Landscape

Rabindranath Tagore was primarily known as a writer, poet, playwright, philosopher and aesthetician, founder of a unique educational institution, Visva- Bharati, music composer and choreographer. Tagore’s emergence as a painter began in 1928 when he was 67 years old. Beginning with scratchings and erasures on the pages of his manuscripts during the mid-20s of the 20th Century, he slowly moved towards drawing and painting independent images. Between 1928 and 1940, Rabindranath painted more than 2000 images. He never, gave any title to his paintings however, in the collection of the NGMA they have been titled by the institution. Fed by memories and the subconscious, Rabindranath’s art was spontaneous and dramatic. His images did not represent the phenomenal world but an interior reality. Rabindranath veered towards abstraction in his figuration. Expressionism in European art and the primitive art of ancient cultures inspired him. Fantasy, wild imagination and an innate feel for the absurd gave a distinctive character to his visual language.

The landscape paintings of Rabindranath crystallize this mystical search for the indomitable spirit of nature. The landscapes are always set in the liminal zone between day and night. The gentle descent of dusk was a favourite theme with him. The landscapes always show the foreground dark, brooding tree or a group of trees standing as sentinels. There is always some water and the vista stretches to some distant horizon. The pensive air about them is haunting.

In this painting one can see a landscape full of dark shadows and the twilight glow of the setting sun, filled with a sense of brooding melancholy. The feverish strokes of the crayon implies some indescribable forebodings. Tagore once said of his art “The variegated colours scattered about me are not reflections of outside lights, but belong to the painter himself, and come passion-tinged from his heart.” This landscape seems to capture the essence of this idea.