Abanindranath Tagore
A Moonlight Music Party, Circa 1903
Wash and pencil on card
16.8 x 23.4 cm
2 5/8 x 9 1/4 in
2 5/8 x 9 1/4 in
Signed 'A. Tagore' lower right
In his article Abanindranath: Master-Artist and Renovator in Art, Bengali linguist Suniti Kumar Chatterji describes his first encounter with the work of Abanindranath Tagore. As a young man he and...
In his article Abanindranath: Master-Artist and Renovator in Art, Bengali linguist Suniti Kumar Chatterji describes his first encounter with the work of Abanindranath Tagore. As a young man he and a group of friends were taken to the Government School of Art by Arthur Lefevre, an English missionary in Calcutta. The art gallery contained a number of traditional European paintings, Indian miniatures as well as a selection of paintings by Tagore:
References
Golden Jubilee Number, The Indian Society of Oriental Art, Calcutta, 1961
I came to a small room and made another discovery, the effects of which I have not been able to get over even now. It was a series of miniatures by modern Indian artists, including those famous seven pictures by Abanindranath Tagore, the subjects of which were: A Moonlight Music Party, The Feast of Lamps, Lovers in Summer, Lovers in Spring, The Woman going to her Tryst, The Siddhas of the Upper Air and Buddha and Sujata. The pictures brought to me the message of a totally new world, the world of Romantic Ancient India.”
References
Golden Jubilee Number, The Indian Society of Oriental Art, Calcutta, 1961
I came to a small room and made another discovery, the effects of which I have not been able to get over even now. It was a series of miniatures by modern Indian artists, including those famous seven pictures by Abanindranath Tagore, the subjects of which were: A Moonlight Music Party, The Feast of Lamps, Lovers in Summer, Lovers in Spring, The Woman going to her Tryst, The Siddhas of the Upper Air and Buddha and Sujata. The pictures brought to me the message of a totally new world, the world of Romantic Ancient India.”
Provenance
Collection of Norman Blount;
Thence by descent
Exhibitions
Government School of Art Gallery, Calcutta, Winter 1903
Victoria & Albert Museum, London, Paintings of the New Calcutta School, April and May 1914, No. 65 (an image of the printed version was lent to the exhibition by Dr.. Ananda Coomaraswamy)Grosvenor Gallery, London, South Asian Modern Art 2024, 13 June – 5 July 2024, no.1, illustrated in exhibition catalogue pg. 9
Literature
Okakura Kakuzō, Kokka, 1908
Partha Mitter, Art and Nationalism in Colonial India, 1850-1922, Cambridge, 1994, plate XXIV, figure 162 (an image of the printed version)
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