Childhood and Early Life
Jamini Roy was born in the year 1887 at Beliatore village in the Bankura district of West Bengal. Roy was born into an affluent family of land-owners. His father, Ramataran Roy, resigned from his government services to pursue his interest in art.
In the year 1903, when he was only 16 years old, Jamini Roy left his village and enrolled himself at the Government College of Art. There, he received education under Abanindranath Tagore. Tagore was the vice principal of the college and trained Roy as per the prevailing academic tradition. Roy finished his education in 1908 and was given a Diploma in Fine Arts. Roy was true to the art that he learned and started painting in accordance with the Western classical style. But he straightaway realized that his heart belonged to some other form of art. While there, he learned academic drawing and painting in the Western tradition. After graduating, Roy adopted the simple forms, flat colors, and humble paints of Bengali folk artists. Jamini Roy inspired from the Bengali culture and lifestyle. He was also influenced by the Kalighat paintings.
He had three main goals that he wanted to achieve when it came to his artwork.
- 1. He wanted to make art a form of entertainment that could be easily
accessible to people from all walks of life.
- 2. He
also wanted Indian art to essentially develop its own unique identity.
- 3. Lastly, he wanted to capture the culture that he saw around him and depict the simple lives of the people he saw.
Abanindranath Tagor
Jamini Roy's work from the 1910s and 1920s show the rich variety of his training and choices. He produced, on the one hand, a series of academic-style portraits and figural compositions in oil. On the other hand, a set of romantic studies of the tribal Santhal women of eastern India that carry echoes of Bengal School mannerisms.
It was in the year 1925 that he heard his true calling outside the famous Kalighat temple in Calcutta. After observing a few Kalighat paintings, displayed outside the temple, Jamini instinctively knew what his preference and interest was, when it came to art. He knew that the Bengali folk art could be used as a stone to bring down not two but three birds –a way to simplify and portray the lives of common people; to make his art accessible to all; to bring back the glory of Indian art. From that moment onwards, his paintings started reflecting the Kalighat style of art.
During the 1930s and 1940s, Jamini Roy's paintings serve to represent the passage of new modernist and nativist phases from its earlier academic and nationalist phases. His new "folk" style, drawing heavily on the idioms of local art forms (the rural patachitra, the Kalighat , the clay figurines, and the terracotta temple sculptures of Vishnupur, stands out in this period as a singular example of Indian primitivism, with Jamini Roy as a bearer of a New Left cultural ideology.
By the early 1930s, Jamini Roy became fully conversant with the lines of the Kalighat idiom and produced more number of art works. In 1938, his art works became the first Indian paintings to be displayed at a British-ruled street in Calcutta.
Jamini’s thought process began to bear fruit in the 1940s when his works were bought by average middle-class Indians. What surprised him though was the interest shown by the European community towards purchasing his paintings. With the passage of time, his paintings were only reflecting the indigenous art of Kalighat painting, along with the terracotta's of the Bishnupur temple. In the following years, his works were exhibited at prestigious shows in places like London and New York City. By now, Jamini Roy had accomplished what he had intended to do when he first switched over from the Western classical styleto the folk art of Bengal.
Characteristic of Jamini Roy's work is the diversity of his stylistic experiments, ranging from his bold dark-lined brush drawings to his play with mosaic effects and the scheme of Byzantine icons.
Equally distinctive are the different themes he delved into Santhal archers and drummers, baul and kirtan singers, or his series of paintings on Christ, the Krishna lila, the Ramayana, and some of his most striking portraits of the 1940s, such as those of Rabindranath Tagore and Mahatma Gandhi.
He captured the qualities that are a part of the native folk painting and recombined them with those of his own. He fused the minimal brush strokes of the Kalighat style with elements of tribal art from Bengal.
Abstract art uses a visual language of shape, form, color and line to create a composition which may exist with a degree of independence from visual references in the world. Abstraction indicates a departure from reality in depiction of imagery in art. This departure from accurate representation can be slight, partial, or complete. (Abstract art is considered as the purest form of expression, it allows an artist to communicate their feelings without any restrictions.)
A painting from the Ramayana series. Image from Flickr by Nathan Hughes Hamilton
Jamini Roy’s paintings that belong to the early 1920’s reflect the influences of the Bengal School of art. Initially, he came up with some excellent paintings that marked his entry into the Post-Impressionist genre of landscapes and portraits.
Later in his career, several of his many paintings were based on the everyday life of rural Bengal. Then, there were numerous ones revolving around religious themes like Ramayana, Radha-Krishna, Jesus Christ, etc. Jamini Roy also painted scenes from the lives of the aboriginals called Santhals. Throughout his works, his brush strokes were largely bold and sweeping.
Around mid-1930s, Jamini Roy moved away from the conventional practice of painting on canvases and started painting on materials like cloth, mats and even wood coated with lime. He also started experimenting with natural colors and pigments derived from mud, chalk powder and flowers instead of European paints.
Of all his themes, his feminine images-of gopinis, pujarinis, housewives, and mothers- emerged as the most favored, archetypal Jamini Roy motif: one that most powerfully captured the middle-class imagination of his times and made Jamini Roy a household name in Bengal cultural circles.
In the years around the Second World War and India's independence, the artist reached a high point of fame, as he came to be hailed by Bengal's left-wing cultural elite as the most creative and socially progressive of Indian painters.
Prominent Works
·
Ramayana – Art lovers and
critics would unanimously agree that his 1946 masterpiece ‘Ramayana’ is his
magnum opus. Created using
Kalighatpata style, this particular work of his is a series of paintings
portrayed across 17 canvases. Roy used vegetable colors and pigments derived
from natural elements to narrate his version of the great Indian epic. Sarada
Charan Das, the successor of K.C. Das, bought the entire series, which now
adorns the walls of his residence ‘Rossogolla Bhavan.’ The residence boasts of
the artist’s largest private collection with 25 of his original paintings.
Jamini Roy also came up with individual episodes of Ramayana, some of which are
now displayed in places like the National Art Gallery of India and the Victoria
Memorial Hall.
·
Dual Cats with one Crayfish -
Jamini Roy, during his lifetime, came up with a number of paintings portraying
cats, which are now collectively called as the cat series. This particular art
was created in the year 1968. The painting looks somewhat restrained when it
comes to the usage of colors but has a distinctive style to it.
·
Bride and two Companions –
Painted in the year 1952, this particular piece stands out for its majestic
indigo of Bengal. Critics described this painting as having a meaning and
reason attached to every aspect of it.
·
Crucifixion with Attendant Angels –
This painting depicts the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. Opaque watercolor is
used on a material that is made out of woven palm fiber.
·
Krishna and Balarama –
Lord Krishna is depicted along with his brother Balarama in this painting. Roy
had used distinct earthy colors against a majestic red color backdrop.
·
Santal Boy with Drum –
Jamini Roy came up with a number of paintings depicting the Santal tribe as the
people belonging to this particular tribe fascinated him. This particular
painting was created in the year 1935.
·
Krishna and Radha Series –
Roy created a series of paintings depicting the colorful life of Radha and
Krishna. He even painted the life of Krishna along with his other Gopis
(girlfriends).
·
Makara – ‘Makara’ is a
strange looking sea animal mentioned in the mythological tales of ancient
India. Roy created this painting in the year 1945. While most of his paintings
revolve around people, one might wonder what prompted him to paint this mythological
creature.
·
St. Ann and the Blessed Virgin –
All his paintings that represented the Christian iconography had Hindu idioms,
making his works that much more interesting. This particular painting had three
versions and was created in the year 1945.
·
Seated Woman in Sari –
This is arguably one of the most recognizable works of Jamini Roy. It was
created in the year 1947.
Recognition-Awards
Throughout his glittering career, Jamini Roy won many prestigious awards. Some of the prominent ones are given below:
Viceroy's Gold Medal – In the year 1934, he received this prestigious gold medal for one of his paintings at an all India exhibition.
Jamini Roy is one of the most significant modernists in the world of Indian fine arts of the 20th century and was also honored with one of the highest civilian honours of the country-- Padma Bhushan in the year 1955.
Jamini Roy’s art works have been displayed in museums all over the world. Among the most important museums that showcase his paintings, Victoria and Albert Museum in London are widely recognized by art lovers.Roy’s works can be found in the collections of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the Harn Museum of Art at the University of Florida, and the National Gallery of Modern Art in New Delhi, among others.
In 1955, he became the first Indian painter to be honored with Fellow of the Lalit Kala Akademi by Lalit Kala Akademi, Indian Government's National Academy of Art. Fellow of the Lalit Kala Akademi is the highest honor conferred by the Academy in the field of fine arts.
In the year,1976, a final consecration came after four years of his death on 24th April 1972 , his works were granted the status of "national treasures" by the Government of India.His works were included among the ‘Nine Masters’ by the Archaeological Survey of India. The ‘Nine Masters’ are considered as art treasures because of their artistic and aesthetic value.
Personal Life
He
fathered four sons and a daughter. He spent most of his life in Calcutta and
dedicated almost all his time to his work. Jamini Roy was a simple person and
led a non-materialistic lifestyle. He wasn’t too concerned about making
money and was more focused on taking the glory of Indian art to the world
stage. This perhaps will remain as one of his greatest legacies. Jamini Roy’s
died on April 24, 1972, a few days after he celebrated his 85th birthday.
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