Untitled

PROPERTY FROM THE FAMILY OF NANDALAL BOSE

Ink on paper
6 3/4 × 9 1/4 in. (17.1 × 23.6 cm.)

For much of his life, despite a deep reverence for all the arts, Rabindranath Tagore focused on his writing. Although the majority of his paintings were produced in the last decade of his life, he had sketched as a young man and continued to draw intermittently throughout his life. As in this instance, Tagore gifted many of these early works to family and friends. Towards the end of his life, he became more and more fascinated with painting, and what began as doodles on his working manuscripts, became an obsession. In his last ten years, he is known to have produced almost two thousand pictures, yet few works remain in private hands, as the majority of the artist’s paintings form part of the collections of the National Gallery of Modern Art in New Delhi and the Rabindra Bhavana in Santiniketan.

In a review of a retrospective exhibition held at the National Gallery of Modern Art, the critic Keshav Malik states, ‘The poet’s pictures do not represent a preconceived scheme. Evidently while working at them, he does not know what they are going to be. He is never copying nature. He is really working as a poet does, merely assisting at a birth. And the main thing is that there is a suppleness and vitality in what he conjures up... essentially he manages harmonious cum grotesque wholes. Some call this a genuine modern primitive art. But then this was created by a most sophisticated mind. It is childlike but not childish.’ (Keshav Malik, ‘A Sophisticated Primitivism’, The Times of India, 7 July, 1993, reprinted in Keshav Malik, A Critic’s View, New Delhi, 2023, p. 15)

Tagore’s artistic path began with his ‘erasures’ that turned crossed out words and lines in his handwritten manuscripts into images that assumed grotesques forms. These ‘primitive’ forms evolved over time into more fully worked images and paintings. For the most part, the process remained unplanned and was shaped by the artist’s intuition. His paintings have been categorised into three types: human figures, landscapes, and primitive forms that appear to be inspired by tribal and oceanic art. The current lot falls into this final category. In this style of work, Tagore reveals his natural tendency towards a symbolist approach; his subconscious doodles and these more evolved works seem to tap an archaic source in a manner which is spontaneous and intuitive. The artist states, ‘I have a force acting in me... that ever tries to win me for itself... this life impulse I speak of belongs to a personality beyond the ego.’ (Geeta Kapur, ‘Rabindranath Tagore’, Six Indian Painters, exhibition catalogue, The Tate Gallery, London, 1982, p. 18)

‘The poet, at his best, is a free man, a free mind and, with his drawings, Tagore regained his freedom to roam where he pleased. Someone deep in him would not care to be guided by academic rule or solemn commandment. Nor would it guide. The ethic of the act inhered in the discovery of the truly expressive form, the just balance, creation without the imposition of outward, alien standards – the only standard being that demanded by the material spontaneously thrown up by his own groping and sensing fingertips, fingers fascinatedly holding pencil or brush. It is for this that the dark passioned drawings and self-portraits are truer witnesses of Tagore’s (and our) inner self than any art merely plodding or correct.’ (Keshav Malik, ‘Tagore’s Work Expressive of Chuckling Energy’, The Times of India, 7 January, 1982, reprinted in Keshav Malik, op. cit., p. 14)

*NATIONAL ART TREASURE - NON-EXPORTABLE ITEM (Please refer to the Terms and Conditions of Sale at the back of the catalogue)
Condition: The colours of the original are less saturated than the catalogue illustration. Minor spots of staining visible across the centre of the work, as visible in the catalogue illustration. The right edge of the paper is perforated with minor losses to the lower right corner. These losses are hidden by the mount board and not visible when examined in the frame. Overall good condition.