Osian's Auction Catalogue India The Passionate Detachment | February 2001

EXPERIMENTS & EXPRESSIONISM 135 102 GAGANENDRANATH TAGORE (1867 — 1938) National Art Treasure a. Gramophone Series Initials in English, c.r. Pen & Ink, c.1916 22.5 x 20 cm. (8.9 x 7.9”) b. Gramophone Series Initials in English, l.r. Pen & Ink, c.1916 22.9 x 31.5 cm. (9.0 x 12.4”) Rs. 300,000 – 375,000 Non-Exportable Item (Set of 2) “ Sir J.C. Bose has said that Gaganendranath’s cartoons are ‘not the soured delineations of a cynic but scenes which must have wrung the artist’s soul with sorrow.’ This view is borne out from the serious, even fanatical, revolt of Gaganendranath against the superficial impulses of Europe, which were gripping Indian life and destroying even the better habits of the Indian people. To an extent this revolt was tinged by the rising nationalism of the time… There is not deception and very little cleverness employed in these pictures. In fact the measurer of the universe is here not a mature worldly man, but the innocent child with the same spontaneous and vivid realization of the awkard hypocrises of society that a child often displays in his honest horror of the incongruities and barbarisms of adult people.” (Mulk Raj Anand, Rooplekha XXXVIII 1969 . p134). a b