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Shri Jamini Roy 

Shri Jamini Roy (Bengali: যামিনী রায়; 11 April 1887 – 24 April 1972) was an Indian painter.He was honored with the State award of Padma Bhushan in 1955.He was one of the most famous pupil of Abanindranath Tagore, whose contribution to the emergence of modern art in India remains unquestionable. Jamini Roy died in 1972.

Early life

Jamini Roy was born on 11 of April 1887 into a moderately prosperous family of land-owners in a village called Beliatore in the District of Bankura in Bengal .

When he was sixteen he was sent to study at the Government School of Art in Calcutta. He was taught to paint in the prevailing academic tradition drawing Classical nudes and painting in oils and in 1908 he received his Diploma in Fine Art.

However, he soon realised that he needed to draw inspiration, not from Western traditions, but from his own culture, and so he looked to the living folk and tribal art for inspiration. He was most influenced by the Kalighat Pat,Kalighat pat was not a person but a style of art with bold sweeping brush-strokes. He moved away from his earlier impressionist landscapes and portraits and between 1921 and 1924 began his first period of experimentation with the Santhal dance as his starting point.

Style

His new style was a reaction against the Bengal School and Western tradition. His underlying quest was threefold: to capture the essence of simplicity embodied in the life of the folk people; to make art accessible to a wider section of people; and to give Indian art its own identity. He was awarded the Padma Bhusan in 1954. His work has been exhibited extensively in international exhibitions and can be found in many private and public collections such as the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. He spent most of his life living and working in Calcutta. Initially he experimented with Kalighat paintings but found that it has ceased to be strictly a "patua" and went to learn from village patuas. Consequently his techniques as well as subject matter was influenced by traditional art of Bengal. He preferred himself to be called a patua. Jamini Roy died in 1972. He was survived by four sons and a daughter. Currently his successors (daughters-in-law and grand children and their children) stay at the home he had built in Ballygunge Place, Kolkata. His works can be found in various galleries across the globe as well as in his home.It is evident that his followers and successors copied many of his works with a minor variations intentional or unintentional. So, the basic problem lies with the indetification of the originality of his works.

Disheartened, Roy began a wrenched journey to discover his own true style, undertaking odd jobs to survive. Roy discovered the answer to his predicament right in rural Bengal, in Kalighat paintings, the popular bazaar paintings sold outside the Kalighat temple in Calcutta. 

In 1925, he began experimenting along the lines of the Kalighat idiom, and by the early 1930s he had made a complete switch to indigenous materials. His fascination with the indigenous art of Kalighat painting and the terracotta's of the Vishnupur temple, grew unabated. Quietly, yet firmly, the bold simplicity, linear flow began to suffuse his work. In his mid-thirties, he abandoned his tame and conventional art practice. He abandoned the canvas and made his own painting surfaces out of cloth, wood, even mats coated with lime, and painted using earth and vegetable colours. The 1930's saw the beginning of his scintillating career, which spanned well into the 60's. 

Roy enacted a complete retreat from the middle class congruity of art-school trained modernity and withdrew into the nostalgic lyricism of the true Bengali folk painters. This marked a new phase in the history of Indian Modern Art, with a strategic denial of its 'modern' traces. Though his own amazing style took off and matured from there, he never forgot his debt to the Bengali village and especially to Kalighat paintings.

However, Jamini Roy's art too awaited the same fate as some of his celebrated predecessors like Abanindranath and Raja Ravi Varma. The neat patterning, rythmic outlines and flat, bright colours were extracted from his works and tamed into a standardized formula and a flood of perfected copies overcame the master.

Jamini's presentation of Santhal drummers, toiling blacksmith, Krishna-Balaram and women figures like Radhas, Gopi's, Pujarinis and Virgin and Child became very popular during the 1940s and his collectors included the middle-class Bengalis as well as the European community. His work was exhibited in London in 1946 and in New York in 1953. He was honored with the State award of Padma Bhushan in 1955.

He died a much celebrated and revolutionary artist, at the age of 85, in Calcutta in 1972.

Here are some samples of his beautiful work. 
 

• Santal Boy with Drum: 
• Cats Sharing a Prawn 
• St. Ann and the Blessed Virgin
• Makara
• Cats Plus 
• Seated Woman in Sari 
• Krishna And Radha Dancing 
• Kitten 
• Virgin And Child 
• Crucifixion with Attendant Angels
• Ravana, Sita And Jatayu 
• Warrior King 
• Krishna with Gopis in Boat 
• Krishna and Balarama 
• Krishna and Balaram 
• Queen on Tiger 
• Vaishnavas 

Awards and honors

In 1934, he received a Viceroy's gold medal in an all India exhibition for one of his work. In 1955 he was awarded the Padma Bhushanby the Government of India,this was the third highest award a civilian can be given.

Critical views

In 1929 while inaugurating Roy's exhibition sponsored by Mukul Dey at Calcutta, the then Statesman Editor Sir Alfred Watson said: "....Those who study the various pictures will be able to trace the development of the mind of an artist constantly seeking his own mode of expression. His earlier work done under purely Western influence and consisting largely of small copies of larger works must be regarded as the exercises of one learning to use the tools of his craft competently and never quite at ease with his models. From this phase we see him gradually breaking away to a style of his own.

You must judge for yourselves how far Mr. Roy has been able to achieve the ends at which he is obviously aiming. His work will repay study. I see in it as I see in much of the painting in India today a real endeavour to recover a national art that shall be free from the sophisticated tradition of other countries, which have had a continuous art history. The work of those who are endeavouring to revive Indian art is commonly not appreciated in its true significance. It is sometimes assumed that revival means no more than a return to the methods and traditions of the past. That would be to create a school of copyists without visions and ideals of their own.

....Art in any form cannot progress without encouragement. The artist must live and he must live by the sale of his work. In India as elsewhere the days when the churches and the princes were the patrons of art have passed. Encouragement today must come from a wider circle. I would say to those who have money to spare buy Indian art with courage. You may obtain some things of little worth; you may, on the other hand, acquire cheaply something that is destined to have great value. What does it matter whether you make mistakes or not. By encouraging those who are striving to give in line and colour a fresh expression to Indian thought you are helping forward a movement that we all hope is destined to add a fresh lustre to the country."

Key works"Bride and two Companions", 1952, tempera on card, 75 x 39 cm. Coates described the painting: "Note the magnificent indigo ofBengal, and how the palms of the bride's hands are smeared with red sandalpaste. Jamini Roy's choice of colours looks at first sight purely decorative. In fact, nearly every thing in his pictures has a reason and a meaning." ^[1]