Osian's Auction Catalogue Creative India Series 1 Bengal | December 2011

Devi Series Watercolour on paper, 1921-25 Initialled in English ‘G.T.’ l.r. 10.2 x 6.8 in (25.7 x 17.4 cm) Provenance Acquired by a Kolkata-based gallery from the Family Collection of Abhijit Dey, whose grandfather was the Chief Justice of Kolkata and a friend of Rabindranath Tagore, during whose lifetime the core of the collection was built. ` 800,000 – 1,200,000 US$ 16,000 – 24,000 National Art Treasure Non-Exportable Item 33 1780 1800 1820 1840 1860 1880 1900 1910 1920 1925 1930 1935 1940 1945 1950 1955 1960 1965 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 2000 Creative India BENGaL | Gaganendranath Tagore 75 74 “It was quite a different story with Gaganendranath (compared to Abanindranath). Not only did he use watercolour in the frank European manner, he brought in light and shade, chiaroscuro. What was more, his objects and figures cast their own shadows on the picture itself, something quite novel in Indian painting. He did not go in for chiaroscuro in the Indian manner such as we find in...Mughal miniatures: for even in them darkness around the light does not make a pattern like petals around the centre of a flower; on the other hand the light diffuses itself and reaches out beyond the frame in all directions... His use of brush and paint, too, was European; so, too, and that quite unreservedly, was his analysis of space and the use of it. The way he mathematically divided up his ground according to the pattern of his subject and placed his objects in each compartment, served to bring about a geometric order, cohesion, a taut and nervous tension peculiar to European drawing, which is worlds apart from what one gets from Western Indian illuminated manuscripts or Indian miniatures. But since his drawing was founded on geometry, it displayed qualities of construction all its own. And it is precisely because his drawing had this virtue, that his figures held together firm, united in a certain tension created by the geometric pattern itself, even if the figures severally did not always stand on their own.” [Asok Mitra, rpt. in Anand, Mulk Raj [Ed.] [1962]. The Modern Movement of Art in India: A Symposium (Including Abanindranath and his Tradition). New Delhi: [Essay.JOU] Lalit Kala Contemporary No.1 (LKA); p.10] Illustrative reference Parimoo, Ratan [1973]. The Paintings of the Three Tagores: Abanindranath, Gaganendranath & Rabindranath - Chronology and Comparative Study. Baroda: Maharaja Sayajirao, University of Baroda; Figs.238, 239 & 242 [Devi Series, Between 1925-29] g aganendranaTH T agore 18 September 1867 – 14 February 1938 from An important collection