Legacy of one of India’s most distinguished poet-painters

Legendary artist Rabindranath Tagore began painting relatively late in his career when he was in his sixties. Nevertheless he produced thousands of works and was the first Indian artist to exhibit his works across Europe, Russia and the United States in 1930.

His painting style was very individual, characterized by simple bold forms and a rhythmic quality, and later served to inspire many modern Indian artists. Although he was untrained as an artist and sometimes referred to his paintings as foundlings, painting also made Rabindranath more observant and sensitive to the visible world. More than ever before, him saw it 'as a vast procession of forms'.

This new engagement with the visible world found a definite expression in his landscapes, which in turn also linked up with one of his older passions. As a child confined to a large home and left to himself, he spent a lot of his time observing nature through the windows. The world outside then gave him a sense of companionship and freedom, and later when he roamed the vast rural landscapes of Bengal he felt he was in contact with the infinite.

It was also his lifelong practice to be up before sunrise and watch the world wrapped in the morning twilight. In these landscape paintings done at the evening of his life he more often shows nature bathed in the evening light; with radiant skies and forms coagulating into ominous silhouettes they invoke mystery and foreboding silence.

The works included in a major exhibition at the V&A Museum are arranged around four themes of his oeuvre. His first paintings are highly imaginative works, usually focusing on animals or imaginary creatures, which are imbued with vitality and humor. Human figures are depicted either as individuals with expressive gestures or in groups in theatrical settings.

In portraits produced during the 1930s, he renders the human face in a way reminiscent of a mask or persona. Landscape subjects represent the smallest output among Tagore’s works, and this display will include four of the finest of this group.

(Information courtesy: V&A Museum)