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

92 THE PASSIONATE DETACHMENT Seeds of Modernism The naturalism of the western and colonial narrative, as best represented by Ravi Varma, Pestonji Bomanji & J.P.Gangooly, and the oriental and romantic idealism of the Bengal School, as best represented by Abanindranath Tagore, Nandalal Bose & Kshitindranath Majumdar, were the two parallel and seemingly contradictory forces which inter-related to define the late 19th/ early 20th century Indian artistic context. In building upon this context, either as reaction or assimilation, Indian artistic modernism emerged with a greater expression of one’s individuality with its need to experiment and play, along with sensing a wider social responsibility.