Important Notice

Born on 18 September 1867, into the Tagore family in Kolkata, Gaganendranath Tagore received little formal training in art and began painting at an advanced age. He often found inspiration from nature and in the environment around him, painting works that were marked by individuality. He was associated with the revivalist art movement, led largely by Abanindranath Tagore, and was briefly influenced by him.

Gaganendranath’s works show an... Born on 18 September 1867, into the Tagore family in Kolkata, Gaganendranath Tagore received little formal training in art and began painting at an advanced age. He often found inspiration from nature and in the environment around him, painting works that were marked by individuality. He was associated with the revivalist art movement, led largely by Abanindranath Tagore, and was briefly influenced by him.

Gaganendranath’s works show an affinity with the favoured painting style of the time, which looked back at the Indian traditions of painting- namely murals at the Ajanta caves and miniature traditions amongst others. Gaganendranath studied the wash technique and brush strokes of Japanese ink paintings of visiting Japanese artists, Yokoyama Taikan and Hishida Shunsho. which he deployed in a number of watercolours and ink sketches that captured a direct visual experience or were drawn from memory. The present lot is an ethereal landscape in tones of deep blue where the white tips of the mountains appear as though illuminated by moonlight. It shows his proficiency in the European watercolour technique much like his other landscapes and sketches.

Gaganendranath had a number of interests; he practised photography, painted cubist works later on in his life as well as illustrated his uncle, Rabindranath Tagore’s autobiography in 1911. Rabindranath Tagore is said to have commented on his art in 1938, “What profoundly attracted me was the uniqueness of his creation, a lively curiosity in his constant experiments, and some mysterious depth in their imaginative value. Closely surrounded by the atmosphere of a new art movement ... he sought out his own untrodden path of adventure, attempted marvelous experiments in colouring and made fantastic trials in the magic of light and shade.” (Rabindranath Tagore, Journal of the Indian Society of Oriental Art (Vol. 6), 1938)

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