Lot Essay
In 1915, Gaganendranath Tagore traveled to Darjeeling to summer in the mountains for the first time, rather than his usual trip to the seaside in Puri. As R. Siva Kumar notes, this visit marked the beginning of the artist's "long association with the mountains. Following this he travelled to the Himalayan foothills - to Darjeeling, Kurseong, Mussoorie - several times and the Himalayas became a recurring motif in his paintings."
In this painting of the snow-capped Himalayas, Tagore "is not a traveller or tourist viewing an exotic or beautiful corner of nature but a thoughtful, withdrawn and contemplative viewer face to face with nature's vastness [...] With no narration or allegory and no purpose there is only a sublime presence of nature in these paintings, here reason is indistinct from feeling and experience, and beauty is allied with mystery. Nature is taken into account but it is also transcended and imagination is allowed to prevail." (R. Siva Kumar, Paintings of Gaganendranath Tagore, Kolkata, 2015, pp. 249, 252)
In this painting of the snow-capped Himalayas, Tagore "is not a traveller or tourist viewing an exotic or beautiful corner of nature but a thoughtful, withdrawn and contemplative viewer face to face with nature's vastness [...] With no narration or allegory and no purpose there is only a sublime presence of nature in these paintings, here reason is indistinct from feeling and experience, and beauty is allied with mystery. Nature is taken into account but it is also transcended and imagination is allowed to prevail." (R. Siva Kumar, Paintings of Gaganendranath Tagore, Kolkata, 2015, pp. 249, 252)