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Lot 4

 

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In 2010, a distinguished charity organisation in the county of Devon, England, set the world abuzz with its decision to place a collection of highly important paintings on auction. The Dartington Hall Trust was to sell twelve rare and never-before-seen paintings by Rabindranath Tagore, including the current lot - a painting of sepia-toned figures. The interest in the works well exceeded all expectations, highlighting the tremendous interest in... In 2010, a distinguished charity organisation in the county of Devon, England, set the world abuzz with its decision to place a collection of highly important paintings on auction. The Dartington Hall Trust was to sell twelve rare and never-before-seen paintings by Rabindranath Tagore, including the current lot - a painting of sepia-toned figures. The interest in the works well exceeded all expectations, highlighting the tremendous interest in Tagore's paintings not only among collectors in India, but around the world.

Most of the world knows Rabindranath Tagore for his prolific literary creations, and as the first Asian who won the Nobel Prize for literature. Tagore's achievements go far beyond what he was primarily known for - penning the national anthem of India, his poetry, plays, short stories, novels, and essays. They extend into the realm of fine arts: a talent he developed without formal training, and nurtured in his sixties. Yet, his interest in the subject existed much earlier, and announced itself through other milestones. He established the Visva Bharati School at Santiniketan, an environment that fostered a spirit of creativity and enquiry in its students, integrating all arts and disciplines. He saw the school as "an indigenous attempt in adapting modern methods of education in a truly Indian cultural environment" (quoted in R. Siva Kumar, The Last Harvest: Paintings of Rabindranath Tagore, Mapin Publishing and National Gallery of Modern Art, pg. 14).

Tagore envisioned a world rich with ideas incorporated from diverse sources, and Santiniketan embodied this. Unlike the prevailing approach to art which eschewed Western influences, he encouraged "a value system that celebrated the diversity of Nature and looked to the various cultures for their ability to express universal themes and art forms" (ibid., pg 24). By the time he forayed into painting he had cultivated that vision, and brought together his experiences and views of the world. Painting helped him transcend the limitations he felt with language, and he embraced its universality to further his ideas and thoughts.

"A large part of man can never find its expression in the mere language of words. It must, therefore, seek for its expression other languages - lines and colours, sounds and movements. Through our mastery of these we not only make our whole nature articulate but also understand man in all his attempts to reveal his innermost being in every age and clime ... It is the duty of every human being to master, at least to some extent, not only the language of the intellect, but also the language of the personality which is the language of Art."
- Rabindranath Tagore

The last fifteen years of his life were dedicated to art. During this time, he produced nearly 2,500 paintings. They began as doodles and erasures in his manuscripts, and gradually assumed an independent life. His renderings of birds and animals were elegant and bordered between semi-abstract and geometric. He filtered his love for nature and natural forms through an Indian palette and simplicity. They appear primitive, yet integrate a surreal, otherworldly feel made possible owing to his desire to imbibe various sources. His portraits, however, were haunting and personal. The artist's sensitivity and emotions flowed through these works with measured restraint. If anything summed up his outlook and vision, it would be this body of art that he left behind as his legacy.

Among his oeuvre were many ink and brush drawings. They bear a fluid rhythm that he has often spoken about or described with regards to his poetry and songs. With figures, this rhythm is contained to capture the moods and burdens of his subjects. For Tagore, the focus was never on anatomical accuracy, but on emotions. Here lay the strength of his sepia-toned figurative drawings. For instance, the current lot shows a group of figures engaged in labour. It is hard to decipher if they are all engaged in the same profession, or if the commonality lies in the burdens they face. One does not know what these issues are, but feels the pain of these figures, carrying on through the day, trying hard to veil their sorrows under the garb of work.

R. Siva Kumar aptly observes that "While rhythmic shapes and flat bright colours marked his early work, the later paintings...are more often monochromatic. This coincided with his gaining a greater facility in the use of brush and pen to build up forms. They are also generally more representational. It changed the appearance of his images, but it did not quite alter his vision......the enigma of colour is here transformed into dark pools of sorrow......Whether it relates in someway to Rabindranath's darkening vision of the world may remain a matter of speculation" (My Pictures: A Collection of Paintings by Rabindranath Tagore, Viva Books Pvt. Ltd., New Delhi, 2005, pg. 30)

Rabindranath gifted this painting, along with a small collection of others, to Leonard and Dorothy Elmhirst of the Dartington Hall in 1939. An Englishman, Leonard was studying agricultural economics at Cornell University, New York, when he met Tagore. The two grew to become close friends, and after graduating in 1921, Leonard travelled to India to help run a farm project in Surul. His travels with Tagore across China, Japan, and Argentina, and his interactions with him shaped his vision for an educational, social, and rural ethos at Dartington Hall. The medieval hall in South Devon was purchased by the Elmhirsts in 1925, and by the 1930s, they had founded the Dartington Hall Trust. The centre quickly grew in reputation. It developed as a base for experimentation and innovation in rural reconstruction and the arts, and attracted visionary thinkers and artists from around the world. It still carries, at its fulcrum, Tagore's belief that the arts must play a full part in the life of any community.

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