The Bengal School and Cultural Nationalism Chapter Notes | Fine Arts for Grade 12 PDF Download

Introduction

• Art in India prior to British rule
• Types of Indian art: temple wall statues, miniature paintings, village mud house decorations, etc.
• English officers commissioned local artists to paint scenes of the natives for documentation and artistic reasons
• Mixture of traditional and European style of painting led to the Company School of Painting

Raja Ravi Varma

• Academic style of oil painting that used a European medium to depict Indian subject matter
• Self-taught artist, Raja Ravi Varma of the Travancore Court in Kerala
• Mastered academic realism and used it to depict scenes from popular epics like the Ramayana and Mahabharata
• Many of his paintings were copied as oleographs and were sold in the market

The Bengal School

• Art movement and a style of painting originated in Calcutta, the centre of British power
• Associated with the nationalist movement (Swadeshi)
• Spearheaded by Abanindranath Tagore
• Tagore and E. B. Havell were critical of colonial Art Schools and the manner in which European taste in art was being imposed on Indians
• Mughal and Pahari miniatures were important sources of inspiration
• The year 1896 was important in the Indian history of visual arts

Abanindranath Tagore and E. B. Havell

• Havell and Abanindranath Tagore saw a need to Indianise art education in the country
• Designed a curriculum to include and encourage technique and themes in Indian art traditions
• Abanindranath was the main artist and creator of the journal, Indian Society of Oriental Art
• The Bengal School set the stage for the development of modern Indian painting
• Younger artists like Kshitindranath Majumdar and M. R. Chughtai followed the direction opened by Abanindranath

Shantiniketan — Early modernism

• Nandalal Bose, a student of Abanindranath Tagore, was invited by poet and philosopher Rabindranath Tagore to teach art at Shantiniketan
• Bose was instrumental in shaping the curriculum and the direction of the art school at Shantiniketan
• The art school became a place where Western and Indian art styles could coexist and where students could learn to appreciate and create art from a global perspective.

Pan-Asianism and Modernism 

• Pan-Asianism was gaining popularity in India.
• In 1922, an important exhibition of works by Paul Klee, Kandinsky, and other artists, who were part of the Bauhaus School in Germany, travelled to Calcutta.
• The European artists had rejected academic realism and created a more abstract language of art.
• Indian artists and the public had a direct encounter with modern art of this kind.
• The influence of modern western style of paintings can be seen in the paintings by Gaganendranath Tagore, brother of Abanindranath Tagore.
• Gaganendranath made several paintings using Cubist style and caricatures, in which he often made fun of rich Bengalis blindly following the European style of living.

Different Concepts of Modernism: Western and Indian

• The divide between anglicists and orientalists was not based on race.
• Benoy Sarkar sided with the anglicists and considered modernism growing in Europe as authentic in an article, ‘The Futurism of Young Asia’.
• E. B. Havell, an Englishman, was in favor of returning to native art to create a true modern Indian art.
• Havell collaborated with Abanindranath Tagore.
• Amrita Sher-Gil is a perfect example of the meeting of both points of view.
• Modern art in India can be best understood as a result of the conflict between colonialism and nationalism.
• Nationalist artists accepted changes introduced by colonialism but continued to assert more Indian taste in art and even accepted a larger Asian identity for a while.
• The legacy of this conflict was going to leave a deep impact on the later history of modern Indian art.

In conclusion, the history of Indian art has been shaped by various influences, both indigenous and foreign. The Company School of Painting, Raja Ravi Varma's academic realism, and the Bengal School of Art were some of the significant movements that emerged during different periods. These movements represented different approaches to Indian art, with some artists seeking to depict Indian subject matter using European techniques, while others aimed to develop an Indian style of painting that drew inspiration from the country's rich artistic heritage. Despite the varying approaches, these movements contributed to the development of modern Indian painting and continue to inspire artists today.