The Bengal School and Cultural Nationalism

2.1 Core concepts

NCERT opens with a sweeping historical contrast. Prior to British rule, Indian art existed in three principal forms — temple statues, miniature paintings illustrating manuscripts, and decoration on village mud-house walls. With the consolidation of colonial rule from the eighteenth century, English officers began to commission local artists to document Indian people, flora, fauna and locales. Local artists who had been working in the erstwhile courts of Murshidabad, Lucknow and Delhi migrated to colonial cities; they adapted their traditional miniature technique to the close observation that was a striking feature of European art, and produced what came to be known as the Company School of Painting. Albums of such Company paintings were also in demand in Britain, where they served as exotic documentary records (NCERT §Company Painting, p. 85).

The Company style declined in the mid-nineteenth century with the arrival of photography, which displaced the documentary function painting had performed. What flourished instead in the British-established Art Schools was the academic style of oil painting — a European technique applied to Indian subject matter (NCERT §Raja Ravi Varma, p. 86). The single most successful Indian exponent of this academic style was Raja Ravi Varma of the Travancore Court, Kerala — a self-taught artist who imitated the European paintings popular in Indian palaces, mastered academic realism, and depicted scenes from the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. Many of his paintings were reproduced as oleographs and calendar images, which carried his iconography into millions of Indian homes and made him the first modern Indian artist with a mass audience.

With the rise of nationalism by the end of the nineteenth century, Ravi Varma's academic style came to be looked down upon as "foreign and too western" to depict Indian myths and history with authenticity. Out of this nationalist climate emerged the Bengal School of Art in the first decade of the twentieth century. The Bengal School was an art movement that originated in Calcutta — the centre of British power — and was spearheaded by Abanindranath Tagore (1871–1951) and supported by E. B. Havell (1861–1934), the principal of the Calcutta School of Art. The movement was politically associated with the Swadeshi movement, and culturally drew its visual language from Mughal and Pahari miniature painting rather than from the Company School or the academic European style (NCERT §The Bengal School, p. 86).

Both Abanindranath and Havell were critical of colonial Art Schools and the imposition of European taste. The year 1896 is identified by NCERT as crucial in Indian visual-arts history: Havell and Abanindranath redesigned the curriculum of the Government Art School, Calcutta (now the Government College of Art and Craft, Kolkata) to include Indian technique and themes. Sister schools in Lahore, Bombay and Madras at the same time focused on crafts. Abanindranath was the main artist and creator of the journal of the Indian Society of Oriental Art, and the first major supporter of Swadeshi values in Indian art; his painting Journey's End (1913) shows Mughal–Pahari influence in its delicate palette and wash technique (NCERT §Abanindranath Tagore and E. B. Havell, p. 87).

His followers include Kshitindranath Majumdar — painter of Rasa-Lila — and M. R. Chughtai (Abdul Rehman Chughtai) — painter of Radhika. Both developed personal idioms within the wash-technique tradition. Nandalal Bose, a student of Abanindranath, was invited by Rabindranath Tagore to head the painting department at Kala Bhavana — India's first national art school — at Shantiniketan, Visva-Bharati University. Bose drew systematically on local Bengali folk-art forms in his teaching and practice. In 1937 Gandhi invited Bose to paint panels for the Haripura Congress session — the famous Haripura Posters — depicting ordinary rural folk such as a musician, a farmer and a woman churning milk in sketchy, colourful figures that placed common people at the centre of nation-building (NCERT §Shantiniketan — Early modernism, pp. 87–88).

K. Venkatappa in South India carried forward the Kala Bhavana legacy in the Madras region. Jamini Roy went one step further: he rejected colonial Art School training entirely to adopt the flat, colourful folk-painting style of Bengal's villages, painting women, children and rural life with the bold outlines and primary colours of the Bankura pat tradition. Despite this rising nationalist art, the British Raj awarded the mural decoration of Lutyens's new Delhi buildings to students of the Bombay School — trained in realism under Principal Gladstone Solomon — while Bengal School artists were allowed only to decorate the Indian House in London. NCERT highlights this divide as evidence of the official colonial preference for European realism over Indian-modernist work (NCERT §Shantiniketan, p. 88).

The political background sharpens after the Partition of Bengal in 1905, when the Swadeshi movement peaked. Ananda Coomaraswamy wrote influential essays on Swadeshi in art and joined hands with the Japanese nationalist Kakuzo Okakura, who came to Calcutta with the idea of pan-Asianism — the proposition that India should ally with other eastern nations against western imperialism. Two Japanese artists accompanied Okakura to Shantiniketan to teach the wash technique as an alternative to western oil painting (NCERT §Pan-Asianism and Modernism, p. 89). The year 1922 is then identified by NCERT as a remarkable year in Indian art history: an exhibition of works by Paul Klee, Kandinsky and other artists of the Bauhaus School in Germany travelled to Calcutta. This was the first direct encounter of Indian artists with modern abstract art — squares, circles, lines and patches of colour rather than figurative representation.

Gaganendranath Tagore, Abanindranath's brother, was the artist whose paintings show the clearest influence of modern western Cubist style: building interiors broken into geometric planes, sharp angled lighting, and prismatic colour effects. He also drew sharp caricatures of rich Bengalis blindly following European living, providing the satirical edge of the early Bengal modernist moment (NCERT §Pan-Asianism, p. 89).

NCERT then notes that the divide between "anglicists" and "orientalists" was not strictly based on race. The Bengali intellectual Benoy Sarkar sided with the anglicists in his article "The Futurism of Young Asia," seeing the Bengal School as regressive; the Englishman E. B. Havell, by contrast, favoured a return to native art. This crossing of expected camps is important for understanding modernism in India. Amrita Sher-Gil exemplifies the meeting of pan-Asianist and modernist points of view, using a Bauhaus-inflected visual language to depict distinctively Indian rural and domestic scenes (NCERT §Different Concepts of Modernism, pp. 89–90).

Modern Indian art, NCERT concludes, emerged out of the conflict between colonialism — which had introduced art schools, galleries, magazines and societies — and nationalism, oscillating throughout the early twentieth century between internationalism (the appeal of Western and pan-Asian ideas) and indigenous-ness (the recovery of India's own artistic legacy).

Seven detailed picture studies round out the topic. Tiller of the Soil (Nandalal Bose, 1938) is one of more than four hundred Haripura panels: thick tempera in a bold cursory style reminiscent of patuas (Bengali scroll painters), with Ajanta-inspired formal design, placing common people at the centre of nation building (NCERT p. 91). Rasa-Lila (Kshitindranath Majumdar, 1891–1975) is a watercolour in wash technique, showing Krishna dancing with Radha and the sakhis, drawn from the Bhagavata Purana and Gita Govinda; humans and the divine are shown in the same proportion (NCERT p. 92). Radhika (Abdul Rehman Chughtai, 1899–1975) is in wash and tempera, influenced by Abanindranath, Gaganendranath and Nandalal Bose; the calligraphic line is typical of Mughal manuscripts and old Persian paintings. Chughtai is described in NCERT as a descendant of Ustad Ahmed, the chief architect of Shah Jahan's Jama Masjid, Red Fort and Taj Mahal (NCERT p. 93). City in the Night (Gaganendranath Tagore, 1922) is a watercolour using Cubism's syntax to depict imaginary cities like Dwarka and Swarnapuri, with diamond-shaped planes and artificial theatrical lighting echoing Rabindranath's plays staged at home (NCERT p. 94). Rama Vanquishing the Pride of the Ocean (Raja Ravi Varma) is a Puranic theme in oil — the scene from the Valmiki Ramayana where Rama shoots a fiery arrow into the ocean when Varuna does not respond; Ravi Varma was one of the first Indian painters to master both oil and lithographic reproduction (NCERT p. 95). Woman with Child (Jamini Roy, 1887–1972, gouache 1940) demonstrates Roy's "folk renaissance": basic seven colours from organic materials (rock-dust, tamarind seeds, mercury, alluvial mud, indigo, common chalk), lamp-black for outlines, and a celebration of village community as resistance to colonial rule (NCERT p. 96). Journey's End (Abanindranath Tagore, 1913, watercolour) shows a collapsed camel against a red dusk background, symbolising the end of a journey or of life; the wash technique yields a soft misty impressionistic landscape. Abanindranath also painted a series of 45 paintings based on The Arabian Nights (NCERT p. 97).

2.2 Definitions to memorise

2.3 Diagrams / processes to remember

Plates to recognise: Group of Courtesans by Ghulam Ali Khan (Company Painting, 1800–1825, San Diego Museum, p. 85); Krishna as envoy by Raja Ravi Varma (1906, NGMA, p. 86); Dhaki by Nandalal Bose (Haripura Posters, 1937, NGMA, p. 88); Rama's marriage by K. Venkatappa (1914, p. 88); Camels by Amrita Sher-Gil (1941, NGMA, p. 90); Tiller of the Soil (Nandalal Bose, 1938, p. 91) — farmer ploughing under an arch, Ajanta-inspired; Rasa-Lila (Majumdar, p. 92) — wash painting of Krishna with gopis; Radhika (Chughtai, p. 93); City in the Night (Gaganendranath, 1922, p. 94) — Cubist geometric urban scene; Rama Vanquishing the Pride of the Ocean (Ravi Varma, p. 95); Woman with Child (Jamini Roy, 1940, p. 96); Journey's End (Abanindranath, 1913, p. 97).

The chronological backbone, easily memorised: 1750s–1850s Company School → mid-19th c. academic style + Ravi Varma → 1896 curriculum reform by Havell + Abanindranath → 1905 Partition of Bengal + Swadeshi peak → 1907 founding of Indian Society of Oriental Art (Abanindranath) → 1922 Bauhaus exhibition Calcutta → 1937 Haripura Posters → 1940s Amrita Sher-Gil and Jamini Roy folk renaissance.

2.4 Common confusions / NTA trap points

• Raja Ravi Varma was from the Travancore Court (Kerala), self-taught, used oil paint — NOT a Bengal School artist; his style was rejected by nationalists as "foreign."
• The Bengal School emerged in the FIRST DECADE OF THE 20TH CENTURY, not in the 19th; the curriculum reform with Havell was in 1896.
• Kala Bhavana is at Shantiniketan (Visva-Bharati), founded by Rabindranath; headed by Nandalal Bose. The Government College of Art and Craft is in Kolkata — do not confuse the two.
• The wash technique was taught at Shantiniketan by TWO JAPANESE ARTISTS who came with Kakuzo Okakura — not by European/Bauhaus artists.
• The 1922 Calcutta exhibition featured BAUHAUS artists Paul Klee and Kandinsky — they had rejected academic realism, which is why they appealed to Swadeshi artists.
• Gaganendranath Tagore (Abanindranath's BROTHER) used Cubism; Abanindranath himself used the wash technique drawing on Mughal-Pahari miniatures. Do not swap.
• Abdul Rehman Chughtai painted Radhika; Kshitindranath Majumdar painted Rasa-Lila. Both were Abanindranath's followers.
• LUTYENS'S DELHI murals went to BOMBAY SCHOOL students (under Gladstone Solomon); the INDIAN HOUSE IN LONDON was decorated by BENGAL SCHOOL artists.
• Jamini Roy is the "father of folk renaissance" and learnt from PAT paintings of BANKURA.
• Benoy Sarkar (Bengali intellectual) sided with the ANGLICISTS — not the orientalists.
• Havell (English) sided with the ORIENTALISTS — not the anglicists.
• The Haripura Posters were painted in 1937 — by Nandalal Bose — at Gandhi's invitation.

2.5 Key artworks / artists