- Abanindranath Tagore
"See Tagore for disambiguation"
Abanindranath Tagore ( _bn. অবণীন্দ্রনাথ ঠাকুর) (
August 7 ,1871 -December 5 1951 ), was the principal artist of the Bengal school and the first major exponent ofswadeshi values in Indian art. [http://www.chitralekha.org/abanindranath.htm Abanindranath Tagore, A Survey of the Master’s Life and Work by Mukul Dey] , reprinted from "Abanindra Number," "The Visva-Bharati Quarterly," May – Oct. 1942.] He was also a noted writer.Tagore sought to modernize
Moghul andRajput traditions in order to counter the influence of Western models of art, as taught in Art Schools under theBritish Raj . Such was the success of Tagore's work that it was eventually accepted and promoted as a national Indian style within British art institutions.Life
Tagore was a member of the distinguished
Tagore family , and a nephew of the poetRabindranath Tagore . His grandfather and his elder brotherGaganendranath Tagore were also artists. Tagore learned art when studying atSanskrit college in the 1880s. In 1889 he married Srimati Suhasini Devi, daughter of Bhujagendra Bhusan Chatterjee, a descendant ofPrasanna Coomar Tagore . At this time he left the Sanskrit College after nine years of study and studied English as a special student at St. Xavier's College, which he attended for about a year and a half.In the early 1890s several illustrations were published in Sadhana magazine, and in Chitrangada, and other works by Rabindranath Tagore. He also illustrated his own books. About the year 1897 he took lessons from the Vice-Principal of the Calcutta Government School of Art, studying in the traditional European academic manner, learning the full range of techniques, but with a particular interest in watercolour. At this time he began to come under the influence of Mughal art, making a number of works based on the life of
Krishna in a Mughal-influenced style. After meeting E.B. Havell, Tagore worked with him to revitalise and redefine art teaching at the Calcutta School of art, a project also supported by his brother Gaganendranath, who set up the Indian Society of Oriental Art.The publication of Rabanindrath Tagore's
Gitanjali in English brought the Tagore family international renown, which helped to make Abanindranath's artistic projects better known in the west.Art
Tagore believed that Western art was "materialistic" in character, and that India needed to return to its own traditions in order to recover spiritual values. Despite its Indocentric
nationalism , this view was already commonplace within British art of the time, stemming from the ideas of thePre-Raphaelites . Tagore's work also shows the influence of Whistler's Aestheticism. Partly for this reason many British arts administrators were sympathetic to such ideas, especially asHindu philosophy was becoming increasingly influential in the West following the spread of theTheosophy movement. Tagore believed that Indian traditions could be adapted to express these new values, and to promote a progressive Indian national culture.With the success of Tagore's ideas, he came into contact with other Asian artists whose work was comparable to his own. In his later work, he began to incorporate elements of Chinese and Japanese calligraphic traditions into his art, seeking to construct a model for a modern pan-Asian artistic tradition which would merge the common aspects of Eastern spiritual and artistic culture.
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