Osian's Auction Catalogue 101 Rare Artworks | June 2010

45 101 Rare Artworks from the History of Indian Modern & Contemporary Art 7 Abanindranath Tagore (1871 – 1951) National Art Treasure Girl seated on rocks Watercolor and wash on paper (pasted on card), Early 1910s Signed in Devanagari ‘Abanindra’ l.l. 9.3 x 6.8 in (23.6 x 17.3 cm) Provenance The Osian’s Collection INR 1,800,000 – 2,700,000 USD 37,500 – 56,250 Non-Exportable Item Exhibition Reference Exhibited at the Bengal School of Art, Calcutta, 1924 “The technique of Abanindranath got its ingredients from Mughal, JapaneseandEuropeantraditions. Amongst these the pre-eminent quality of the art traditions of Europe and of modern Japan is naturalistic; while from the standpoint of expression, the style of the Mughal court-artists may be called realistic. Today one need not hesitate to admit that the technique of Abanindranath is of the realistic type. But this realism of his paintings is neither British academic type, nor of the Japanese, nor even of the Mughal type. It is a realism absolutely his own; to be more precise, one might say that he presented the decorative form of the Mughal school in all its meticulous delicacy in a light more real, and the technique he adopted for this purpose did not belong to any specific tradition. It was wholly a creation of his own in order to express his own idea. Thus Abanindranath is not the founder of any tradition in painting; he is the creator of a new style.” – B.B.Mukherji, quoted in Abanindranath Tagor e (ISOA, 1961): 72. “Compositions soaked in water, with blotted images and evanescent blends of blues, greens and greys capture the full feel of East Bengal’s riverine, rain-washed environs; at the same time the all-pervasive sense of water, rain and mist removes from these landscapes the specifities of time and place.” – Tapati Guha Thakurta, “Visualizing the Nation”, in Journal of Art & Ideas No. 27-28 (March 1995): 28. “Abanindranath’s own personal technique had nothing to do with those of traditional Indian painting. Indeed, the wash technique, though inspired by certain Japanese paintings he saw, was essentially a personal invention, a work process developed to suit his own sensibility and a wholeness composed of intimate fragments. Initially his pictures, with their small format and intimate scale adopted from traditional miniatures, were conceived as selectively focused images with considerable scenic unity. They present a figure, or episodic moment as a soft-focused cameo of experience.” – R. Siva Kumar, quoted in Contemporary Indian Art : Other Realities, edited by Yashodhara Dalmia (Marg Publications, 2002). Early 1910s