabindranathTagore'sown late coming of age as a painter. In the unfolding of a new modem era in Indian art, the three Tagores, Aban~ndranath, Gaganendranath and Rabindranath have been seen to varyingly qualify within the rubric of India's 'new moderns'."

Here, Abanindranath

becomes the most hesitant and d~fficult contender for the new designation. A main dlfflculty is one of marking any radical break from the past or any clear-cut, post-8engal School, modernist direction in his work. The problem becomes clearer when wejuxtapose his case with his brother Gaganendranath's experimentations with a new genre of 'cubist' composit~onsthat emerge dur~ngthe late 20s from the same family milleu (Flgure 19), and, even more so, when we the newly ,founded Andhra Jatiya Kalashala at Masulipatam in 1922, and Debiprasad Roy Chowdhury (the realist sculptor, whothen broadly workedwithinthefoidsof the'lndian-style') to the Madras School of Arts in 1928.In a letter to Havell, Abanindranath talked of "the scattering of the seeds", the fruits of which will be gathered by future generations."

Elsewhere, he also

remembered this as the tlme of victory over the nation of the movement its dlgvoay or the conquest of all diredlons Seen in hindsight, this sense of success and gratification can be piquantly counter-posed with hissense of release from the responsibility of leading the movement. In the nation's modern art history, the 1920s FCum 2& Gaganendranath Tagore. 'The Rlch Landlord a Home: Caocature 01Uograph1918) Courtesy, Rabmndra Bharatl Sociery, Cakutta

-

Rgwn: Gaganendnnah Tagore, "The Boat' (watwmlour.c 1925) - C o u w , Rabindm ehama o c -

Caiolna

presents itself as a crucial conjuncture - on the one hand, we see the ail-lndla diffusion of the

contrast it with the non-f~gurative shapes,

Bengal School, its multiple regional inflections,

grotesque beasts, brooding heads and

and its inst~tutionalisationin art schools as a

landscapes that Rabindranath begins to paint

thriving system of nationalist pedagogy and

from about 1928.(Figure20) Whatwould become

practice; and, on the other hand, a clear break-

Abanindranath's own eclectic and idiosyncratic

away towards new languages of artistic

forays into modernism, and how do we place

expression, abstraction and affect in the activities

them against these more recognized histor~es?

from Park Street, Abdul Khalek, (Figure 22) who could well mergeinto one ofthe medieval Persian characters from Omar Khayyam's poetry that Abanindranth was visualizing in parallel. Elsewhere, we see his widowed mother, in the form of a Mughaljhorokha portrait embellished by a floral relief design, a mnemonic image recalled in vivid detail in the 'mind's eye' of the artist soon after his mother's death. Sometime around 1912-13, he also produced his first genre of theatre pictures (later listed as his "Open Air Play" series), where he interpolates distinctly Far Eastern looking figures play-acting their roles as Rati and Kama (the Goddess and God of Love) with local Jatro actors whom he costumes as tinsel-crowned kings, captive heroes or as a potbelliedintoxicated Mahadeva. (Figures23 a, b)

F@wem Rabmdmnath Tagore Head ofa Woman fmlaured mmk on paper 1930s) Collmlm.

-

Rablndra Bhsmm S.nunetaR repmclucedfrom moXumO& UMroM (alcutts' RPG and Dey'r Publkohlng. 1991)

w ~ t hh ~ detailed s recollections of the backdrop of the night sky that he and Nandalal produced for the play, we can also see them as fashioning a genre of nocturnes revolving around an ~conographyof the poet in a deep trance. In staccato contrast emerges Aban~ndranath's parallel flair for humorous caricature, first manifested in the figures of his "Open Air Play" actors, that he follows up in 1918 with his black and white drawings for Rabindranath's play, The

Parrot's Training (a parody of modem education) and a Japanese-style brush painting of a fake ascetic. (Figure 25) in these same years, we can mark his brother Gaganendranath'spassage from his sentimental and mystical 'wash' paintings on the life of Chaitanya to brush and inksketches of peoples, landscapes, householdandstreetscenes The world of amateur dramatic performances at Jorasanko, so richly remembered in his memoirs, had set the tenor for creative artistic experimentation in the household. Both Abanindranath and Gaganendranath were passionately involved with these productions, as actors and as designers of costumes and backdrops. The resonances of thestage would echo, in different strains, across their paintings, from this time onwards - with Abanindranath, in his repeated play with romantic make-believecharacters and theatrical masks; with Gaganendranath, in the inspiration he drew from stage props, screens Ugurs 3hAbanindranath Tagor* Tebunirra" (mete mlour c 192622)- C o u w , Rabindn Bharai sodew Calcutta. and thevisual ardlive of GSSC

and lighting in the structuring of his 'Cubist' interiors. The "Open Air Play" series inaugurates an on-running pageant of stage performances in Abanindranath's paintings, where he next

Mure 31: Abanindmnath Tagme, .Christ' in'wtercolavc c. 192or)- counerv. ~abindn Bharati Sociew, Calaum.and the visual archlvc afCSSSC.

takes up Rabindranath performing the role of the blind bard in his dance drama, Phalguni (1916). (Figure 24) Matching these paintings

to a novel vibrant genre of social caricatures that he would publish as three albums between 1917 and 1922n (Figure 26) Abanindranath on the contrary provides uswith no comparableoutpour

recognizable genreof caricature: hisincursions

environment and in a variety of Eastern pictorial

satire would remain more obliqueand indirect,

trad~tions,ranging from Ajanta and Bagh murals to Chinese brush drawings and Japanese

atic and stylistic options. This would now be

woodcuts to rural patochitror. The beginning of

for the general course of his work of the

the decade also brought a parallel wave of

ing decades

-

a staying away from the

encounter and engagement with European modernist art

- initfated,

it seems, largely by

Rabindranath Tagore, by the series of lectures on This becomesalltoo evident when we turn to

modern European art historythat he organised in 1921 by the young Viennese art historian, Stella

phase of modernism in Bengal, a time also

Kramrisch, who was then just settling into Santiniketan and Calcutta; and by a landmark exhibition of the works of the German Bauhaus

e Santinketan Kala Bhavan, Nandalal Bose as

group that he brought over to the Indian Society of Oriental Art in 1922? Its effects would most

ie hisguru trails off, to set into a motion a new

immediately ripple across a new genre of wafer-

nition of a 'national modem' art. Nandaial's

colour composit~onsof Gaganendranath Tagore,

vented style (and with it,all ofSantiniketanesart)

where he designed haunting interiors and

Id become exemplary of a new model of

somnambulist landscapeswrth prisms, cubes and refracted splinters of light and colour, that would be branded and applauded by Kamrish as the

d instead in a deep bonding with the natuml

works of an "Indian Cubi~t".~ (Figure 27) Later in

Rgvn 32a.b: hhnmdtemth T a m 'Blue Pigeon: 'Dhabl DurW, Wgeod mes, IluNsban of H8mpdeso MmobMo hvms mlour. c 193944- Comes%RaPindra BhmSmety. Calcutta and the

Gandhi. Andrews and Tagore, or of a standing Jesus Christ. (Figure 31) Landscapes and blrd and animal studies would also emerge as new areas of the artist's work. The styles are often largely carried over from his work of 1915-16- the birds and animals he paints then in heavy sombre tones and hazy contours take on more elegantly orchestrated and colorful profiles in his later "Playmate" and "Pigeon" series (from 1925 and 193940), where they assume the role of magical talking creatures and mythical friends from the Sanskr~tfables of the decade would follow Rabindranath's own celebrated arrival as a modernist, primitivist painter, and the European tours and exhibitions of his works that would draw frequent analogies between his imagery and those of Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky or Edward Mun~h.~(Figure28)

Hitopodeso Mitmlobha. (Figures 32 a, b) At a time when a new invigorated aesthetic of the brisk landscape sketch became the hallmark of Santlnketan's art, Abanindranath carries on with he inim~table'wash' technique in a series he paints during 1926-27 of the Tagore zarnindori estate at Shahajadpur in East Bengal. In these

It 1s in striking dissonance with such

blotted compositions soaked in watery blends of

departures into "pure painting", into nonfigurative abstractions and psychic forms, that Abanindranath continues through these same years t o work with legends, fables, and historical and literary themes.

A persisting

fascination with his Mughal past leads him to produce now a set of portraitsofthe princesses Nur-Jahan and Zebunnissa, (Figures 29, 30) of Jahangir in his garden, and of a massive stooping and contemplative emperor, Alamgir. A mastery over intricate modelling of willowy Fiu*3* Abanmdnna* Tagore. "The B W Skhedpur landsrape M ~ S IWr-miour.c 1926.27)~ a r " r y ,Rablodre ahant, Soc~eN,Calcutta, and thevnusl archlveof csssc

fb- 3 l i h n , " d r a M m Tagore. 'Alladin: "&abisn Nigh6' Yries (WatFr-coiow 1934 - t o u r n bwndra Bhsnti Sociq, Calcum andthe visual archive of csssc

faces and anatomies combines here with an unusual enlargement of scale, where the artist still opted t o work with water-colour and sheets of absorbent cartridge paper (that best

blues, greens and yellows, his signatorial 'wash'

softened his lines and tones) rather than oil,

style is used with optimum effect to create a feel

board or canvas. The largest of his paintings,

of the

the magisterial image of Alamgir (1922) leads t o some other large scale portraits he

(Figure 33) The elusive formlessness of this series would find a dramatic counterfoil in the

undertakes around this time, for instance of

exuberance of narrative detail and intricacies of

rain-washed riverscape of this region.

Figurn 35:

Abanlndranath

agor re, "story of Three Slsteir: "~rablan~ t g h rerles ~ " (watercolou~ 1930)-COUrte% Rablndra Bharatl Society, Calcuita, and thevisual archwe

of CSSC

Pigure36: Abanindranath Tagore, 'The Hunchback of Firhbone:"Arabian Night' rerier (water-colour, 19301 C w w , Rabindra Bharati s~uery.c a l m a , and the visual archive DiCSSSC

,

figures, objects and scenes that the artist next

backyard with servants, dogs and'cats, half-open

presents us, in a set of forty-five outstanding

doors and curtained rooms are laid out as

miniature paintings loosely based on the tales of

different floor segments of a house where, on the

TheArabian Nights.

main level, musicians and masked performers

painted inthe span of a singleyear (1930),

accompany the bridegroom's Party that arrives

Abanindranath's "Arabian Nights" series has been seen as "the culmination of his artistic achievement, his chefs d'oeuvre as a painter."In his recent scrutiny of this series, Siva Kumar has argued for the artist's passage here from "illustration t o narration", a clearing away of the :overbearing emotional mist and sentiment o f his earlier painting towards a new tenor

I of

contemporary facticity and inventive

I story-telling."

Even as the artist

characteristically searched out an exotic world of fables from the ancient Caliphate of Baghdad, he would continuously interject into these stories his present urban setting and a contemporary cast of subaltern characters from the environs of n

llorasanko and Chitpur. A local vendor and hisshop of hurricane lanternsis transposed on to the character of the boy Alladin (Figure 34); vignettes of a k~tchen, a

Figure37: Abanlndranath Tagore, *Kagarur Eadh' (51aylng the Cmw Demon), 'Klshna Mangal'senec (water-COIIUU 1938) Courtery Mbmdra ~haratlSoaety Calcutts, and thevlrual arch,- of CSSSC

-

script). What is novel is his mode of renarration of Shaharzade's stories - and the representational libert~esand excesses through which he inscr~bes his present into this mythic past which makes for the distinct modernity of these paintings. This modernitycomestousasan uneasy revelation,as traces that we have to search out in the minutiae of fading details of these compositions. Never publ~shednor made available for public display, these paintlngs, when pulled out of the trunks, haveaboutthema fragility and fadedness thatwe find hard to relate to the concept of modern art. Their modernity baffles us today as much as the complex web of stories and citations that they enfold. Abanindranath's painting of th~s series

coincides with the penning of the first set of his I memoirs, Apon Kotho, and the bringing forth of an unstoppableflow of stories of his past life and for "Nuruddin's Marriage"; a uniformed colonial

times that began to fill his present. Like the

bearer and a hawker carrying a box of bread with

legendary Shaharzade who kept spinning stories

the Great Eastern Hotel logo are made the target

for king Shahryar through a thousand and one

of seduction of "The Three Ststers" who in the

nights t o defer her own annihilation,

story wanted to respectively marry the king of Persia, his cook and his baker. (Figure 35) I n the most discussed of these paintlngs, "The HunchBackof Fishbone: the artist brings in a slice of his own fam~ly h~story, through a signboard of DwarakanathTagore's entrepreneurialf~rm,"Kerr, Tagore & Co." that appears above a scene of a dinner party at the Tagore home, amidst a A38: Abanlndra~m Tagma, "Kallya Daman" (Slaying rhekrpent Demon). "Knrhns Mangar Wer (water-cclw~ 1938)-Courtesy Rabrndra Bharni %ow,C a b , and the vlrual archmdCSSSC

surrounding maze of rooftops and rooms, within wh~chunfolds the tale of the hunchback jester who would die of swallowing a fish bone in the houseofatailor. (Figure36) The style that Abanindranath pursues here is once again that of the miniaturist and

Finn 3 9 Nandalal Bme. "Dhah: Hanpun Congrerr panel (watermlaul: 1938) -Cauriery, Nal-1 Galleryof Modem A n New Delhi.

calligrapher, attaching to many of these pictures lines of now largely undecipherablestorytexts (as always in a hybrid Bengali stylised as Persian

Abanindranath, the painter and writer, now turned to nostalgic storytelling as his w;

1

linguistic metaphors to expound his personatised credo of artistic creation. Abanindranath's liberation from the cause of the Ind~anart

figumila ~ a m r nnq, ~ ~samhal an atlger" (temperaon cloth ~1930s) -Courtesy, Calcutta W o w c o n Centre, and the w m ~archwe l oiC5SSC

movementwas now complete; hissole doctrine of

art, it seems, was one of unfettered creativity and freedom of imag1nation.h his practice, thlswould translate into a mode of complete withdrawal from the worlds of profess~onal modern art. mere would be a long stretch during the 1930s, from roughly 1931 t o 1938, when Abanindranath stopped painting altogether, and, Instead, took to composing popuiarjotro ballads dng a t bay the changes and erosions of the

(polo-goon) on stories from the Romayana. Tf~ls

ent. The artist, we are told, was not unl~kethe

became the new obsession of the elderly artist,

wrof lgrncentury Pans, one who substituted

fill~ngpage after page with these jocular ballads

act of strolling the streets with one of relf-

albed watching from the statlonary perch of Huthern verandah.leThat space was both h~s fwe shell and like a box-seat in a theatre, ttvhose vantage point he could observe the ?dwith~nandoutside Jorasanko as a costume

,inserting its scenes and characters into a repertorre, blurring the l~nes that Zed realty from fantasy, the present from st. ihere would be the occssional bt~ef ~deof public engagement. Appointed the hgeswari Professor of Indian Fine Arts at

ta Univers~wbetween 1921 and 1929, bdranath would deliver a set of twenty-

zmres on aesthetics and the philosophyof &, as he recalls, to a largely empty hall.

;lectures would find their more effective

ke in print, as a collection of essays titled

-

ri Shilpa Prabondhoboli" in these, the o had earlier delved into the Sanskrit astra texts to formulate the canons of portion and anatomy in Indian painting ture," transforms himself into a pure using his superb command over

Flguns4r Amrha She*.GR "HtII Women"(0x1 on canuar, 1932) courten/ ~ationaicanery of Modem A r t New mlhi

7

represented by books like Khatanchlr Khota (19211, BodshohiGalpo or ChotjaldiKabito (193839). In his writing as in his painting, then, there is a sharply transformed configuration of a late style of the artist?p One of the most critical directions of this change lies in the artist's engrossment with a vibrant store of popular vernacular traditions of Bengal. The litterateur now reinvents himself as a writer of old-fashioned forms of the punthi and polo, inflectingthe folk genres with the resources

d his contemporary urban milieu, peopling his tales with servants and street folk, peppering his Bengali with a pidgin Urdu, Hindi and Oriya dialect At the end of the decade, when the artist returhed to painting, he would, in a matching vein, recast his style in the mould of the village meant for publication

potuos of Bengal. The rarified ambience of the

or performance), and illustrating the book

'wash' and the fine details of the miniature would

manuscriptwith collages he piecedtogether w ~ t h

be supplanted by a new premium on earthy,

throw-away items like cigarette packets, cinema

unrefined rusticity. What is equally significant is

{most ofwhichwb,, ,,,ither

handbills, and chocolate

wrapper^.'^

It

that he now turns for ha themes, no longer to

exemplified his whole-hearted recession into a

classical Sanskrii and Persian poetry and exotic

world of childish whimsicality, where he

Arabian legends, but to the medieval literary

mockingly turns his back even on the sonority and

genre of the mangol-kovyas of Bengal. Between

of his own pronouncements on

1938 and 39, in the last prolific spurt of pictorial

artistic creation in his Bageswari lectures, For

adivity, Abanindranath produced close to 60

seriousness

Bengali readers, Abanindranath's most enduring image is that of a grandfather figure (Abm-DodvJ whose chosen audience were groups of children whom he would keep spellbound with his stories. Literary critics have charted a sharp shift in the

a ALwinCkOmth

writing styles, vocabulary, and narrativeformat of

'N~hnta"Mww'

the latter-day genre of Abanindranath's stories - a

""

shshlft from simple lyrical prose (of his first stories, Shokuntolo or Kshimr Puful of 1895-96) or rich ornate description(ofhis middle periodbooks like

'Ma&'

paintings, using splashes of vivid colour and nalvelysfylisedforms with thick black outlines. In one set of thirty-three paintings, which he called the "Kabikankan Chandi" series, he depicted a variety of folkish animal characters from the legends of the hunter Kalaketu and his wife Phullara in Mukundraram Chakrabarty's Chandimongot in the other ser, titled "Krishna Mangal" series, he visualizd scenes from the life

Rajkohini and Na[akof 1916) towards a new taste

and miracles of Krishna, particularly his slaying of

for the irrational and irreverent the comic and the

variousdemons. (Figures 37.38)

bizarre that become the hallmark of his stories,

Abanindranath, one could argue, was in his

poems and plays of the 1920s, 30s and 40s, best

own way keep~ngup with the modernartwaves of

I

time. The best-known artists of this period

In pulling these paintings out of the artist's

Id seek out a main ground of identity and

intensely privatised world of art practice and

enticity inthearttraditionsofvillageIndia.1n

latter-day oblivion, we could claim for

milar time frame, we see Nandalal Bose

Abanindranath a new place in the history ofIndia's

priating the style of Kaiighat and Orissa

artist~cmodernisms ofthe 1920sand30s. Butthat

thitms to paint his famous panels on India's

claim becomes difficult to sustain

- not

least

life and culture for the pavilions of the

because of the way the ageing Abanindranath

pura Congress session of 1938, producing a

kept turnlng his back on his present and found

modernist model of a 'people's art'. (Figure

himself isolated from the very circuit of

bdo less striking is Jamini Roy's turn-around

exhibitions, art criticism and art publicationsthat

ng these years from his middle-class

once been the mainstay of his art movement. For

emlc art practice t o the ideaiised world of

one who had never travelled abroad, and was

rural scroll palnters and terracotta craftsmen,

reluctant to ever move too far or for too long out

retreat from Calcutta to his village home in

of the shell of his home, Abanindranath's

bra, and the inculcation of his own modem

disengagementwiththe outsideworld of modem

style. [Figure 40) The 1930s was also the when the Paris-trained Amrita Sher-Gil into the ethnography and landscapes of Punjab hill countryside to infuse an Indian tentand flavourinto herpaintings. (Rgure41) nindranath's vernacularization of the forms conteMof his paintingsat thisjundure needs broughtface to face with these surrounding ernist trends. What also demands a ming modernist tag is a large body of ait masks that he paints from the end of the s, in which he presents a series of bodiless

onette heads as likeness of fnendsandfamily as castumed characters from Rabindranath's ce dramas. (Figure 42) In the~rtaut economy ign and spatial elegance, these "Masks" out asthe high point ofthe artist's late style. hese, he scales new heights of wit and Iveness, as he converts his own face into a hrome crumpled papier-mache mask, s Rabindranath's portraits into a set of

abstractions and throws up some dark, ny heads that are reminiscentof the poet's atntings. (Figure43,44)

art would now stand out even more ~harply.~' What could be seen as a typical vanity of the modern artist

-

-

a disinterest In publics and

publicity, a rejection of employment, and extreme creative self-indulgence

- became more than a

bustling activity of the Jorasanko house, while it crept into so much of his paintings, storces and memoirs, also provided him with the most enduring motif of his own artistic practice. Art, he declared, has a first, a second and a

third storey. The ground floor was a place of work and laborious preparation, where servants toiled and craftsmen manufactured their elaborate wares. The floor above was the boithok-khono or thesalon, the hallsof leisure, recreation and social Figurea Abanlndmnath Tagore, Wnralt d

congregation, where assembled critics, scholars

RabmdranaUI, 'Maw retle (water-colour,c 19384)Courtesy. Rabnndra Bhantn Sou- Cabna, and the visual arrhivedCSSSC

and connoisseurs, along with artists, musicians and dancers to exercise their judgement and share their appreciation of art. The topmost floor was the ondormohol, which to Abanindranath was the same as ontarmohal, an enclosed inner posture for Abanindranath. It inadvertently

chamber, where the artist was completely

became his way of writing h~mseMout of the

immersed in his work, nurturing his art like a

professional mainstream history of the modern

mother rearing her child. While he admitted that

Indianartofthese years.

the "genius" could be produced at all three levels,

The 1940s, the last decade of his llfe, was a

he unequivocally separates himself from the

time of inconsolable loss and even greater

artisan and the critic to shut himself into the top

personal withdrawal. In 1938, his brother and

floor, where his art was a world unto itself,

long-time inmate on the southern verandah,

liberated from effort, fame and publicity. While

GaganendranathTagore, died after nine years of

around him exploded a variety of modernist art

paralysis in 1941came Rabindranath'sdeath. The

options and the Progressive art movements

most cruel blow that came the next year was the

of Bombay, Calcutta, Delhi and Madras,

sale of their house on No. 5, Dwarakanath Tagore

Abanindranath sat on this upper floor as a

Lane, and his displacement to another residence,

strangely anachronistic figure, the old man

"Guptanibas" in the city's northern outskirts of

turned into a ch~ld,modelling an array of odd-

Baranagar. One of his autobiographical short

shaped goblins with stone and drift-wood,

stories from these last years, "Mashi: is brimming

miniaturising the whole world as he playfully

with the memories of this home and the

observed it from "the wrong end of the

poignancy of its loss, as Abanindranath turns

telescope".*

himself into the child protagonist of the story, Abu, who relives the lost past of that house through the streams of remembrances of his old aunt.'

The tiered architectural spaces and

OTES A shorter version of this essay has appeared in Gayatfl Sinha. ed, Art and Visual Culture in India, 1850-2007(Mumbai:Marg and BodhiArt, 2009). Abanindranath Tagore, Gharaa, reprinted in Ahonindm Rochanobali, Vol. I(Calcutta: Prakash Bhaban, second edition. 1975), pp. 171-72. All reference to page numbers in the artist's memoirs are from this volume of his collected writings. Apan Katha, appeared as individual pieces in the journals, Bangabani and Chitra between 1927 and 1938, and was published as book by Signet Press in 1946. Gharoa and Jorasankor Dhme, narrated by Abanindranath and written by Rani Chanda were published as books by VisvaBharat~ln1941and 1944. For a discussion on this theme, see Tapati GuhaThakurta, The Makingafa New '1ndion'Art:ArtisO Aesthetics and National~sm in Bengal (Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress, 1992). Asok Mitra, "The Forces behind the Modern Art Movement", Lalit Kola Contemporary, Vol. 1,No. 1,June 1962, p. 19. R Siva Kumar, PaintingsofAbonindmnath Tagare (Calcutta: Pratikshan, in association with Reliance Industries,2007).

The artist's 70°'%irthdaywas the occasion for the publication of a special commemorative Abanindra Numberofthe VisvaBharatiQuarterly (May-October, 1942). in which appeared Benode Behari Mukherjee's "A Chronology o f Abanindranath's Paintings", pp. 119-135. See, e.g, K.G.Subramanyan, "The Phenomenonof Abanindranath Tagore: in Moving Focus: Essays an Indian Art (New Delhi: Lalit Kala Akademi, 1978), pp. 56-65. Jaya Appasamy, Abanindranath Tagare and the Art of his Times (New Delhi: Lallt Kala Akademi, 1x8). Hercategorizatlonof the lastfourartistsas individualists can be directly traced to W.G.Archer's evaluation of who constituted the first 'moderns' In Indian art, in his pioneering book, India and Modern Art (London: Unwin and Allen 1957).

10. A full contextualized discussion of the works of these other artists is outside the scope of this paper. 11. Gharoa, p.74.

12. Ibid., pp. 66-74. For a vivid historical account of this period and these activities, see Sumit Sarkar, The Swadeshi Movement in Bengal (New Delhi: PPH, 1973). 13. I provide a detailed account of the early development of the artist and his role as the leader of nationalist a r t movement in The Making ofa New 'Indian'Art, Chapter7, pp. 226-312. This period of Abanindranath'swork is only sketchily recounted in thisarticte. 14. Ratan Parimoo, The Paintingof the Three Tagores: Abanindranath, Gaganendmnath, Rabindranath (Baroda: M.S.University of Baroda, 1973), pp. 7281. 15. This nationalist art-critical discourse and the debates it generated is discussed a t length in The Making of a New 'Indian'Art, Chapter 6. pp. 185199. 16. Gharoa, pp. 61-62, 76-77, ff. The premium he places on fancy and whimsicality as the source of his creativity came out of the general tenor of cultural activity of the Jorasanko home, where one ofthe main poetry and dramatic clubs setup by Rabindranath Tagore in the 1890swas named Khamkheyali Sabha - khamkheyali is the term I loosely translate as whimsical. 17. Abanindronother Shilpa Charcha Sambondhe Smriti-charana (Abanindranath's reminiscences on his mode of painting)- Abanindranath Tagore papers, Rabindra Bhavan Archives. Santiniketan. 18. On the 'Nihonga' art movement in Japan and its aesthetic manifesto, see Miriam Wattles, "The 1909 Ryata and the Aesthetics of Affectivity: Art Journal, Vol. 55, No. 3,1996: and Victoria Weston, Japanese Painting and NotionalIdentity: Okakuro Tenshin and his Circle (Ann Arbor: University of MichiganPress, 2003). 19. Through E.B. Havell's initiative, his "KrishnaLeela" paintings were exhibited at the School of Art exhibition of 1900, and his subsequent 'Mughal series' (largely inspired by his study of the Mughal miniatures that Havell had acquired for the Government Art Gallery) were sent to

-

Curzon's Delhi Durbar exhibition of 1902. "The Passing of Shah Jahan" was awarded a silver medal here, to be followed by a gold medal at theCongresslndustrial Exhibition of 1903. 20. With the amalgamation of the Government Art Gallery, attached to the Calcutta School of Art, with the Art Section of the Indian Museum, this choice collection of Abanindranath's early paintings came into theIndian Museum and are now a part of its holdings. See,Abanindranoth Tagore, His Early Works (Calcutta: Indian Museum, 1964). 21. TheMaking ofa New 'Indian'Art pp. 269-274. 22. Such a critical study of the ind~vidualartlsts and the internal workings and strains within the Bengal School collective is yet t o be undertaken. The subsequent devaluation ofthis school and its sterileformula of 'Indian' painting meantthat itwould never receive anv sustained art historical attention.

23. This proposition is first and most persuasively made bv K.G.Subramanvan, , . in his brief essav. ,. "The Phenomenon ofAbanindranathTagore". 24. One of the best studies on this is in R.Siva Kumar, Santiniketan: The Making ofa Contextual Modernism, book and exhibition catalogue (New Delhi: National Gallery of Modern Art, 1997). 25. Letter from Abanindranath to Havell, dated 5* September 1925 - Havell Papers, Oriental and India Office Collections, London. 26. Ratan Parimoo in The Painting of the Three Tagores offers the most detailed comparative analysis (to date) of the works of these three artists within the common family milieu of Jorasanko and the overlapping time frames of their careers, all of which reached their peak during thedecadeofthe20s. 27. These three caricature albums, where the pictures were lithographed by Gaganendranath In his own press, were titled Adhbut Lok (1917), Birup Bajra (1918) and Naba Hullor (1921). A large number of these plates are later reproduced in O.C.Gangoly, The Humorous Art of Goganendranath Tagore (Calcutta. Birla Academy of Artand Culture, 1982).

29. Stella Kramrisch, ' I n Indian Cubist': Rupom, Val. It, July 1922. 30. Such analogies abound, for instance, in W.G.Archer7sessay on Rabindranath Tagore, "Art andthe Unconscious"in IndiaandModernArt. 31. R. Siva Kumar, 'Rbanindranath's Arabian Nights: Native Flanerie and Anti-Colonial Narration': Nondan, Essays in Honour of K.G.Subramanyan, No. XD(, 1999, pp. 154.176. The tour de force of Abanindranath's work, the discussion of these "Arabian Nights" paintings also form the most substantive part and the high point of the author's art historical analysis in his new volume, PaintingsofAbonindranath Tagore. 32. lbid., p. 155-157. 33. These were first published as an anthology by Calcutta University in 1941, followed by an expanded reprint edition by Rupa &Co. in 1969. 34. See Abanindranath Tagore's essays, "Murti" and "Bharat Shilpe Shadanga" of 1913.14, which were translated as Some Notes on indiak Artistic Autonomy and Shadanga or Six Limbs of Indian Painting (Calcutta: Indian Society of Oriental Art, 1914,1921).

35. This manuscript album, titled, Khude Ramayana (miniature Ramayana) was gifted to his two grandsons, Biru and Badshah, and is now in the collection of Amitendranath (6iru)Tagore. 36. A wonderful account of these trends is provided by Shankho Ghosh in his book, Kalpanar Hysteria (Calcutta: Proma, 1984). 37. There were some professional positions he did take on during these last years - he was a joint editor with Dr. Stella Kramrisch of the Journal of the lndian Society of Oriental Art during the late 1930s and 40s and after Rabindranath's death in 1941, he was inducted for a while as Upacharya (Vice-Chancellor) of Visva-Bharati at Santiniketan But none of these positions could propel him into an active professional life. 38. The story was posthumously published in 1954, and is reprinted in Abanindra Rachanabali, Val. 4, Prakash Bhavan, Calcutta, 1979, pp. 125-67. 39. Recounted in Gharoo, pp.75-76.

28. Parimoo, The Painting of the Three Togores, pp. 99-105.168-69.

TitleDescription

Shahajadpur Landscape Series Bengal Landscape, Shahajadpur Bengal Landscape, Shahajadpur

Medium

water-colour

The Boat

water-colour water-colour

"The Grave of Makdum Saheb"

water-colour

Miscellaneous "Ba~ragi"(Caricature) "Vasantasena" Jesus Chr~st

water-colour and ink water-colour on board water-colour on cloth

"Arabian Nights" Series "The Greek King And the Physician" "Aladdin And His Wonderful Lamp" "Sindbad, the Sailor" "Looking into the Harem" "The Four Fishes" "The Merchant Who Understood Animal Language'' "The Four Travellers" "The Hunchback of Fishbone"

water-colour water-colour water-colour water-colour water-colour water-colour water-colour water-colour

"The Story of the Bronze Horse" "Princess Kamar-UI-Jaman" "Wazir and Sahajadi"

water-colour water-colour

"Haroun al Rashid And the Camel Man Telling the Story"

water-colour

"Fisherman And the Genie" "Alibaba And the Forty Thieves"

water-colour water-colour

"Shahajada Being Led into the Bridal Chamber" "The Finding of the Ninth Doll"

water-colour water-colour

"The Three Sisters" "Story of the Three Sisters" "Princess of China" "Abu Hossain, Caliph For a Night" "Marriage of Nuruddin" "The First Old Man's Tale" "The Merchants And the Genie" "Lady of the Rings" "Story of the Cock And the Merchant" "Merchant And the Genie" "In the Harem"

water-colour

water-colour water-colour water-colour water-colour water-colour water-colour water-colour water-colour water-colour water-colour water-colour

Untitled

water-colour

"The Crystal Coffin"

water-colour

"Story of Sharnsul-Nahar"

water-colour

Date

Size (L x B)

crn

Title/Description

Medium

"Krishna-Mangal" Series

"Kaliya Daman"

water-colour with charcoal

"Keshi Badh"

water-colour with charcoal

"Slaying the Elephant Demon"

water-colour with charcoal

"Kagasur Badh"

water-colour with charcoal

"Putuna Badh"

water-colour with charcoal

"Balaramer Mahishasur Badh"

water-colour with charcoal

"Kubjake Shoja Kora"

water-colour with charcoal

"Krishner Mastuto Bhai"

water-colour with charcoal

"Shakat-Bhandan"

water-colour w ~ t hcharcoal

"Ramkrishner Namkaron"

water-colour

"Mask" Series Self-portrait

water-colour

RabindranathTagore

water-colour

"Durmukh"

water-colour

"Alokendranath as Kumarsena"

water-colour

"Birendranathas Debdutta"

water-colour

"Nishikanta as Moghul"

water-colour

Shobhanlal Ganguly

water-colour

"Rabindranath as Vikram"

water-colour

Sisir Kumar Bhaduri

water-colour

Mukul Chandra Dey

water-colour w ~ t hcharcoal

Nitai Binode Goswami

water-colour with charcoal

Nritendranath GangulyINishikanta BratindranathTagore

waterwzolour water-colour with charcoal

Mask

water-colour

Mask

water-colour

Mask

water-colour water-colour water-colour water-colour water-colour water-coiour

Mask

water-colour

Date

Size (L x 6) cm

TitleDercription

Medium

Size (L x B) cm

Date

11. Collection of Nandan Museum, Kala-Bhavana, Santiniketan

Seated Figure of C.F. Andrews

water-colour

27 x 20

Omar Khayyam Series - 29

water-colour

May 23,1911

Omar Khayyam Series - 2

water-colour

May 23,1911

"The Poet in the Cycle of Spring"

water-colour

Boats On River

203x15 21 x 15 24 x 16

ink

175 x 2 6

Portrait of Jagadananda Roy

dry pastel

Seated Figure of C.F. Andrews

water-colour

Standing Figure of a Lady

water-colour

Omar Khayyam Series - 38

water-colour

May 23,1911

Landscape

water-colour

c 1945

October 11.1933

38 x 33

1925

39 x 30 18 x 14 19 5 x 15 15 x 23

Boat On River

water-colour

30 x 24

Priest

water-colour

24 x 16

"Poet in the Role of a Blind Baul"

water-colour

30 5 x 20.5

W.W. Pearson

pencil sketch

36.5 x 18

Passing of Rabindranath Tagore

water-colour

August 7,1941

Seated Yogi

water-colour

c. 1944

Landscape (Gifted to Samarendranath Tagore on Aswar 31, 1345 b.s.)

water-colour

Portrait of Andrews

water-colour

Radha ( "Krishna-Leela" Series)

water-colour

Illustration from Crescent Moon

water-colour

China Bowl

mixed media

Book Cover

ink

Landscape from Ranchi Men in Alarm

water-colour monochrome water-colour

Representation of Manu

water-colour

Boat ( Letter to Arai Kampo, Rathindranath and Dinendranath Tagore)

etching intaglio

Omar Khayyam Series - XLVIU ("To my Guru, E.B. Havell") "Moonlight Music Party"

water-colour

May 23, 1911, Calcutta

colour woodblock print

Landscape (Probably Uttarayan) Presented by Krishna Kripalani

water-colour

Golden Leaf

water-colour

Letter on Reverse Side to Rathindranath Tagore (Ashchha Kabe?)

water-colour

Letter on Reverse Side to Suren Karfrom Puri

water-colour

Letter to Pratima Devi

water-colour

Letter t o Pratima Devi

water-colour

October 4,1944

April 18, year not given

215x28 35x44

'RE FOR STUDIE!

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:

.

,:

.

r

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