Ina Puri on Rabindranath Tagore’s Text in the Catalogue of Nandalal Bose’s Exhibition

Introduction text by Ina Puri

Dating back to 1954, this catalogue is truly a collector’s priceless item, the lead essay written by none other than the Poet Laureate Rabindranath Tagore, himself. About his personal experience on viewing his friend Nandalal’s paintings, Gurudev writes, ‘‘The poet is all in a rapture today to join you in your play to be born a child again in the light of a new dawn. His thoughts are sunk in words, his eyes are open to the beauty in all that is. He yearns to go with you. Show him the way.’’

Rabindranath Tagore Catalogue of Nandalal Bose’s Exhibition, Government College of Art and Craft, Calcutta, March – April 1954. Catalogue Courtesy: Sanjeet Choudhury

Decades later, in Nandalal Bose, the Centenary Volume, published by Lalit Kala Akademi (Honorary Editor, Richard Bartholomew, printed in 1983), evaluating Mastermoshai’s contribution to art history, K G Subramanyan writes, ‘‘If Santiniketan has murals on its various buildings by various artists of distinction including Benode Bihari or outdoor sculpture by an artist like Ramkinkar, appropriate in theme and function to the local scene, the basic impetus came from him. If on the Indian art scene some artists have started thinking in terms of a speaking relationship between art and environment, they also owe it, if only tenuously, to Nandalal’s pioneering efforts.’’

Work in tempera by Nandalal Bose. Catalogue Courtesy: Sanjeet Choudhury.

Between that ’54 catalogue and the volume published in ’83, the words of Tagore and K G Subramanyan, is a reflection of the way art history and art historians would view Nandalal Bose, as an artist and activist in posterity.

Rabindranath Tagore: Catalogue of Nandalal Bose’s Exhibition

Government College of Art and Craft Calcutta, March-April 1954

Originally written in Bengali and translated from Bengali by Somnath Maitra

Rabindranath Tagore To the gifted youth of fifty, Nandalal Bose

From the mature young man of seventy, Rabindranath

The Ranjana flows past Nandans groves. In her waters have you bathed before your birth. One charmed night some hand has touched your eyes with magic salve that gives to them the vision that creates.

Your birth tray is heaped with flowers that know no fading the flowers of paradise in their myriad lovely forms. You have brought away wit you on the tip of your brush the dances of the heavenly nymphs. In the lines you draw plays the music of the flute.

Work in tempera by Nandalal Bose done before 1954. Catalogue Courtesy: Sanjeet Choudhury.

The enchantress who paints patterns in green and blue and red across infinities of time and space, who lights up the somber clouds of evening with the glow of her laughter – she has touched your forehead with her golden wand to rouse colours from their sleep.

The Universe is ever making signs to you; you answer with gestures of your own. How silently and with what art do you converse with your God! Creation, I fancy, is just a play of signs and hints.

The Sun has blessed your pictures with the seal of his approval. You have conquered the easy lure of many-hued illusion. I know that round your canvas lie ever – entwined the matted coils of Shiva’s hair.

The Eternal Child plays at painting pictures of the worlds. In the playground of the earth you are the same age as He. Can age ever hide the child in you? You send your soul floating away to Infinity on your little play – boats.

The poet is all in a rapture today to join you in your play – to be born a child again in the light of a new dawn. His thoughts are sunk in words, his eyes are open to the beauty in all that is. He yearns to go with you. Show him the way.