Bengal school of art
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The Bengal School of Art was a style of art that flourished in India during the British Raj in the early 20th century. It was associated with Indian nationalism, but was also promoted and supported by British arts administrators.
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[edit] 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.[1][2] 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. Tagore's best-known painting, Bharat Mata (Mother India), depicted a young woman, portrayed with four arms in the manner of Hindu deities, holding objects symbolic of India's national aspirations. Tagore later attempted to develop links with Japanese artists as part of an aspiration to construct a pan-Asianist model of art.
The Bengal school's influence in India declined with the spread of modernist ideas in the 1920s.
[edit] Legacy
However Bengal continues to produce some of the best artists of modern India. Among them the best known artists of present day Bengal are Ganesh Pyne, Manishi Dey, Nirmal Dutta, Nilima Dutta, Jahar Dasgupta, Bikash Bhattacharjee, Sudip Roy, Devajyoti Ray and Paresh Maiti.
Sanat Chatterjee is one of the last living pioneer of Bengal School of art. Studied under Asit Kumar Haldar around fifteen years.
[edit] See also
- Indian painting
- Indian Fine art
- Progressive Artists' Group
- Tajore painting
- Rajput painting
- Madhubani painting
- New Indian Art
- Pseudorealism
[edit] Further reading
- Havell, E. B. (1920). A Handbook of Indian Art. John Murray, London. http://www.archive.org/stream/handbookofindian002882mbp#page/n5/mode/2up.
[edit] References
- ^ Mitter, Partha (2001). Indian art. Oxford University Press. p. 177. ISBN 0192842218. http://books.google.co.in/books?id=FHxsDV1GDOIC&pg=PA177&lpg=PA177&dq=Ernest+Binfield+Havell+education&source=bl&ots=Ek6-6QKq--&sig=s5l_7kw7or0vB99ORZT6iiUucFo&hl=en&ei=sbLPTMbKLoG-uwPStZyBBg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=5&ved=0CCMQ6AEwBDgU#v=onepage&q=Ernest%20Binfield%20Havell%20education&f=false.
- ^ Cotter, Holland (August 19, 2008). "Art Review: Indian Modernism via an Eclectic and Elusive Artist". New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/20/arts/design/20bose.html.
[edit] External links
- Anthology of Indian Art
- Art Galleries in India
- Which Way Indian Art? by Mukul Dey
- Profile of a Pioneer: Sarada Ukil by Satyasri Ukil
- Kokka and the Early Neo-Bengal School Masters
- [All issues of 'Nandan' art magazine, published from the Dept of Art History, Kala Bhavana, Santiniketan, Viswabharati University, West Bengal]
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