International studio (35.1908)

The New Indian School of Painting

pounds a year, even when they allowed the grant to
accumulate for several years before making a pur-
chase. So the dreary waste of bare walls was partly
covered with “ drawings from the antique ” by
students of the school of art, where the approved
academic methods of European art training were
also in vogue. Not wishing to hurt tender suscepti-
bilities I did not suggest a bonfire, but proposed
that we should start an Indian section of the
gallery, and see what India could produce for the
instruction of art students. The committee, some-
what reluctantly, agreed to experiment with this
very unorthodox programme.
At the same time I abolished the “antique” class
in the school of art, and revised the whole course
of instruction in that institution, making Indian
art the basis of the teaching. The effect of this
revolution was startling. The Bengali is constitu-
tionally conservative, and the Swadeshi, or national
cult was not then so popular with Indians as it is
now. The students left the school in a body,
held mass meetings on the Calcutta maidan, and
presented petitions to Government, while the
“advanced” section of the Bengali press raged
furiously against me, However, after I had
lectured for a week to the minority of one
on the school benches which had faith in
me and in Indian art, the wandering sheep
returned to the fold.
A great piece of luck attended my first
search for Indian paintings and sculpture
to fill the Art Gallery. A few months after
my enquiries began a Muhammadan book-
seller I had instructed brought me a bundle
of old Mogul paintings, which on examina-
tion proved to be perfect masterpieces of
the best period of Mogul art. They were by
some of Jahangir’s Court painters, stamped
with the State seal, and several of them
inscribed by Jahangir himself with the name
of the artist and explanatory notes. Among
them was a splendid portrait of Sa’di, the
Persian poet; several magnificent studies
of birds by Ustad Mansur, described by
Jahangir as “the most famous artist of my
time ” ; and a superb portrait of one of the
Mogul generals by Nanha, an Indian
Holbein whose name is not inscribed in
the list of artists given in the autobiographies
of the Mogul emperors. The exquisitely
decorated borders were partly devoured by
insects, for the owners of these masterpieces
had thrown them aside as worthless, because
they were “only Indian”; but I was just

in time to save the pictures themselves, which
were in an almost perfect state of preservation.
The acquisition of this treasure partly reconciled
the committee to the new programme, and the
merely nominal prices then usually demanded for
old Indian paintings did not make the Government
grant seem so meagre, though it was barely
enough for the purchase of one tolerable European
picture. After some years, when the personnel of
the Committee had gradually changed, and an
infusion of Celtic blood had raised its artistic
standard, feeling that I had secured their whole-
hearted support for my scheme, I ventured to
propose that the old collection of European
pictures should be sold, and that the funds
realised should be devoted to purchases of Indian
art. This proposal was eventually accepted,
though not without raising another violent storm
in the Bengali press; the principal journal of
Swadeshi politics seeing nothing in it but a
sinister attempt to discourage “ high ” art in
Bengal.
With the proceeds of the sales of some of these
works of “ high ” art, the Gallery increased its


“THE dIwALI ” BY A. N. TAGORE

III