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Lot Essay
Jamini Roy was born in 1877 in the Bankura district of West Bengal, a region rich with folk art traditions. At the age of sixteen, he travelled to Kolkata, where he studied European painting at the Government School of Art. Although the landscapes and portraits from early in his career were distinctly Impressionistic, with growing anti-imperialist sentiments in the late 1930s, the artist began to reject his Western formalist training. Instead, he looked towards more familiar Bengali folk art and Kalighat paintings for inspiration. Discovering that he was far more drawn to the vivid color palettes and bold lines of bazaar pata paintings, Roy developed a unique visual style that reinterpreted local traditions through a modernist idiom.
The present lot, one of the artist’s largest known works on the subject, is a dazzling representation of Krishna, one of the incarnations of the Hindu god Vishnu, and his brother Balaram. The deities stand in symmetry, accompanied by peacocks and other floral adornments. They are depicted in Roy’s revered signature style – flattened, boldly outlined, and with sharp almond-shaped eyes. These attributes were derived from recurrent imagery in indigenous folk art traditions. In fact, even the media he utilized to execute this work, including his natural or mineral pigments and the linen he painted on, paid homage to local sources and culture. Through significant works like the present lot, Jamini Roy distinguished a new genre of modern Indian art that celebrated the essence of Bengali identity. Today, the artist is heralded as a 'National Treasure’ in India, joining eight other artists as the Navaratnas or nine gems of modern Indian art, a pantheon of renowned creators whose work holds immense cultural significance.
The present lot, one of the artist’s largest known works on the subject, is a dazzling representation of Krishna, one of the incarnations of the Hindu god Vishnu, and his brother Balaram. The deities stand in symmetry, accompanied by peacocks and other floral adornments. They are depicted in Roy’s revered signature style – flattened, boldly outlined, and with sharp almond-shaped eyes. These attributes were derived from recurrent imagery in indigenous folk art traditions. In fact, even the media he utilized to execute this work, including his natural or mineral pigments and the linen he painted on, paid homage to local sources and culture. Through significant works like the present lot, Jamini Roy distinguished a new genre of modern Indian art that celebrated the essence of Bengali identity. Today, the artist is heralded as a 'National Treasure’ in India, joining eight other artists as the Navaratnas or nine gems of modern Indian art, a pantheon of renowned creators whose work holds immense cultural significance.