Laughter

Among the two most gifted students of Nandalal Bose, Benode Behari Mukherjee left behind a body of paintings that purely celebrated nature. Among these, the tempera landscape ‘Laughter’ stands out for its exuberance and wild energy. It shows a dense green hillside ignited with scarlet blossoms and fronds of white grass. As in East Asian paintings, whose aesthetics appealed greatly to Mukherjee, the eye travels vertically and the brushwork has a calligraphic fluency.