This painting is an evocative image of a rural community. Jamini Roy has beautifully represented in many of his paintings the sect of the Vaishnavas, the followers of Krishna as either making offerings to the Lord or on the way to a temple in a procession or going around villages singing kirtans (devotional songs) on the life of Krishna, and seeking alms. It is interesting to see how Roy broke down the figure to the essential form that goes into its making and then synthesised it to suggest a structure. Jamini Roy drew authentic imagery, using simplification of form inspired by the folk arts of the region that had evolved over the centuries. In this painting, the artist has adopted the tribhanga or the bent axis from the traditional iconography to represent the figure of Gopini or herd woman or milkmaid. The artist has adhered to the notions of ideal feminine beauty with the depiction of the doe eyes, demure stances, and the voluptuous figure of the Gopini with a heightened pliancy in her figuration. There is a strong element of fantasy in the richly saturated palette that Roy has used, particularly for the Krishna-Leela series of works. The artist conveys a sense of an idyll where faith, religion, and spirituality create an organic wholeness in life. The inscription mentions, signed 'Jamini Roy' in Bengali at the bottom right corner of the painting with a brush in red colour.
- Identifier
- ngma-00076
- Material
- Tempera, Cloth
- Note
- Jamini Roy was one of the earliest and most significant modernists of twentieth century Indian art. From 1920 onwards his search for the essence of form led him to experiment with dramatically different visual style. His career spanning over nearly six decades had many significant turning points and his works collectively speak of the nature of his modernism and the prominent role he played in breaking away from the art practices of his time. Trained in the British academic style of painting in the early decades of the twentieth century, Jamini Roy became well-known as a skilful portraitist. He received regular commissions after he graduated from the Government Art School in what is now Kolkata, in 1916. The first three decades of the twentieth century saw a sea-change in cultural expressions in Bengal. The growing surge of the nationalist movement was prompting all kinds of experiments in literature and the visual arts. The Bengal School, founded by Abanindranath Tagore and Kala Bhavana in Santiniketan under Nandalal Bose rejected European naturalism and the use of oil as a medium and were exploring new ways of representation. Jamini Roy, too, consciously rejected the style he had mastered during his academic training and from the early 1920s searched for forms that stirred the innermost recesses of his being. He sought inspiration from sources as diverse as East Asian calligraphy, terracotta temple friezes, objects from folk arts and crafts traditions and the like. What was increasingly apparent from 1920 onwards was that Roy brought a joy and
- Pages
- 68 x 51.2 cm
- Published in
- India
- Type
- Painting
