From Ravi Varma to the Bengal School

Where

Murshidabad first, then Patna, Calcutta, Lucknow, Delhi, Banaras, Madras, Tiruchirappalli and Thanjavur

When

Late 18th century to the late 19th century; this painting is dated 1809

Who

Indian painters, many from old Mughal and regional courts; at Patna, artists such as Sevak Ram

Style

Indian miniature skills mixed with European observation

Made with

Mostly watercolour on paper, sometimes on ivory or mica

When the East India Company ruled large parts of India, its officers wanted pictures of the people, festivals, buildings, plants and animals around them. Indian painters who had lost their royal patrons began working for them, and changed their style to suit: softer watercolours, shading and perspective, and close observation instead of fixed rules. They made sets of pictures of trades, castes and festivals for albums that the British took home. Photography, which arrived in the middle of the 19th century, slowly put them out of work.

Where

Born at Kilimanoor in the princely state of Travancore (now Keralam, called Kerala until 2026)

When

1848 to 1906

Style

European academic realism in oil paint, used for Indian stories

Made with

Oil on canvas

Key works

Damayanti and the Swan, Shakuntala, Lady in the Moonlight, Galaxy of Musicians, Rama Vanquishing the Pride of the Ocean

Ravi Varma learned oil painting at the Travancore court, partly from the visiting British portrait painter Theodore Jensen, and studied the European pictures in Indian palaces. He used this realistic style for scenes from the Ramayana, the Mahabharata and Sanskrit plays, and for portraits of women in saris. An award at an exhibition in Vienna in 1873 made him famous. Shown here is Damayanti, the princess who falls in love with King Nala when a golden swan carries his message to her.

Where

Ghatkopar, Bombay, from 1894; moved to Malavli near Lonavala in 1899

When

Founded 1894; sold in 1901 to its German technician, Fritz Schleicher, who kept printing; this print is from the 1920s

Made with

Oleographs: colour lithographs printed to look like oil paintings

Ravi Varma set up a printing press so that his pictures of gods and goddesses could reach ordinary homes, not just palaces. The press printed thousands of cheap oleographs of Lakshmi, Saraswati, Krishna and scenes from the epics. For many families these became the faces of the gods, and they shaped calendar art and film posters for decades. The business lost money, and Ravi Varma sold it in 1901, but it went on printing under the new owner.

Where

Calcutta (Kolkata), born into the Tagore family of Jorasanko

When

1871 to 1951; Bharat Mata was painted in 1905

Who

Nephew of Rabindranath Tagore; worked with E. B. Havell, principal of the Government School of Art, Calcutta

Style

Bengal School, with a wash technique

Made with

Watercolour, built up in thin layers and washed with water

Key works

Bharat Mata, Journey's End, The Passing of Shah Jahan, the Arabian Nights series

Abanindranath Tagore and E. B. Havell believed that Indian art schools should stop copying Europe and look again at Mughal and Pahari miniatures and Ajanta. Abanindranath worked in soft watercolour, washing the paper again and again until the colours glowed through a mist, a technique he developed with ideas from Japanese painters. Bharat Mata (Mother India) was painted during the Swadeshi movement of 1905 against the Partition of Bengal. Her four hands hold a book, rice, cloth and a rosary: learning, food, clothing and faith. In 1907 he and his brother Gaganendranath founded the Indian Society of Oriental Art in Calcutta to show and promote the new Indian painting.

Where

Calcutta

When

Died 1938; his Cubist paintings date from the early 1920s

Who

Elder brother of Abanindranath Tagore

Style

Cubist-inspired painting; caricature

Made with

Watercolour and ink

Key works

City in the Night, Dwarka, Adbhut Lok (1917, a book of caricatures)

Gaganendranath co-founded the Indian Society of Oriental Art with his brother, but he took his own path. After an exhibition of Bauhaus artists such as Paul Klee and Kandinsky came to Calcutta in 1922, he began breaking his pictures into prisms and diamond-shaped planes, the language of Cubism, to paint mysterious halls, stairs and dream cities lit like a stage. He was also a sharp cartoonist who made fun of rich Bengalis copying British ways.

Where

Visva-Bharati University, Santiniketan, Birbhum district, West Bengal

When

Founded in 1919

Who

Started by Rabindranath Tagore; Nandalal Bose led it from the early 1920s

Kala Bhavana, the art school of Rabindranath Tagore's university, is often called India's first national art school. Students learned in the open, drew the trees, animals and Santhal villages around them, and studied Ajanta, folk art and East Asian painting rather than copying plaster casts. Its teachers included Nandalal Bose, Benode Behari Mukherjee and Ramkinkar Baij, and later students included K. G. Subramanyan and the film-maker Satyajit Ray. Santiniketan itself became a World Heritage Site in 2023.

When

1882 to 1966

Who

Student of Abanindranath Tagore; head of Kala Bhavana for decades

Style

Bengal School, then Santiniketan

Made with

Tempera, watercolour, ink, linocut

Key works

The Haripura posters (1938), the illustrations in the Constitution of India, the Dandi March linocut (1930)

In the early 1920s Nandalal Bose was one of the Santiniketan artists who made copies of the damaged Bagh cave paintings. At Mahatma Gandhi's request he and his students painted the Haripura posters for the 1938 session of the Indian National Congress at Haripura in Gujarat: bold panels of a drummer, a farmer ploughing, a woman churning, and other ordinary working people. With students such as Beohar Rammanohar Sinha he decorated the pages of the original hand-written Constitution of India, and he also sketched the designs for the Bharat Ratna and Padma Shri awards.

Where

Santiniketan; this painting is in the Indian Museum, Kolkata

When

Began painting at about sixty, in the 1920s; first exhibited in Paris in 1930

Style

Personal and expressive, close to European Expressionism

Made with

Ink, watercolour and coloured inks on paper

The poet who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913 turned to painting late in life. It began with the crossings-out in his manuscripts, which he joined into strange creatures and patterns. He went on to paint thousands of haunting faces, figures and dark landscapes in a limited palette of black, ochre, reds and browns. His art was quite unlike the delicate Bengal School and won admirers in Europe before India.

Where

Born at Beliatore, Bankura district, West Bengal; worked in Kolkata

When

1887 to 1972

Who

Trained at the Government School of Art, Calcutta; Padma Bhushan 1954

Style

Folk-inspired modern painting

Made with

Tempera with colours made from earth, chalk and plants, on cloth, board or paper

Key works

Mother and Child, Black Horse, Santhal women, Krishna and Balarama

Jamini Roy was trained to paint realistic portraits in oil, then gave it up in the 1920s. He studied the village scroll painters of Bengal and the Kalighat painters, and began painting with a few colours, thick outlines and flat shapes. His subjects were Santhal women, mothers and children, cats, Krishna and the life of the village. He wanted his art to be cheap and easy to copy, and he liked to call himself a patua, a village painter.

Where

Santiniketan

When

1904 to 1980; this sketch is from 1952

Who

Student of Nandalal Bose; teacher of Satyajit Ray and K. G. Subramanyan; Padma Vibhushan 1974

Style

Santiniketan modernism, with Chinese and Japanese brushwork

Made with

Watercolour, ink and murals

Key works

The Lives of Medieval Saints (Hindi Bhavana mural, 1946 to 1947)

Benode Behari was born with very poor eyesight, yet became one of India's great painters of murals. On the walls of Hindi Bhavana at Santiniketan he painted The Lives of Medieval Saints, a long fresco about Kabir, Tulsidas and other saints of medieval India. After an eye operation failed in 1956 he became completely blind, but he kept working. In 1972 Satyajit Ray, his former student, made a documentary about him called The Inner Eye.

Where

Born in Bankura district, West Bengal; worked at Kala Bhavana, Santiniketan

When

1906 to 1980; Santhal Family dates from 1937 to 1938

Style

Modern sculpture and painting

Made with

Cement mixed with pebbles over a metal frame, left out in the open

Key works

Santhal Family, Mill Call, the Yaksha and Yakshi at the Reserve Bank of India, New Delhi

Ramkinkar Baij was one of the first great modern sculptors of India. Santhal Family shows a Santhal man carrying his children in two baskets hung from a pole, with his wife and their dog walking beside him, perhaps moving to find work. It is larger than life, made of cheap cement and pebbles, and stands in the open at Santiniketan, where ordinary working people replace the kings and British officials of earlier statues. His Yaksha and Yakshi at the Reserve Bank in Delhi are based on ancient yaksha statues such as the Parkham Yaksha.

Where

Mumbai (Bombay)

When

Founded in 1857

Who

Named after Sir Jamsetjee Jejeebhoy, whose gift paid for it; Lockwood Kipling, father of the writer Rudyard Kipling, taught there from 1865

Style

European academic art: life drawing, oils and realistic portraits

The J. J. School was one of the art schools the British set up in Bombay, Calcutta, Madras and Lahore. It trained students in European-style drawing, oil painting and realistic portraits, along with crafts. From 1872 its principal John Griffiths and his students spent years copying the Ajanta paintings. In the 1920s and 1930s, under principal Gladstone Solomon, its students won the commission to paint murals for the new government buildings in Lutyens' Delhi, while the Bengal School went to decorate India House in London.