By:SHIVA DRINKING THE WORLD’S POISON
Dimensions:70 by 51 cm.; 27 ½ by 20 in
National Art Treasure Non-exportable item Nandalal Bose was commissioned to do a number of subsequent versions of this well known subject, of which this is probably the third, hence the number 3 in Bengali inscribed beside the artist’s signature and date. Another Version of the subject is in the collection of the National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi. Nandalal Bose had a mastery over the history, grammar and techniques of the pictorial traditions of many civilizations, not to speak of his own. His work has a kind of linear, simplified rhythm, but a rhythm that subsumes within its field all inanimate and animate beings in a single design. The philosophical basis of course is the need to weave together all created things within a single entity, to bring the animate and inanimate universe into attunement. Although this bestowed sweetness and rhythm on his work, yet this simplified rhythm deprived it of a wealth od detail and complexity of which Nandalal, one will unhesitatingly concede, was perfectly capable, by virtue of his education, his philosophical upbringing and his technical mastery. Nandalal used a variety of subjects and materials in his paintings. His imagination could deal with material drawm from the Ramayana, the Mahabharatha, Sanskrit poems, the Puranas, from the lives of Buddha, Christ and Gandhiji and from Nature and from human life. He used different kinds of paper, cotton and silk canvases. He used a variety of colours. Sometimes instead of a brush he used rags. Compare: Jaya Appasamy, Abanindranath Tagore and the Art of His Times, Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi, 1968, fig. 11, for an illustration of presumably the prime version of this subject dated to 1913.