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

n andalal B ose 3 December 1882 – 16 April 1966 Shiva Watercolour and wash on paper, Mid 1930s Signed in Bengali ‘Nand’ l.l. 10.5 x 8.0 in (26.6 x 20.3 cm) Condition Previously mended small tear c.r. Provenance Acquired by private Kolkata-based gallery (in the early 1990s) from Shiben Bose. Shiben Bose was the son of Nandalal Bose’s uncle (father’s younger brother). ` 800,000 – 1,200,000 US$ 16,000 – 24,000 National Art Treasure Non-Exportable Item 35 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 | Nandalal Bose & the Bengal school 89 88 “We have a very instructive contrast in the two presentations, one illustrated in the frontispiece, giving an enlarged view of the head of Shiva as visualised by Nanda Lal Bose and the other , in a small cut (fig.2), which gives the same subject by an artist of the school of Ravi Varma. The ash-besmeared forehead, the necklace of snake and the matted locks are the common iconological properties of the two versions of the same subject, which are actually more divergent in their aesthetic qualities than the two poles. In Bose’s supremely introspective image of Shiva, all the essence and spirituality of the theme have been incarnated in all its profundity and exalted nobility of expression. In the other portrait (fig.2), the artist has given us a bald, barren and insipid figure which in its grossly physical outlook, positively bars the entrance to the world of mystery and imagination which has been emptied, as it were, of all its spiritual contents by an almost mocking parody of the conception of the story. In the latter case it is the portrait of a man trying in vain to masquerade as Shiva, aggressively flourishing his stage properties - the snake and the tufted hair - the presence of which we almost miss in the restrained dignity and the subjective presentation of Bose’s creation. The depth of his meditative abstraction seems impossible to be fathomed by human thought and contrasts significantly with the empty shallowness of the other picture. He has indeed, given us a vivid and intimate interpretation in the rich spirit of the best traditions of the theme, fit to take its place with the old masterpieces of Shaivite Art. Yet he is speaking not in the borrowed language of the Indian “antique” but is using a form of expression which he has assimilated and learnt to handle as his own - a language no doubt having a long ancestry and endowed by reason of its very long usage - with a rich power of a specially expressive value for mythic subjects. [Gangoly, Ordhendra C. [Ed.] [1921] Delhi: [Essay.JOU] Rupam: An illustrated Quarterly Journal of Oriental Art (Chiefly Indian) No.5 January 1921; pp.5-6.] Rupam Journal No.5 Jan. 1921 Frontiepiece Rupam Journal No.5 Jan. 1921 Fig.2