Important Notice

“Jamini Roy’s chequered yet glorious career as an artist of great stature and prolificness not only endowed the art connoisseurs of our country with an elegantly simple Indian art form, but also enhanced common man’s faithful taste in the original root art bearing the massive scope of expression of both mundane and mystic life, deeply en?rooted in the widespread tradition of Indian folk art.” (Debashis Dhar, “Jamini Roy: A Martyr to his own... “Jamini Roy’s chequered yet glorious career as an artist of great stature and prolificness not only endowed the art connoisseurs of our country with an elegantly simple Indian art form, but also enhanced common man’s faithful taste in the original root art bearing the massive scope of expression of both mundane and mystic life, deeply en?rooted in the widespread tradition of Indian folk art.” (Debashis Dhar, “Jamini Roy: A Martyr to his own Mastery,” Jamini Roy: National Art Treasure, Kolkata: Purba Publications, 2015, p. 72)

Roy’s artistic language stands apart for its innovation and the importance it accorded to Indian artistic traditions. Owing to his legacy, he was conferred with a Padma Bhushan in 1955 and declared a National Treasure by the Archaeological Survey of India, Ministry of Culture, Govt. of India. Roy received academic instruction in art at the age of 16 from the Government School of Art, Calcutta, displaying astounding skill and went on to become a prolific portrait painter early on in his career. The strong wave of nationalism that swept India in the early 20th century urged Roy to question and reflect upon his approach towards art.

Between 1920?1930, Roy experimented with the motifs, symbols, chromatic range, and essence of Bengali folk traditions. He dismissed naturalism to hone the flatness and narrative quality of art forms such as pattchitra, Kalighat scroll paintings, and terracotta objects from Bankura, his birthplace. “He fled from Calcutta to a Bengal village. He lived among artisans who paint our remarkable expressionistic pats... He learnt from the secret of the fundamental rounded line, the expressive contour enclosing in it the human form in one vital sweep.” (Rudolf von Leyden, “Jamini Roy,” The Art of Jamini Roy, Calcutta: Jamini Roy Birth Centenary Celebration Committee, 1987, p. 17)

Roy developed a distinctive style defined by flat colours, rhythmic bold lines, iconic frontality, and decoration. “His experiments with forms continued for he well realised that forms bear the testimony to a people, their civilization and their history, etc. For further simplification and evolving his own idiom he also drew inspiration from child art. Instead of oil he religiously used traditional pigments from vegetable and mineral sources.” (Dhar, p. 79) Roy increasingly preferred working with tempera from local pigments, binder, and water while also employing a range of surfaces including canvas, mats, and other materials that added a textural quality to his art.

This reconfiguration of style, which is characteristic of Jamini Roy’s most known works, led him to depict a range of themes including Santhal women, Hindu mythology such as the Ramayana, Mahabharata, and Krishna Leela, life of Christ, and folklore. As seen in lot 2, women feature as a recurring theme in Roy’s works, delineated with bold outlines and lyrical brushstrokes. While the almond shaped eyes and frontal postures emphasise two dimensionality, a sense of volume is meticulously created by placing a different coloured line inside the outline or by a textured rendering with a darker hue, as seen in lots 1 and 3 respectively.

Thus, Jamini Roy’s oeuvre established a completely new epoch of development in Indian art. His passion to create works of collective identity that were relatable to a larger Indian audience, led him to adopt a signature style that accentuated the linear expression of Indian folk art. “Jamini Roy signifies not just the advent of modern Indian art but the modern Indian artist.” (Sona Datta, Urban Patua: The Art of Jamini Roy, Mumbai: Marg Publications, 2010, p. 91)

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