Osian's Auction Catalogue The Osianama Series |February 2013

50 19 Gaganendranath Tagore 18 September 1867 – 14 February 1938 Untitled Watercolour and wash on paper, Early 1920s Initialled in English ‘G.T.’ l.l. 9.6 x 8.1 in (24.5 x 20.5 cm) Provenance The Family Collection of Soma Chatterji, d/o Manindra Tagore (adopted s/o Samarendranath Tagore - the second of three Tagore brothers, Abanindranath was the eldest and Gaganendranath the youngest). This painting was gifted to the family by Suren Dey, a very close friend of the Tagores ` 600,000 – 1,200,000 US$ 10,910 – 21,820 GBP 7,500 – 15,000 National Art Treasure Non-Exportable Item detail “Gaganendranath’s cubistic pictures did not satisfy the European defiition of cubism despite superficial association. But this association cannot be entirely an error of the eye, for Gaganendranath happened to be undoubtedly the most skilful and perhaps successful among Indian artists in learning how to analyse pictorial space in the European manner. And it is precisely this competence which gave him the temper and eye of a contemporary painter... The way he mathematically divided up his ground according to the pttern of his subject and placed his objects in each copmpartment, 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 West 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 Gaganendranath Tagore. Calcutta: The Journal of the Indian School of Oriental Art (published in Observance of The Birth Centenary of Gaganendranath Tagore), 1972; p.48 & 52.