Bengal School of Art

The Bengal School of Art was an avant-garde, nationalist movement in Indian painting that arose in Bengal - above all Calcutta and Shantiniketan - in the early twentieth century, reacting against the academic oil painting promoted by British art schools and by Raja Ravi Varma. Backed by E.B. Havell, principal of the Calcutta School of Art, and led by Abanindranath Tagore, nephew of the poet Rabindranath Tagore, the school looked to Mughal miniatures and Indian spiritual tradition - and, through Japanese collaborators, to pan-Asian art - as an alternative to Western materialism. Tagore's Bharat Mata (1905), a four-armed Mother India, became the movement's patriotic icon. At its height the school trained or inspired Nandalal Bose, Asit Kumar Haldar, Kshitindranath Majumdar, and others; its influence faded as modernist ideas spread in the 1920s.

Defining characteristics

• Soft, misty atmosphere built from layered washes of muted color
• Idealized, spiritual figures drawn from Indian history, legend, and devotion
• Mughal and Rajput miniature traditions of line, ornament, and page design
• Subdued, poetic palette rather than academic oil modeling
• Nationalist allegory and symbolism - Mother India, empires, saints
• Pan-Asian influence, especially from Japanese painting

Key figures

• Abanindranath Tagore (1871-1951) — Founder-leader of the school; painter of Bharat Mata (1905)
• E. B. Havell (1861-1934) — British principal of the Calcutta School of Art who reformed its teaching toward Indian art
• Nandalal Bose (1882-1966) — Leading pupil and master painter of the school

Example works

• Bharat Mata — Abanindranath Tagore (1905)
• The Passing of Shah Jahan — Abanindranath Tagore (1902)

Sources

• Bengal School of Art - Wikipedia encyclopedia

← Back to the catalog