What ifs are in the realm of idle speculation. But it’s tempting to ponder this one: what if Jamini Roy in his mid-30s, with a fairly successful, if unremarkable, career had not swerved onto a completely different, completely unknown path? Well, modern Indian art would have looked very different; Roy’s name, despite his enviable skill, could have been lost in the small print of art history; and the National Gallery of Modern Art, Delhi, would certainly not have hosted, on his 133rd birth anniversary, a virtual tour of its collection, or even have acquired one for display.
India’s early modernism, evolving around the three Tagores — Abanindranath and the Bengal School; Gaganendranath and his experiments with geometric space and deep blacks; and Rabindranath’s Santiniketan with its sensuous empiricism in creativity — was groping for a language that would, at once, be modern, Indian and individual as a viable and vibrant alternative to British academicism. And that took the search primarily to two sources: mainstream pan-Indian, even pan-Asian, largely court-patronized art traditions and contemporary Western isms.
Nobody seemed to remember that, on the margins beyond urban centres, there thrived among tribal and village communities arts and crafts practices that had continued into the colonial era without disruption even though the Company’s intrusive land revenue demands and retributive legal system threw their life and agrarian relations into turmoil.
That is, nobody but Jamini Roy (1887-1972), “....the father of the folk renaissance in India who created,” assesses the art historian, Partha Mitter, “an alternative vision of modern Indian identity.” But the Bankura boy who turned to the persuasive simplification of the folk form of regional crafts — especially toys like the famous Bankura horse — was no sentimental revivalist, for his “primitivism.... displayed structural affinities with the avant-garde in the West...” That, too, had challenged industrial modernity. Roy’s return to roots has thus been analyzed by Mitter as his “weapon of resistance to colonial rule.”
But Roy’s journey from portraits — including commissioned ones — post-Impressionist landscapes and Bengal School affectation to his mature idiom didn’t happen in one giant leap that made a clean break with his past oeuvre. He went through interim dilemmas and experiments: like flirting with the Kalighat manner and reverting, on occasion, to Western styles, even in the 1940s. The NGMA collection, divided broadly according to themes, fortunately, has works from all the phases. It includes numerous breezy scribbles and sketches, brush drawings of endearing economy, the more detailed paintings on the Krishna story and the distilled, meditative geometry of the marvellous Christ series, in which, says KCS Paniker, “...all his past appears to fuse into a meaningful and authentic whole.” There are also some fine, rarely-seen examples of wood carving.
His wry play with form and a limited palette, refreshing folk terms as a robust contemporary style, was unique then and remains exhilarating even now, almost 50 years after his death. Everybody will have his/her own favourites. But Kalia Mardan — with its patachitra flavour — Last Supper (picture), Christ with Cross and Flight to Egypt would probably top every list.
While thanking the NGMA for this treat, one can’t but regret a lack of meticulous curating. Following the patua tradition, Roy produced variations/copies of his own works, without bothering about dates. There was also an overlap of styles through the 1940s. Which is why nobody suggests that the NGMA’s task isn’t troublesome. Still, that doesn’t excuse the slip of listing a Bengal School painting as an oil! If no attempt is made now to categorize works by phase and approximate period, perhaps roping in scholars and forensic experts, later might be too late. Surely, this stalwart and posterity deserve the effort?
