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Lot Essay
Hemendranath Mazumdar resisted the 'Indianizing' trends of the Bengal School to become a successful academic painter. The style of his paintings followed in the tradition of Raja Ravi Varma, and covered a similar range of mythological and religious themes, focusing mainly on sensual studies of women.
Paintings of semi-nude females would not have been accepted by society and he adapted his works to suit the audience of his day. To ensure that a sense of modesty was upheld in his works, Mazumdar tended to hint at nudity by draping his models in semi-transparent or wet saris, a technique that was later adopted by Indian cinema.
Before creating a full sized oil painting, Mazumdar would produce several smaller works on paper. Fully worked watercolors such as this were the final stage of his preparatory work before he transposed the image onto a larger format canvas.
Paintings of semi-nude females would not have been accepted by society and he adapted his works to suit the audience of his day. To ensure that a sense of modesty was upheld in his works, Mazumdar tended to hint at nudity by draping his models in semi-transparent or wet saris, a technique that was later adopted by Indian cinema.
Before creating a full sized oil painting, Mazumdar would produce several smaller works on paper. Fully worked watercolors such as this were the final stage of his preparatory work before he transposed the image onto a larger format canvas.