Study Guide · Chapter 5
Bengal School and the Nationalist Art Movement
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- Emerged in the early 20th century as a deliberate reaction against both academic Western realism (as taught in colonial art schools) and, implicitly, against colonial cultural dominance more broadly, seeking to revive an "Indian" aesthetic rooted in indigenous traditions (Ajanta murals, Mughal/Rajput miniatures) blended with some Japanese (Nihonga) wash-technique influences.
- Abanindranath Tagore (nephew of Rabindranath Tagore) is regarded as the founder of the Bengal School; his painting "Bharat Mata" (Mother India), depicting the nation as a divine female figure, became a powerful nationalist visual icon.
- Nandalal Bose: A leading figure of the Bengal School and later principal of Kala Bhavana (the art institution at Tagore's Santiniketan/Visva-Bharati); designed the original artwork/illuminated manuscript pages of the Indian Constitution and the emblem used for the Haripura Congress session (1938) poster series depicting rural Indian life.
- E.B. Havell: A British art educator/administrator who, alongside Abanindranath Tagore, was instrumental in championing this indigenous revivalist approach as principal of the Government School of Art, Calcutta.
- Rabindranath Tagore himself took up painting relatively late in life (from his sixties), producing a distinctive body of expressive, semi-abstract work.
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