A meld of rhythm and instinct

Tagore's paintings fused the familiar with the mysterious and his intuitive style had its own distinct cadence and harmony.

I often think that only painting has a deathless quality,” asserted Rabindranath Tagore. “I believe that the vision of Paradise is to be seen in the sunlight and the green of the earth, in the beauty of the human face and the wealth of human life, even in objects that are seemingly insignificant and unprepossessing.”

Tagore (1861–1941) started painting relatively late in his life. The Bengali polymath, who won the 1913 Nobel Prize for Literature, was in his late sixties when he, self-confessedly, came ‘under the enchantment of lines’. Gripped by his new-found passion, he pursued it vigorously for the remainder of his life. The result was a staggering 2,500 plus drawings and paintings in a relatively short span of about 15 years.

Tagore did show a discerning eye and visual sensibility from his early days. “I still remember the very moment, one afternoon, when coming back from school,” he recalled in one of his late writings, “I alighted from the carriage and suddenly saw in the sky, behind the upper terrace of our house, an exuberance of deep, dark rain-clouds lavishing rich, cool shadows on the atmosphere. The marvel of it, the very generosity of its presence, gave me a joy which was freedom, the freedom we feel in the love of our dear friend.”

Playful inventiveness

Considerable critical study has gone in to recognise and examine Tagore’s achievements as a visual artist. Eminent artist Nandalal Bose (who became the Principal of Kala Bhavan, Santiniketan at the behest of Tagore) identified three major elements in Tagore’s paintings; rhythm, balance and indulgence. “These qualities he acquired during his vast period of writing poems and songs.”

Tagore’s earliest paintings grew out of the doodles he did on his literary manuscripts. With intuitively crossed-out lines and words, he produced a series of unplanned shapes of forms and objects, merging the familiar with the mysterious. “These have an element of playful inventiveness and involve morphological cross-projections that defy perceptual experience,” says R Siva Kumar, professor of art and curator of the exhibition ‘The Last Harvest: Paintings by Rabindranath Tagore’. “As he progressed from landscapes, he also began to see the human body not merely as form, but as gestures carrying within them the seeds of visual narration and theatre.”

Tagore painted intuitively and refused to title his work “because they represent no preconceived subject.” He also did not like to ‘explain’ his images. “People often ask me about the meaning of my pictures. I remain silent even as my pictures are. It is for them to express and not to explain. They have nothing ulterior behind their own appearance for the thoughts to explore and words to describe.” He also did not date most of his work. He drew on whatever paper was at hand and with any instruments and colours he could find. He painted briskly, finishing each picture at one sitting. He was phenomenally energetic. During the last 15 years, he not only created hundreds of artworks, but also more than 60 volumes of new literary writing, poetry and prose.

The beauty of the human face

Notwithstanding his late entry into the world of paintings, Tagore was widely exhibited. In 1930, he was the first Indian artist to exhibit his works across Europe, Russia and the United States. The response to his paintings was overwhelming, particularly in France, Germany and Russia. Critics praised his distinct painting style for its bold forms, imaginary creatures and its unusual rhythmic quality. His rendering of human faces in differing moods and manners — melancholic, mysterious, menacing, melodramatic, and romantic — was often described as hypnotic. “The grotesque, the bizarre, the cruel, the sardonic, all that he scrupulously kept out of his writings peeps out of his drawings. This outburst of creative frenzy drawing on submerged levels of consciousness was as much a wonder to him as to others.”

Historians recognise Tagore’s many influences: Haida carvings of North America; New Zealander scrimshaw carvings; German woodcuts and sculpture from the Pacific Islands. His paintings also bore the mark of German expressionists Max Pechstein (1881–1955) and Ernst Ludwig Kirschner (1880–1938).

Tagore believed that in art, man revealed himself, not the object. For him, the truth of art was not in the substance or logic, but in expression. “The picture of a flower in a botanical book is information; its mission ends with our knowledge. But, in pure art, it is a personal communication. And therefore until it finds its harmony in the depth of our personality, it misses the mark.” He perceived the Universe to have but the language of gestures; and that it talked in the voice of pictures and dance. According to him, every object proclaimed in the voiceless signal of lines and colours; and carried with it the miracle of its existence.

Painting was the last art form to enter Tagore’s rich creative life. As Prof Partha Mitter suggests, “the more than 2,000 paintings produced by Tagore in the evening of his life are also, in significant ways, the final flowering of his belief in the universal nature of artistic communication.”

Tagore’s commitment to art was profound. It is said that four years before his death, he lay in coma for more than two days in Santiniketan, following an attack of erysipelas. On recovery, but still in bed, he immediately asked for a brush and colours to paint a landscape!

When Tagore died on August 7, 1941, at the age of 80, rich tributes were paid across the country and outside. “I have met many big people in various parts of the world,” wrote Jawaharlal Nehru.

“But, I have no doubt in my mind that the two biggest I have had the privilege of meeting have been Gandhi and Tagore. I think they have been the two outstanding personalities in the world during the last quarter of a century. As time goes by, I am sure this will be recognised, when all the generals and field marshals and dictators and shouting politicians are long dead and largely forgotten.”