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拍品专文
Gaganendranath Tagore, a skilled actor and stage and costume designer, only began to paint in 1905 at the age of thirty-eight, much like his polymath uncle Rabindranath Tagore. In fact, it was Gaganendranath who illustrated his uncle’s autobiographical text, Jeevansmriti, around 1912. A few years before that, he helped establish the Indian Society of Oriental Art, Calcutta, with his brother Abanindranath Tagore, where several exhibitions of his work would be held. Apart from his early paintings and illustrations, the artist is known for his refined watercolor landscapes, unique cubist constructions, experiments with black and white photography, and portfolios of caricatures like Birupa Bajra and Adbhut Lok, which offered a satirical take on Bengali society of the time and the impact of colonization on India.
The present lot, titled The Rain in Calcutta, is one of the most significant works by the artist to come to auction in recent years. Beautifully rendered with black ink and washes in a soft monochromatic palette on textured paper, it is a perfect example of the varied brushwork and wash techniques that Tagore had perfected by the 1920s. Training with the watercolorist Harinarayan Bandhopadhyay, and then under the tutelage of Japanese artists Kakuzo Okakura and Yokoyama Taikan, Tagore was able to hone a unique visual vocabulary through his own experimental creative process, which firmly established his place among the pioneers of modernism in Indian art.
In the foreground, a sea of hunched male figures, most covered under a patchy canopy of black umbrellas, seems to be negotiating the heaving metropolis during a downpour. Reminiscent of other urban landscapes by Tagore including Calcutta Rooftops, A Rainy Day and English Teacher Arriving in Rain, in the collections of Kala Bhavana at Santiniketan and the Rabindra Bharti Society, this relatively large work showcases the artist’s accomplished brushwork, both in its fine lines and translucent washes, as well as his mastery of light, movement and perspective. Vertical layers of wash imitating the heavy monsoon rains almost completely obscure the buildings on the left of the picture from view. However, the domed edifice on the right with its columned gallery is sharply defined, and, like a beacon in the storm, seems to be the destination towards which the crowd is progressing. Possibly modeled after the General Post Office in Dalhousie Square, this imposing building is perhaps symbolic of the city of Calcutta, the imperial capital of British India until 1912 and an intellectual mecca where scholars and innovators like Tagore always felt welcome.
In 1925, Gaganendranath Tagore gifted The Rain in Calcutta to Dr. Michael Ernest Sadler (1861-1943), a devoted pedagogue, collector of modern art and friend and correspondent of Rabindranath Tagore. Sadler and the Rabindranath shared a mutual admiration as well as a passion for educational reform, and their paths crossed several times in India and abroad from the mid-1910s onward. It is likely that Sadler also met other members of the Tagore family during his time in Calcutta, including Gaganendranath. In 1917, during Sadler’s tenure as Vice Chancellor of the University of Leeds, he was invited by Austen Chamberlain, Secretary of State for India, to chair a commission of inquiry into the affairs of Calcutta University. The comprehensive Sadler Commission Report, which was published across five volumes two years later, transformed the education system in the country and spurred the establishment of several universities, including Tagore’s Visvabharati at Santiniketan in 1921. Later, as Principal of University College at Oxford and a supporter of Dartington Hall, Sadler continued to collaborate with Tagore, and in 1934 he penned an introduction for H. Chaturvedi’s book, A Survey of Dr Rabindranath Tagore’s Educational Experiments at Shantinekatan.
Gaganendranath Tagore’s artistic career ended prematurely in 1930 when the artist suffered a cerebral stroke that left him paralyzed for the rest of his life. Speaking about the artist’s work following his death in 1938, his uncle Rabindranath noted, “What profoundly attracted me was the uniqueness of his creation, a lively curiosity in his constant experiments, and some mysterious depth in their imaginative value. Closely surrounded by the atmosphere of a new art movement he sought out his own untrodden path of adventure, attempted marvellous experiments in colouring and made fantastic trials in the magic of light and shade” (R. Tagore, Journal of the Indian Society of Oriental Art, Vol. 6, Calcutta, 1938).
The present lot, titled The Rain in Calcutta, is one of the most significant works by the artist to come to auction in recent years. Beautifully rendered with black ink and washes in a soft monochromatic palette on textured paper, it is a perfect example of the varied brushwork and wash techniques that Tagore had perfected by the 1920s. Training with the watercolorist Harinarayan Bandhopadhyay, and then under the tutelage of Japanese artists Kakuzo Okakura and Yokoyama Taikan, Tagore was able to hone a unique visual vocabulary through his own experimental creative process, which firmly established his place among the pioneers of modernism in Indian art.
In the foreground, a sea of hunched male figures, most covered under a patchy canopy of black umbrellas, seems to be negotiating the heaving metropolis during a downpour. Reminiscent of other urban landscapes by Tagore including Calcutta Rooftops, A Rainy Day and English Teacher Arriving in Rain, in the collections of Kala Bhavana at Santiniketan and the Rabindra Bharti Society, this relatively large work showcases the artist’s accomplished brushwork, both in its fine lines and translucent washes, as well as his mastery of light, movement and perspective. Vertical layers of wash imitating the heavy monsoon rains almost completely obscure the buildings on the left of the picture from view. However, the domed edifice on the right with its columned gallery is sharply defined, and, like a beacon in the storm, seems to be the destination towards which the crowd is progressing. Possibly modeled after the General Post Office in Dalhousie Square, this imposing building is perhaps symbolic of the city of Calcutta, the imperial capital of British India until 1912 and an intellectual mecca where scholars and innovators like Tagore always felt welcome.
In 1925, Gaganendranath Tagore gifted The Rain in Calcutta to Dr. Michael Ernest Sadler (1861-1943), a devoted pedagogue, collector of modern art and friend and correspondent of Rabindranath Tagore. Sadler and the Rabindranath shared a mutual admiration as well as a passion for educational reform, and their paths crossed several times in India and abroad from the mid-1910s onward. It is likely that Sadler also met other members of the Tagore family during his time in Calcutta, including Gaganendranath. In 1917, during Sadler’s tenure as Vice Chancellor of the University of Leeds, he was invited by Austen Chamberlain, Secretary of State for India, to chair a commission of inquiry into the affairs of Calcutta University. The comprehensive Sadler Commission Report, which was published across five volumes two years later, transformed the education system in the country and spurred the establishment of several universities, including Tagore’s Visvabharati at Santiniketan in 1921. Later, as Principal of University College at Oxford and a supporter of Dartington Hall, Sadler continued to collaborate with Tagore, and in 1934 he penned an introduction for H. Chaturvedi’s book, A Survey of Dr Rabindranath Tagore’s Educational Experiments at Shantinekatan.
Gaganendranath Tagore’s artistic career ended prematurely in 1930 when the artist suffered a cerebral stroke that left him paralyzed for the rest of his life. Speaking about the artist’s work following his death in 1938, his uncle Rabindranath noted, “What profoundly attracted me was the uniqueness of his creation, a lively curiosity in his constant experiments, and some mysterious depth in their imaginative value. Closely surrounded by the atmosphere of a new art movement he sought out his own untrodden path of adventure, attempted marvellous experiments in colouring and made fantastic trials in the magic of light and shade” (R. Tagore, Journal of the Indian Society of Oriental Art, Vol. 6, Calcutta, 1938).