“Here was perfect technique of brushstroke, beginning with a broad firm pressure of the brush and ending the curve with a light fine gradation. These simple figures were composed almost entirely of curves, the only straight line perhaps the line of the nose, or a sharp angle in the drapery of the Sari…

...Jamini carries out these themes in ash-grey line on a background graded from grey to white, giving the effect of figures emerging from a shadowy room or animals leaping across a wide plane.”

E Mary-Milford, A Modern Primitive, Horizon Review of Literature and Art, London, Vol.X, No. 59, 1944

Chanchalkumar Chattopadhyay (1915-2004) was a prominent left-wing poet and translator and part of the intellectual community in Calcutta in the 1930s. These three paintings were acquired directly from the Artist and have been in the family's collection since then. Chattopadhyay was introduced to Jamini Roy by the poet, writer and academic Bishnu Dey (1909-1982).

"Jamini Roy went through a phase of monochrome brush drawings during which he purified the quality of his line and trained it to express volume and movement without sacrificing its power to decorative elegance without direct imitation he gave to his Work the monumental power of images."
Rudy Von Laydon