BY OSWALD COULDREY M.A., (OXON)

I approached the India society’s Exhibition of Modern Indian Art from a particular angle, which would have been that of many readers of Triveni. I was bitterly disappointed; but my disappointment shall be expressed as cheerfully as possible. If the exhibition gave as inadequate a notion of modern Indian art generally as it did of that part of it of which I happen to know something in detail, then modern Indian art generally is in a very flourishing condition indeed.

For the show as a whole was impressive; much more so than any of the same subject previously seen in London. It was held in the new Burlington Galleries, where some of our best exhibitions are regularly held; was opened by the Duchess of York about a fortnight before Christmas, and remained open until nearly the eve of the festival. The Galleries have two large rooms, two small chambers, and a corridor. The first and smaller of the two large rooms was wholely occupied by the Bombay pictures and sculptures, about a hundred altogether. The corridor was hung with architectural drawings and designs, likewise mostly from Bombay. Most of the other pictures, Nos. 87 to 354, were in the larger of the two main rooms, which is more than twice the size of the other. One side and one end of the room and a little more were covered by pictures described in the catalogue as from ‘Delhi, Punjab and the Central India Provinces,’ and numbering about 150. About 100 pictures from Bengal occupied the rest of the other long side of the room and most of the other end. On what was left of this last, which was the corner about the door, were the Madras pictures, numbering fifteen.

Even these poor fifteen so-called ‘Madras’ pictures were a pitifully scratch lot, and looked as if they had been collected with difficulty to make some sort of a show that might cover the artistic nakedness of our ‘benighted’ Presidency. Six of the fifteen were by Mr. D. P. R. Chowdhury. They were accomplished and remarkably versatile water-colours. They may have been painted in Madras, but since scores like them may be seen at any better-class English provincial show of water-colours, they could hardly be called racy of the soil. Nor could the rather similar ‘Night Scene’ (No. 343) of Mr. K. G. Dastider. Mr. Syed Ahmed’s ‘Fakir’ was one of the two or three pictures in the whole exhibition which I would most willingly have possessed. Near the classical Mogul, it had yet a freedom of its own, and was wonderfully fresh and original both in drawing and colour. But though a little host in itself, or shall we say a Hyderabad contingent, it was contingent after all and accidental, extraneous aid and undeserved. There remain Mr. Desouza’s ‘After the Bath’ and six pictures which from the names appended seem to have been the work of real South Indian painters. Three of these six were lent by the Indore State!

The three genuine South Indian pictures which the exhibition owed to the enterprise and ‘valuable co-operation and support’ (as the Hon. Organizer calls it in the Foreword) of the Madras Regional Committee deserve to be mentioned separately, for their outstanding good fortune if not for their outstanding merit. They were the ‘Flight of Prithviraj’ by M. Venkatarathnam; ‘Devadasi’ by A. Balakrishnan; and ‘Ravens’ by K. Madhava Menon. The first, an individual and vital drawing in line, delicately tinted, I have somewhere seen before, either awake or dreaming. Of the second I have no very clear recollection, except that it had the distinction of being sold. The third was like a Chinese picture and one of the most accomplished and impressive designs in the show. For its beauty and size it was probably also the cheapest (£5). Most of the pictures seemed to be overpriced.

Of the three South Indian pictures lent by the Indore state ‘Chandbibi of Ahmadnagar,’ by K. Venkatappa, might have been a Mogulai miniature of the eighteenth century. Before looking at the catalogue I took one of the others, Mr. A. M. Shastri’s line drawing, ‘Offering to the Sun God,’ to be a work of Adivi Bapirazu; and surely it belongs to the same school. The third Indore loan was Damerla Rama Rao’s ‘Emperor Bimbisara,’ a slight but accomplished study in the manner of Ajanta, or rather of some of Lady Herringham’s pale reflections of it in water-colour.

Two other works of our ill-starred but ever-young Andhra master (more baldly listed in the catalogue as ‘D. Rama Rao, the late,’ and even once as ‘D. R. Rao, the late,’) were exhibited, but among those of the school that made him and not with those (or rather where those should have been) of the school that he made. One was ‘Water Carriers’ (46), obtained I know not whence, for the catalogue was very grudging of acknowledgments. It is a slight work and rather wanting compression, but interesting as an experiment in the use of a subdued and subtle system of lighting in combination with a decisive linear style. The other was the ‘Krishna Lila,’ which I lent myself, and which was well displayed in the middle of the first room. For beauty of drawing and perfection of colour and rhythm, there was probably nothing finer in the show. What a splendid mural design might have been based on it! Strangely, a large ‘Mural Panel’ on the same subject by Y.K. Shukla (No. 72), was hung almost immediately over it, and was more widely noticed in the reviews, I think, than any other picture. It was gayer though not lovelier in rhythm as in colour and mood than Ram’s, but otherwise bore a distinct resemblance to it. Whether this was due simply to accident and the subject, or whether the painter had ever seen Ram’s picture, I do not know. After my first sight of the show I met this young painter at Mr. Gladstone Solomon’s, but as I did not then know that he was the painter of the panel I could not ask him, as I wish I had. He seemed to think Ram as a sort of ancient, having joined the school in ’27, or two years after Ram’s early death. I understood that he is now studying in the Academy schools here, and for the moment inclines to Impressionism.

But why in the name of all the gods of art was nothing shown of the work of the Andhra school, which Rama Rao founded in his native Rajahmundry, and which still holds annual exhibitions there? Why was there nothing of Varada Venkataratnam’s, or Ch. Satyanarayana’s of Coconada, or Y. Subba Rao’s, or of the talented ladies of the Damerla family? And what again of that other group of Adivi Bapirazu and his fellows, who blossomed at Masulipatam ? I have seen photographs enough of the work of all these painters to be sure that twice as much wall as those fifteen so-called Madras pictures occupied could have been easily filled with Andhra work alone, and well up to the standard of the rest of the room. And could not a loan have been obtained of Rama Rao’s own masterpieces from the Damerla House at Rajahmundry? At this distance I can only ask these questions and express a grieved astonishment. I hope the Editor of this magazine will be able to ventilate the matter further, and to pass a vote of censure where it is due. For it appears that Indian art and the South of India, as well as the India Society and the London public, have been very ill-served by somebody.

to notice the rest of the exhibition with as much composure and as little envy as the circumstances admit. The Bombay pictures in the first room made by far the most imposing group at first sight. Apart from skilful arrangement this was largely the result of size efficiently mastered. The painters had learnt to express themselves with assurance on a larger scale than is usual in the other provinces, or has been usual in India for many centuries. The flawless execution of such ambitious works as Mr. R. G. Chimulkar’s ‘Spirit of Art’ (73) and ‘Despair’ (40), or of Mr. J. D. Gondhalekar’s ‘Illusion’ was very remarkable. But I felt more than once that the painter in the pride of his craft had sought size for its own sake, that his design would have been more effective on a smaller scale. Thus Mr. Gondhalekar’s ‘Divided Devotion’ (12) would have been delightful at half the size, but now seemed hardly powerful enough to carry its own weight. But Mr. Shukla’s ‘Mural Panel’ above mentioned (72) looked not at all too big for itself, nor indeed did the mural designs generally, but only Mr. R. N. Parekh’s (78) was comparable with Mr. Shukla’s in mastery of drawing and design.

In this room there were half a dozen pieces of excellent sculpture. The most remarkable were Mr. R. P. Kamat’s ‘Exile,’ rather like an Expulsion from Eden in a modernized Rodinesque style, and Mr. K. C. Roy’s ‘Harmony,’ perhaps a couple of Siddhas, not unlike the other, except that an ‘Indian air,’ not without charm, had been added to it.

Among the Bengali pictures in the next room I fell deeply in love with Mr. S. Ch. Sen’s ‘Morning Flower’ (279). Indeed there was not a picture in the show that I so much desired, but its price (£ 31) was far beyond me. It represented, I suppose, a Sudra woman gathering a wild flower, perhaps for an offering or adornment. Like most of the Bengali work it was quite small, and perhaps the style of it was based on the Mogul, but it had a fresh and sober truth and sweetness of colour that was all its own, and I never saw another picture at all like it. If the English pre-Raphaelite painters had painted small in water-colour as they should have done, and if one of them had with adequate knowledge and sympathy painted an Indian subject, it might have been something like this. Apart from this picture, of the painter of which I know nothing and found perhaps one other work, I could see nothing from Bengal that challenged the supremacy of the group that first made the school famous, Dr. Abanindranath Tagore and Messrs. Nanda Lal Bose and Asit K. Haldar and G. N. Tagore. Two line drawings by Mr. Haldar were especially charming. Dr. Tagore’s ‘Illustrations to the Arabian Nights’ (235-266) were the most vital pictures in the show, full of beauty and variety and artistic enterprise, of wit and poetry and impish fun. Why does not he or another Indian painter illustrate for us the ‘Adventures of the Ten Princes,’ ¹ or the ‘Ocean of the Rivers of Story,’² of which the ‘Arabian Nights’ are only a belated echo?

But if these approved masters still bore away the palm, I still saw in this section several examples of a type of picture that was new to me and that appeared to have great possibilities, although none of the examples shown appeared quite to realise them. The type was larger than was usual on the wall and generally represented a gathering of the folk in a wide landscape setting treated rather crudely and childishly, words of praise nowadays in art-criticism and associated with what is called ‘the innocence of the eye.’ ‘The Bride’s Departure’ by R. N. Chakrabartty (298); ‘Market Place’ by Tarak Nath Basu (306); and ‘Bathing in the Ganges’ by S. K. Mazumdar (298) were the principal examples. I saw a smaller one, without the ruggedness which these affected, on the wall near the Madras pictures, and liked it much better, indeed I found it charming; I think it must have been ‘Immersion of the Goddess Durga’ by Susil Chandra Sen (336), but I only now realise that, if so, it was apparently by the painter of my favourite ‘Morning Flower.’ The biggish, anonymous ‘Storm’ (269), rather like a Japanese print, was very successful and interesting.

So much for the walls assigned to the Bengali school; but indeed a large proportion of the pictures on those labelled ‘Delhi, Lucknow, and Central India Provinces’ appeared from the names attached to be by Bengali painters, and we saw that the same thing happened in the Madras section. I suppose this is because Bengal supplies India with art masters. I saw Mr. Promode Chatterjee’s dignified ‘Asoka’ (154; from Indore) thus abroad. Many of the Lucknow pictures rivaled those on the Bengal wall in liveliness, while preserving an individuality of their own. Moreover they were remarkably cheap, (from £1 to £5, mostly nearer £1), whereas most of the pictures in the show were overpriced. Consequently the Lucknow pictures were almost all sold, and very few others. I tried to buy more than one myself but was always too late. Remarkable were Mr. Sharadendu’s ‘Dhritarashtra’ (186) and indeed his other pictures, none like another; Mr. Bishnudas Haldar’s ‘Offering’ and ‘Shooting Star’ (which was more like a comet); and Mr. Brij Mohan Nath Jiga’s delightfully conservative paintings in lacquer (204 & 206).

On the same wall as some of these, but not from Lucknow, ‘India’s Great Politician’ (R. G. Vijayavargi, 161) had power but was (appropriately?) inscrutable; Roop Krishna’s ‘Mythic Dance’ (159) was a vital design. Near was a picture by Mr. M. A. R. Chughtai which was reproduced in the July-August number of Triveni as a frontispiece (142, ‘Qalandar’) and there were five other works from the same sensitive hand. Hereabouts also were some exquisite pictures in the strictly traditional style by Ganga Baksh, of which one at least fetched £10, as few of the modern pictures did. Among the Baroda pictures in the staircase room were three others no less learned and accomplished, but in a rather less delicate tradition; the painter, Huzuri Ram, if I mistake not.

Another small room was devoted to works without colour, etchings, lino-prints, line and wash drawings. Mr. Mukul Dey’s clever etchings pleased me less than some of his early works that I used to see, but by this time I was perhaps tired of appreciation. In the middle of the back wall of this little room, like an idol in a sanctum, was a wash drawing by the great Rabindranath, at which I gazed with reverence but without understanding. It was called ‘Devatatma Himalaya,’ and indeed in some ways it suggested a ghost, and in others a glacier.