Christ Preaching

The series of images depicting the life of Jesus Christ is perhaps one of the boldest experiments in figuration and narrativisation by Jamini Roy. The Christ paintings' language is remarkable for their grave, contemplative faces in somewhat hieratic poses with iconicity. In this particular painting, the artist depicted Christ's figure in a frontal stance with thick black lines along the contours. His right hand is held up in a gesture of preaching while he holds a book in his left. Jamini Roy narrated episodes from Christian mythology in a way that could communicate itself easily to the ordinary Bengali villager.