Important Notice

Rabindranath Tagore was one of India’s greatest literary figures. Famed as a poet, song composer, short-story writer, novelist, playwright and essayist, he was the first Asian to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, in 1913. Born in 1861, Rabindranath was brought up in a family of artistically minded social reformers and patriots, which had a profound impact on him. His astute observation of society was reflected in his writing, and later on in... Rabindranath Tagore was one of India’s greatest literary figures. Famed as a poet, song composer, short-story writer, novelist, playwright and essayist, he was the first Asian to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, in 1913. Born in 1861, Rabindranath was brought up in a family of artistically minded social reformers and patriots, which had a profound impact on him. His astute observation of society was reflected in his writing, and later on in his establishment of a school and university at Shantiniketan. These institutions tried to combine traditional Indian and modern western methods of education and to inculcate a spirit of free and open learning in their students, especially in the arts.

Tagore had no formal training as a visual artist. His drawing and painting erupted around 1924, in his mid-sixties, when he began to elaborate the erasures in his manuscripts into fantastic forms and grotesque creatures using his pen. Paintings of human figures and faces soon followed, often using a brush, and featured in his first exhibitions, in Europe in 1930. Many more date from after 1930. Before his death in 1941, Tagore’s haunting portraits of women had become a hallmark of his work. In the decades since then, these faces—“recognisably Bengali” thought Satyajit Ray—have become favourite images in posters and catalogues for Tagore exhibitions.

“The pensive, ovoid face of a woman with large unwavering soulful eyes was perhaps a more obsessive theme than any other”, notes Prithwish Neogy (Drawing and Paintings of Rabindranath Tagore, New Delhi: Lalit Kala Akademi, 1961). “The earlier ones were delicately modelled and opalescent, while the later examples were excessively dramatic with intensely lit forehead, exaggerated nose-ridge, painted in strong colours, bodied forth from a primal gloom.”

The present lot, first published as late as 1983, may be a portrait of Tagore’s beloved elder sister-in-law Kadambari Devi, who shocked the young Rabindranath with her suicide in 1884 and became the central character in his famous novella, Nashtanirh (The Broken Nest), filmed as Charulata. Not only does the portrait somewhat resemble a photograph of Kadambari, there is also the evidence from Tagore himself, in a remark reported by his artist-friend Nandalal Bose: “The look of the eyes of Notun Bouthan [Kadambari] has become so deeply imprinted in my mind that I can never forget about them and when I paint portraits, not unoften her glowing eyes present themselves before my sight. Probably that is why the eyes in my portraits take after her eyes.” (quoted in Andrew Robinson, The Art of Rabindranath Tagore, London: Andre Deutsch, 1989, p. 214; foreword by Satyajit Ray).

– ANDREW ROBINSON

Andrew Robinson is the author of “The Art of Rabindranath Tagore”, Andre Deutsch, London, 1989, and “Rabindranath Tagore: The Myriad-Minded Man”, Bloomsbury, London, 1995; and co-editor of “Selected Letters of Rabindranath Tagore”, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1997, and “Rabindranath Tagore: An Anthology”, Picador, London, 1997.

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