Important Notice

“A picture is what it is: Man creates it. And whatever man creates reflects his character, daily life, his innermost thoughts, indeed everything.” — JAMINI ROY

Jamini Roy’s sincere desire for self-expression guided his artistic career and complacent experiments, instilled with passion that never waned. He negotiated with his rigorous academic training and interest in form and design to achieve a pictorial language strengthened by... “A picture is what it is: Man creates it. And whatever man creates reflects his character, daily life, his innermost thoughts, indeed everything.” — JAMINI ROY

Jamini Roy’s sincere desire for self-expression guided his artistic career and complacent experiments, instilled with passion that never waned. He negotiated with his rigorous academic training and interest in form and design to achieve a pictorial language strengthened by characteristically strong swept lines and bold colours. His contribution to Indian art is valued for a modernist perception of folk art that championed simple themes and essential form to make it accessible for a large audience.

Roy enrolled at the Government School of Art in Calcutta in 1906. At a time when Abanindranath Tagore was the head of the Indian art department, Roy chose the unpopular academic section to practise at. Soon after, Roy established himself as a famed and able painter of portraits in oil. While commissions formed the backbone of his financial independence, it brought him little satisfaction in terms of exercising his creative faculty. It is here that his conscious efforts to invent a reasonable alternative to Western academism was of critical importance.

Roy turned towards learning and unlearning from various styles and techniques to include references from European painting, Christian imagery of Byzantine murals, Tibetan and Chinese paintings as well as indigenous art traditions of Bengal. He admitted that “painting like Europeans is not possible for me-I cannot paint like the Chinese, Persians or Mongols, for all this is not possible since I am not in that atmosphere. Therefore I have to search for my way out of my own quest. My aim is to have a different style.” (Interview with Bishnu Dey as quoted in Anjan Sen, Painter Jamini Roy, Poiein Kai Prattein, online)

While Roy’s exercises in European academic styles and borrowing of Indian folk elements is widely discussed, his examination of Asian art is little known. The various phases of learning include rare paintings such as the present lot, depicting a seated Buddha on the lotus throne. The symmetrical compositions, iconographic elements and style appear to be inspired from a thangka, a traditional Tibetan Buddhist painting usually used for meditation and monastic instruction. In a documentary titled The Art of Jamini Roy by the artist’s grandson, Debabrata Roy, we see Jamini Roy show a Tibetan thangka that his grandfather painted and discuss his grandfather’s curiosity to explore different art forms, an interest that Roy too seems to have inherited.

The present lot thus makes for an exceptionally rare and interesting example within Roy’s oeuvre. It is a testament to his earnest explorations that led the way to a style where “Far Eastern motives and technique were resorted to and obscured with dim tones, the indecision between the unreal and the impossible. Then, of single purpose and without sentiment, Jamini Roy cut through the confusion of contemporary thought.” (Stella Kramrisch, Foreword, The Art of Jamini Roy, Calcutta: Jamini Roy Birth Centenary Celebration Committee, 1987, p. 22) Additionally, he also experimented with media such as tempera made from local pigments, binder, and water. He never abandoned a style completely, learning and amalgamating elements; his aim to create an art of collective identity dictated his larger subject drawn from folktales, mythology, and Santhal men and women at work as seen in the present lots 6 - 9.

FROM THE COLLECTION OF TARA ALI BAIG

Tara Ali Baig (1916-1989) was a social reformer, historian, TV and radio host, and writer. Half American and half Bengali, she was born in Mussourie, educated in Dhaka and Switzerland, and lived in Manila, Jakarta and Tehran with her diplomat husband. Curious, adventurous and ahead of her time, Baig had a ringside seat to several epochal moments in newly independent India’s history through her friendships with Jawaharlal Nehru, Sarojini Naidu and J R D Tata, among others, which she documented in her book, Portraits of an Era. A remarkable storyteller, a devoted mother and grandmother, Baig’s greatest passion and most significant contributions were in the field of child welfare, as founder of SOS Children’s Villages in India, President of the International Union for Child Welfare, and the author of two wonderful children’s books.

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