Bengal School of Art

The Bengal School of Art, commonly referred as Bengal School, was an art movement and a style of Indian painting that originated in Bengal, primarily Kolkata and Shantiniketan, and flourished throughout the Indian subcontinent, during the British Raj in the early 20th century. Also known as 'Indian style of painting' in its early days, it was associated with Indian nationalism (swadeshi) and led by Abanindranath Tagore (1871–1951), but was also being promoted and supported by British arts administrators like E. B. Havell, the principal of the Government College of Art and Craft, Kolkata from 1896; eventually it led to the development of the modern Indian painting.

Bharat Mata (1905), by Abanindranath Tagore, a nephew of the poet Rabindranath Tagore, and a pioneer of the movement.

History

• The Bengal school arose as an avant garde and nationalist movement reacting against the academic art styles previously promoted in India, both by Indian artists such as Raja Ravi Varma and in British art schools. Following the influence of Indian spiritual ideas in the West, the British art teacher Ernest Binfield Havell attempted to reform the teaching methods at the Calcutta School of Art by encouraging students to imitate Mughal miniatures. This caused controversy, leading to a strike by students and complaints from the local press, including from nationalists who considered it to be a retrogressive move. Havell was supported by the artist Abanindranath Tagore, a nephew of the poet Rabindranath Tagore. Tagore painted a number of works influenced by Mughal art, a style that he and Havell believed to be expressive of India's distinct spiritual qualities, as opposed to the materialism of the West.

Abanindranath Tagore

• 7 August 1871 – 5 December 1951) was the principal artist and creator of the "Indian Society of Oriental Art". He was also the first major exponent of Swadeshi values in Indian art. He founded the influential Bengal school of art, which led to the development of modern Indian painting. He was also a noted writer, particularly for children. Popularly known as 'Aban Thakur', his books Rajkahini, Buro Angla, Nalak, and Khirer Putul were landmarks in Bengali language children's literature and art.

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• Tagore sought to modernise Mughal and Rajput styles to counter the influence of Western models of art, as taught in art schools under the British Raj. Along with other artists from the Bengal school of art, Tagore advocated in favour of a nationalistic Indian art derived from Indian art history, drawing inspiration from the Ajanta Caves. Tagore's work was so successful that it was eventually accepted and promoted as a national Indian style within British art institutions.

Abanindranath Tagore

Painting

"Ganesh-janani" by Abanindranath Tagore

Abanindranath Tagore's Konnagar Baganbari in 2014 (before restoration)

Rabindranath Tagore, Uccelli migranti, Carabba, 1918

Abanindranath Tagore

Journey's End

Rabindranath Tagore

• 7 May 1861 – 7 August 1941 was an Indian polymath who was active as a poet, writer, playwright, composer, philosopher, social reformer, educationist and painter during the age of Bengal Renaissance.[4][5][6] He reshaped Bengali literature and music as well as Indian art with Contextual Modernism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Author of the "profoundly sensitive, fresh and beautiful" poetry of Gitanjali, he became in 1913 the first non-European and the first lyricist to win the Nobel Prize in Literature.Tagore's poetic songs were viewed as spiritual and mercurial; where his elegant prose and magical poetry were widely popular in the Indian subcontinent. He was a fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society. Referred to as "the Bard of Bengal", Tagore was known by sobriquets: Gurudeb, Kobiguru, and Biswokobi.

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• A Bengali Brahmin from Calcutta with ancestral gentry roots in Burdwan district and Jessore, Tagore wrote poetry as an eight-year-old. At the age of sixteen, he released his first substantial poems under the pseudonym Bhānusiṃha ("Sun Lion"), which were seized upon by literary authorities as long-lost classics. By 1877 he graduated to his first short stories and dramas, published under his real name.

Rabindranath Tagore

7 May 1861

Art works

Primitivism: a pastel-coloured rendition of a Malagan mask from northern New Ireland, Papua New Guinea

Tagore's Bengali-language initials, the letters র and ঠ, are worked into this "Ro-Tho" (of Rabindranath Thakur)

Face of a woman, inspired by Kadambari Devi.Ink on paper. National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi

Tagore hosts Gandhi and wife Kasturba at Santiniketan in 1940.

Nandalal Bose

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Padma Vibhushan

Nandalal Bose

Nandalal Bose (3 December 1882 – 16 April 1966) was one of the pioneers of modern Indian art and a key figure of Contextual Modernism.

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A pupil of Abanindranath Tagore, Bose was known for his "Indian style" of painting. He became the principal of Kala Bhavan, Santiniketan in 1921. He was influenced by the Tagore family and the murals of Ajanta; his classic works include paintings of scenes from Indian mythologies, women, and village life.

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Today, many critics consider his paintings among India's most important modern paintings.[2][3][4] In 1976, the Archaeological Survey of India, Department of Culture, Govt. of India declared his works among the "nine artists" whose work, "not being antiquities", were to be henceforth considered "to be art treasures, having regard to their artistic and aesthetic value“.

Paintings

Yama and Savitri, from a painting by Nandalal Bose, 1913

Kirat-Arjuna, 1914

Sunayani Devi

Sunayani Devi (18 June 1875 – 23 February 1962) was an Indian painter born into the aristocratic Tagore family in Calcutta, West Bengal. She was a self taught artist, with no academic training in art. Inspired by her brothers, Abanindranath Tagore, Gaganendranath Tagore, and Samarendranath Tagore, she started painting only at the age of 30. She was married at the age of 12 to the grandson of Raja Ram Mohan Roy.

Sunayani Devi

18 June 1875

Asit Kumar Haldar

• Haldar was born in Jorasanko in 1890. His maternal grandmother was the sister of Rabindranath Tagore, making him Tagore's grandnephew. Both his grandfather Rakhaldas Haldar and his father Sukumar Haldar were accomplished in the art of painting. He began his studies at the age of 14. His education was undertaken at Government School of Art, Calcutta and began in 1904. Haldar learned sculpting from two famous Bengali artists in 1905 – Jadu Pal and Bakkeswar Pal, and he also learned from Leonard Jennings.

10 September 1890

Jorasanko, Calcutta, Bengal Presidency, British India

Paintings

Dhruva, Painting, published in Myths of the Hindus & Buddhists (1914).

Stamp of India – 1991 – Colnect 164218 – Sidhatrtha with an Injured Bird – by Haldar

Kshitindranath Mazumdar

• Kshitindranath Mazumdar was born on 31 July 1891 to a Bengali family in Jagtai, a remote village in the Murshidabad district of West Bengal. Mazumdar's mother passed away during his infancy; his father, Kedarnath Mazumdar, a sub-registrar by profession, raised him by himself. His family was highly influenced by Vaishnavism, a sect of Hinduism which revolves around the worship of the Hindu deity Vishnu. Artistically inclined since childhood, Mazumdar trained in hymnody and often interpreted legends from Indian epics. As a teenager, he performed in the productions of a local theatre group owned by his father.

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• Mazumdar's artistic capabilities and talent caught the eye of Mahendra Narayan Roy, the zamindar of a nearby village, Nimtita. On his advice, Mazumdar joined the Government College of Art & Craft in Kolkata. It was here that he met Abanindranath Tagore, one of the founders of the Bengal School of Art.

The Birth of Ganga

Paintings

Damayanthi

The Dance of Shiva

THANKS

• Dr. Shailender Kumar
• (Assist. Prof.)
• Fine Arts Dept.