Nandalal Bose, one of the most renowned artists from India, was a sensible craftsman who hooked the viewers through his emotional and psychological setting of the artworks. One of his students, Subramanyan, referred to the artist as an affectionate solitudinarian, someone who admired his personality and art. Deeply rooted in the values of his country, he never liked the idea of consciously borrowing aspects from any school of foreign painters. In fact, he was a true believer of Indian and Oriental art, representing linear art and leveraging to see the inside beauty over the exterior. Furthermore, the concept of anatomy naturally emerged in these compositions. Hence, the works of the artist show a rhythmic flow instead of exact imitation of the subject. The tendency to imitate in Modern Indian Art was never accepted by him, as it enslaved the thought procedure, hindering the freedom of thinking. Since Bose was a lover of freedom in personal and professional life, he created a distinct style in his artworks. In this article, we will learn about this very style, his life, and the paintings he created in his career.
Looking at the Life of Nandalal Bose.
Early Life of the Artist.
Born on 3rd December 1882 to Kshetramonidevi and Purnachandra Bose, he grew up in a middle-class Bengali family in the British Presidency, at Haveli, Kharagpur. He had four brothers and sisters. His father used to work as a manager for the Raja of Darbhanga, while his mother made toys for children earn and contribute with her creative side and, at the same time, played the role of a housewife. Her creativity was instilled in him, further bringing a sense of curiosity that grew throughout his life. Sketches of Indian Gods and Goddesses became part of his style, as well as decorations for poojas and pandals.
Nandalal Bose was the third child among a family of five; the eldest brother Gokulchandra, followed by a sister, Kiran Bala. Another sister Kamala, was younger than him, and the youngest and their darling was Nimai. From the early days, he began to take a keen interest in modeling images of Durga, Ganesh, elephants, and bulls that were often produced in fairs and festivals. On the daily rounds to the village school, Nandalal would see potters, carpenters, and toymakers working with their crafts, which intrigued him. This craftsmanship and observation made Nandalal manipulate his art forms in later life.
The artist’s father was affectionate and didn’t involve much petting or fondling, but had an outspoken understanding with his son. Sometimes he would just draw an elephant figure and then go on to show his son its spelling. The stories of the Ramayana and Mahabharata were suffused in Nandalal Bose’s childhood, making his childhood revolve around Indian culture.
The early schooling of the artist had frequent changes, as he would never write a word or number, instead he always used visual form. It was only after a long training period in the vernacular middle school at Kharagpur when he gained basic knowledge of spoken Hindi, history, and arithmetic. Nandalal never left the language Bengali as his father appointed a tutor for him, as they never wanted to leave the link with the mainstream of their own culture.
He moved to Calcutta when he was 15 to study at Central Collegiate School. Kantichandra Ghosh was one of his classmates, with whom Nandalal developed a deep friendship. Kantichandra later became famous as the translator of Omar Khayyam. Talking about the school life of the artist, Kanti always invented novel pranks or embarrassed teachers and students, but Nandalal remained a passive spectator throughout the events. He neither showed enthusiasm nor encouragement to volatile Kanti, but he observed his activities and his surroundings promptly. After a couple of months, he managed to clear an entrance exam in 1902, continuing his college studies in the same institution. Forcing himself into the books of English, Sanskrit, and history, his mind always wandered into the world of fantasy and art, which led him to fail in the annual promotion to the second year.
In 1903, Nandalal Bose married his mother’s friend’s daughter, Sudhiradevi, who was 12 years old at the time of marriage. By this time, Nandalal’s mother died. Sudhiradevi’s father Prakashchandra Pal was a close friend and colleague of Purnachandra, and hence the wedding was celebrated with due pomp and festivity in Calcutta. Nandalal, who left college at this time, joined another college, the General Assemblies Institution, to further resume his studies, but he failed here too. With renewed perseverance, he started over from Metropolitan College but then decided to join the Art school. His father, who was away in Darbhanga, delegated the responsibilities of guidance to Nandalal’s parents-in-law; the artist’s decision to join art school prompted everyone, as art was not considered a respectable career at the time. However, he continued his pursuit of art.
This era was the golden time of India for media and journalism. Nandalal saw the multi-reveled renaissance in the cultural life of Bengal; Swami Vivekananda was traveling around the world and brought fresh laurels in the praise of the Indian heritage; Bankim Chandra and Michael Madhusudan were the guards of this revival and Rabindranath rose like a star. The literary journal Pravasi circulated among the middle-class population of India, and there were numerous journals from political discussions and economic analyses, to poetry, history, and studies of ancient texts. All these greatly impacted the art and life of the artist.
The monthly magazine of the publication showed the Ajanta murals, Ravi Varma, and sculptures of Mhatre and the following years of Dhurandhar and Abanindranath. Further, there were different paintings, like Sujata and the Buddha and Vajra Mukut by Abanindranath that left an impression on the young painter. It was only after these inspirations, rejections in various colleges, and his pursuit of art that he joined Art School later in 1905.
Nandalal Bose at the Art School.
After joining the school, he came close to Abanindranath Tagore, who joined the school as Vice-Principal, in the same year after persuasion from E.B. Havell (principal of the school). Abanindranath accepted the artist as his first student, and Havell wrote an essay, where he described him as one of Abanindranath’s ‘most promising pupils.’ In the same year, 1908, he won an award for his painting Sati. He mastered the Japanese wash technique for his early works. Later, in 1909, he was sent to Ajanta with Samarendranath Gupta, Asitkumar Haldar, and K. Venkatappa, by Nivedita and Abanindranath to assist Lady (Christiana) Herringham in copying the murals. At the same time, he took notice of local folk, Mughal paintings, and varied aspects of Indian art.
Swadeshi Movement and the Artist.
Post 1910, Nandalal grew professionally and stepped out into the public sphere as both an artist and a teacher. He did so by addressing social and practical needs, further finding a functional solution to them linked through a shared aesthetic.He freed himself from historicism and linked his artworks with local experiential realities to broaden their functional goals. The most significant experiential reality was Nationalism as the Swadeshi movement hit. He drew the attention of Sister Nivedita, further getting in contact with several monks associated with the Ramakrishna mission, like Ganen Maharaj and Mahendranath Dutta, the younger brother of Swami Vivekanand.
On the other hand, he had close associations with Coomaraswamy at this time, and his experience assisting him in cataloging Gaganendranath and Abanindranath’s collection of Indian art that he later memorialized in drawings and sketches. Later, his visits to Orissa in 1917 and to China and Japan in 1924 also impacted his artworks. Through Japanese artists, he not only learned the techniques of ink paintings that he exemplified in 1913 artworks, but also added a linguistic rationale.
Nandalal Bose also met Rabindranath Tagore in 1909, who was the leader of the Swadeshi movement. But to him, art must show the contemporary realities, environment, and personal experiences. Paintings like Over the Padma in Winter (1915), Rain Swept Konarak (1916), and Lost in the Woods (1918) were inspired by Rabindranath’s thinking, where the artist gradually replaced mythological subjects with nature.
Nandalal’s interest in Chinese and Japanese calligraphic approaches to ink painting is traced back to 1913; but after he visited Japan, he got inspired by the Yamato-e style, and he began to flatten the image, break the motifs into flat color areas, and use contours expressively with combined naturalism. This style was noticed in several paintings after his return, like Jalasattra, Poye Dance (1924), and Guru Abanindranath (1926).
Later, he combined these elements with different eclectic styles, further providing sympathetic resonance on other occasions. Further, he realized the challenges Rabindranath placed before him to give a personal expression in his artworks, which assured him to create a new visual culture strung with an aesthetic thread noticed in Japan. From Coomaraswamy, the artist learned that an art language runs from the functional and decorative arts to symbolic and narrative. Hence, he added all these elements to form his compositions.
Bagh Caves, Nandalal Bose, and Mural Paintings.
The most significant period of the artist came when his pedagogical method met with the mural paintings (which he did between 1922 and 1946). After he returned from Bagh Caves, he painted a few decorative panels on the pillars and landing of Dwarik. These panels were based on the Ajanta murals and used watercolor on paper, not their original methods. But the artist never ended up learning mural techniques and at last, he recreated the Ajanta fresco techniques along with the Jaipuri fresco technique, the Italian wet process or fresco buono, the dry process, egg tempera, scraffito, and relief modeling, which he explained in his book Silpacharcha for further use.
You can refer to the paintings of the artist from the next section to know more about his life or you can simply read Nandalal Bose by Dinkar Kowshik or The NGMA art Journal.
The Artist’s Inspiration.
Ajanta Caves murals profoundly influenced his art when he was a young man. Nandalal Bose also became a prominent member of the international circle of artists passionate about bringing back Indian culture. Okakura Kakuzo, William Rothenstein, Yokoyama Taikan, Christiana Herringham, Laurence Binyon, Abanindranath Tagore, and Eric Gill comprised this community.
Contributions of Nandalal Bose.
He made contributions at different times during his career. On the occasion of Mahatma Gandhi’s arrest in 1930 for the Salt Satyagraha, he created an iconic image to represent the nonviolent movement. In black and white, he created a licorice print of himself walking. In addition to these, he drew emblems for government awards such as the Bharat Ratna and the Padma Shree. He was also responsible for embellishing the constitution book with a gold leaf emblem. Further, Bose drew Haripura posters for the famous Congress sessions.
In the Tagore family, Nandalal Bose studied with Modern Indian Painters – Gaganendranath Tagore and Abanindranath Tagore. A few years later, they founded the Indian Society of Oriental Art with Ananda Coomaraswamy and Ordhendra Coomar Gangoly. The year 1922 marked his appointment as principal of the Kala Bhavana (College of Arts) at Tagore’s International University, Santiniketan.
Briefly Analyzing Nandalal Bose Paintings.
1. Sati.
The Sati is one of the early Nandalal Bose paintings, which demonstrates the mastery of the Japanese-wash technique on the canvas. There is a depiction of the brilliance of the fire with the deathly black night and sympathetic surroundings. One of the similar paintings that was composed during this time, which shows how the artist quickly grasped the technique of Japanese-wash, is Vikramaditya and the Vampire.
There is a diminished female body within the context of characterizations of the ‘feminised native’ here. Typically asexual as depicted, the lady wears loose clothing, which covers her entire body with grace. The wash technique dissolves her figure so that the body appears to lack mass, floating against the gloomy background.
2. Annapurna.
The composition is the grieving reciprocation of the Bengal Famine of 1943 that killed at least 3 million people through starvation and malaria. Being one of the 83 Haripura posters that Nandalal painted in Santiniketan, this work portrays the broad patches of flat opaque color, finished with spontaneous brush lines in black. It have coherence and gestural vitality to the motifs, invoking the style of pat paintings but carrying mastery and imprint of his individuality. Further, this composition subsumes the iconic, symbolic and narrative under the logic of a decorative visual language, putting forth a view about this decorative painting.
3. Radha’s Viraha.
This exquisite artwork was painted when the Bhakti movement was on the shores of India. It showcases the compositional features of Rajasthani Miniatures, Egyptian paintings, and Japanese decorative screens. A careful viewer will understand that the merging of these cultures through canvas initiates a conversation between the historically distinct conventions and discover the points of convergence between them. Radha Viraha is in general an exceptional canvas of impressions where a decorative visual language is used to narrate the decorativeness of the culture.
4. Gangavataran.
The Gangavataran is a single and iconic figure that is surrounded by decorative swirls in flat colors, resembling the look of a large Tibetan tanka. In contrast to the other murals like Meera Bai and Natir Puja, it is broken into several scenes that are discrete and episodic in one and continuous and narrative in another. In both, the figures are bound with the contour lines, and scenes are structured through an arrangement of flat color ideas. In contrast, the latter has softer colors with closer tonal values and fine lines. The elements in each panel are held through a fluid rhythm, but in Gangavataran, the colours are more tonally separated, the lines are heavier, and the scenes are linked by an open architectural grid that progresses across the mural in a staccato rhythm.
5. Siva Drinking World Poison.
The artwork is the reminiscences of Ajanta frescoes and art after the artist’s first visit to Ajanta. The painting is not too naturalistic or weightless but rather more substantial, though not muscular and somewhat mannered. It is not overly delicate, but it has a supple body with dreamy eyes and opaque touches, and a hint of materiality. This style was a new path for Nandalal Bose.
Though the composition was painted in the wash technique, it was combined with touches of opaque colors.
6. Floating a Canoe.
Nandalal Bose had sketched a piece of art displaying two men in the middle of the sea fighting against the waves to survive. They are wearing loincloths and together display great teamwork. There are several emotions and scenes in this sketch. The gigantic waves are horrifying through their heights and dark shades. However, a key takeaway from this painting is its clear visualization. It can be commonly termed ink on paper art which is a monochrome version of ‘touch-work’. In contrast to the codes and conventions governing earlier works of the artist, the suggestive richness of touch-indicating light, shapes, space, and tactility with the slightest nuances of tone and stroke is shown here.
7. The Golden Pitcher or Swarna Kumbha.
A single-figure panel painting of the Golden Pitcher, Swarna-Kumbha, recalls the conventions of Egyptian art. A theme running through these is the search for a personal pattern of the decoration with resonances that can reconcile the various antecedents without incongruence. The sharp features of the lady who is decorated with gold jewelry are mesmerizing. She is holding a golden pitcher here. The effective color contrasts are just amazing and make it even more beautiful. The blue-colored upper garment is well combined with the golden bottom wear.
8. Dhritarashtra and Gandhari.
The 1920s brought a change in the artist’s career as he replaced history and mythology with life as the primary source of art to give his drawing a regular and lifelong practice. By this time, he was introduced to mural painting and crafts and lastly, he developed an analytical approach to practice and demonstrate different structural and linguistic principles with their representational, communicational, and expressive potentialities. These points were actively present in his paintings between 1920 and 1923. The painting, Dhritarashtra and Gandhari was painted at this time in wash technique. It shows two women from Mahabharata in different costumes in a more expressive manner.
9. Abhimanue Badh.
Abhimanue Badh is an amalgamation of five distinct episodic panels bristling with visual details of the action. Each of the elements in this panel is held together, and the colors are tonally separated with heavier lines. The painting is a mural artwork that the artist composed in his later life. In a staccato rhythm, this mural is distinctly expressive, which recalls Japanese heian period paintings.
Final Words.
Nandalal Bose kept himself engaged with the aspect of swadeshi nationalist politics that affected his artworks. Since it rejected the amble full figure body enshrined in the classical literature and the anatomically accurate body sanctioned by the colonial art education, Nandalal Bose paintings had lissome figures whose delicate frame and shadowy presence formed the centerpiece of the art. The artist explored the effeminate male body in emancipatory ways and he used an affirmation of a masculine poetics enshrined in the figure of the Brahmachari in his works. Furthermore, the locus of this empowered native male body offers a response to the emasculating politics of colonialism and participation in the swadeshi project of envisioning Modern Indian art. Throughout his life, the art of the artist changed through a series of events, but this element remained consistent in his paintings.
Resources.
- Featured Image: Nandalal Bose Photograph, Sati Painting; Old Indian Photos, Sotheby’s.
- NGMA Journal.
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