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The Bengal School of Art, commonly referred as Bengal School, was an
art movement An art movement is a tendency or style in art with a specific common philosophy or goal, followed by a group of artists during a specific period of time, (usually a few months, years or decades) or, at least, with the heyday of the movement defin ...
and a style of
Indian painting Indian painting has a very long tradition and history in Indian art, though because of the climatic conditions very few early examples survive.Blurton, 193 The earliest Indian paintings were the rock paintings of prehistoric times, such as the ...
that originated in
Bengal Bengal ( ; bn, বাংলা/বঙ্গ, translit=Bānglā/Bôngô, ) is a geopolitical, cultural and historical region in South Asia, specifically in the eastern part of the Indian subcontinent at the apex of the Bay of Bengal, predo ...
, primarily
Kolkata Kolkata (, or , ; also known as Calcutta , the official name until 2001) is the capital of the Indian state of West Bengal, on the eastern bank of the Hooghly River west of the border with Bangladesh. It is the primary business, comm ...
and
Shantiniketan Santiniketan is a neighbourhood of Bolpur town in the Bolpur subdivision of Birbhum district in West Bengal, India, approximately 152 km north of Kolkata. It was established by Maharshi Devendranath Tagore, and later expanded by his ...
, and flourished throughout the
Indian subcontinent The Indian subcontinent is a physiographical region in Southern Asia. It is situated on the Indian Plate, projecting southwards into the Indian Ocean from the Himalayas. Geopolitically, it includes the countries of Bangladesh, Bhutan, Ind ...
, during the
British Raj The British Raj (; from Hindi ''rāj'': kingdom, realm, state, or empire) was the rule of the British Crown on the Indian subcontinent; * * it is also called Crown rule in India, * * * * or Direct rule in India, * Quote: "Mill, who was him ...
in the early 20th century. Also known as 'Indian style of painting' in its early days, it was associated with
Indian nationalism Indian nationalism is an instance of territorial nationalism, which is inclusive of all of the people of India, despite their diverse ethnic, linguistic and religious backgrounds. Indian nationalism can trace roots to pre-colonial India, ...
(
swadeshi The Swadeshi movement was a self-sufficiency movement that was part of the Indian independence movement and contributed to the development of Indian nationalism. Before the BML Government's decision for the partition of Bengal was made public in ...
) and led by
Abanindranath Tagore Abanindranath Tagore ( Bengali: অবনীন্দ্রনাথ ঠাকুর; 7 August 1871 – 5 December 1951) was the principal artist and creator of the "Indian Society of Oriental Art". He was also the first major exponent of S ...
(1871–1951), but was also being promoted and supported by British arts administrators like E. B. Havell, the principal of the Government College of Art and Craft, Kolkata from 1896; eventually it led to the development of the modern Indian painting.


History

The Bengal school arose as an
avant garde The avant-garde (; In 'advance guard' or ' vanguard', literally 'fore-guard') is a person or work that is experimental, radical, or unorthodox with respect to art, culture, or society.John Picchione, The New Avant-garde in Italy: Theoretical ...
and nationalist movement reacting against the
academic art Academic art, or academicism or academism, is a style of painting and sculpture produced under the influence of European academies of art. Specifically, academic art is the art and artists influenced by the standards of the French Académie ...
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 Ernest Binfield Havell (16 September 1861 – 31 December 1934), who published under the name E.B. Havell, was an influential English arts administrator, art historian and author of numerous books about Indian art and architecture. He was a me ...
attempted to reform the teaching methods at the
Calcutta School of Art The Government College of Art & Craft (GCAC) in Kolkata is one of the oldest Art colleges in India. It was founded on August 16, 1854 at Garanhata, Chitpur, "with the purpose of establishing an institution for teaching the youth of all classe ...
by encouraging students to imitate Mughal miniatures. 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 Abanindranath Tagore ( Bengali: অবনীন্দ্রনাথ ঠাকুর; 7 August 1871 – 5 December 1951) was the principal artist and creator of the "Indian Society of Oriental Art". He was also the first major exponent of S ...
, a nephew of the poet
Rabindranath Tagore Rabindranath Tagore (; bn, রবীন্দ্রনাথ ঠাকুর; 7 May 1861 – 7 August 1941) was a Bengali polymath who worked as a poet, writer, playwright, composer, philosopher, social reformer and painter. He resh ...
. Tagore painted a number of works influenced by
Mughal art Mughal painting is a style of painting on paper confined to miniatures either as book illustrations or as single works to be kept in albums (muraqqa), from the territory of the Mughal Empire in South Asia. It emerged from Persian miniature pai ...
, 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. Through the paintings of 'Bharat Mata', Abanindranath established the pattern of patriotism. Painters and artists of Bengal school were Nandalal Bose, M.A.R Chughtai,
Sunayani Devi Sunayani Devi ( bn, সুনয়নী দেবী; 18 June 1875 – 23 February 1962) was an Bengali painter born into the aristocratic Tagore family in Calcutta, West Bengal. She was a self taught artist, with no academic training in art. ...
(sister of Abanindranath Tagore), Manishi Dey, Mukul Dey, Kalipada Ghoshal, Asit Kumar Haldar, Sudhir Khastgir, Kshitindranath Majumdar, Sughra Rababi, . The Bengal school's influence in India declined with the spread of
modernist Modernism is both a philosophy, philosophical and arts movement that arose from broad transformations in Western world, Western society during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The movement reflected a desire for the creation of new fo ...
ideas in the 1920s. , there has been a surge in interest in the Bengal school of art among scholars and connoisseurs. Bimal Sil' was a contemporary of Abanindernath Tagore. He painted in water colours. His paintings are found in private collections only.


Legacy

Bengal continues to produce some of the best artists of modern India. There is a department in the Government College Of Art & Craft that has been training students the traditional style of tempera and wash painting for almost a century now. These students are carrying the legacy of the Bengal School artists, who, initially, were a group of artists, following Abanindranath's style and sharing his aesthetic vision. Among them, Dhirendranath Brahma is the living legend of the Bengal School of Art. He is a master of calligraphy and has innumerable students who are carrying on the tradition of Bengal School of painting. Among the other renowned artists of this style of painting are Amit Sarkar, Ajoy Ghosh, Sankarlal Aich, Amal Chaklader, Narendra Chandra De Sarkar, Sukti Subhra Pradhan and Ratan Acharya. Some of the best known artists of present-day Bengal are Jogen Chowdhury, Mrinal Kanti Das, Gopal Sanyal, Ganesh Pyne, Manishi Dey,
Shanu Lahiri Shanu Lahiri (23 January 1928 – 1 February 2013) was a painter and art educator who belonged to one of the most prominent and culturally elevated families of Kolkata and a first-generation modernist who emerged post independence. She was one ...
, Ganesh Haloi Jahar Dasgupta, Samir Aich, Bikash Bhattacharjee, Sudip Roy, Ramananda Bandopadhyay and Devajyoti Ray. Sanat Chatterjee was one of the last pioneers of Bengal School of art. He studied under Asit Kumar Haldar for around fifteen years.


R. Siva Kumar's disagreement

R. Siva Kumar, who has been studying the work of the
Santiniketan Santiniketan is a neighbourhood of Bolpur town in the Bolpur subdivision of Birbhum district in West Bengal, India, approximately 152 km north of Kolkata. It was established by Maharshi Devendranath Tagore, and later expanded by his so ...
masters and their approach to art since the early 80s, refutes the practice of subsuming Nandalal Bose,
Rabindranath Tagore Rabindranath Tagore (; bn, রবীন্দ্রনাথ ঠাকুর; 7 May 1861 – 7 August 1941) was a Bengali polymath who worked as a poet, writer, playwright, composer, philosopher, social reformer and painter. He resh ...
, Ram Kinker Baij and Benode Behari Mukherjee under the Bengal School of Art. According to Siva Kumar, 'This happened because early writers were guided by genealogies of apprenticeship rather than their styles, worldviews, and perspectives on art practice'. His ideas on this issue are formulated in the catalogue essay of the exhibition Santiniketan: The Making of a Contextual Modernism.


See also

* Contextual Modernism * Modern Indian painting * Progressive Artists' Group *
Tanjore painting Thanjavur painting is a classical South Indian painting style, which was inaugurated from the town of Thanjavur (anglicized as Tanjore) in Tamil Nadu. The art form draws its immediate resources and inspiration from way back about 1600 AD, a pe ...
*
Rajput painting Rajput painting, also called Rajasthan painting, evolved and flourished in the royal courts of Rajputana in northern India, mainly during the 17th century. Artists trained in the tradition of the Mughal miniature were dispersed from the imperia ...
*
Madhubani painting Mithila painting is a style of painting practiced in the Mithila region of India and Nepal. Artists create these paintings using a variety of mediums, including their own fingers, or twigs, brushes, nib-pens, and matchstick. The paint is crea ...


References


Further reading

* * (see index: p. 148-152) *


External links

{{commons category, Bengal school of art
Anthology of Indian ArtArt Galleries in India
by Mukul Dey

Schools of Indian painting Culture of West Bengal Art movements Modern art