Rediscovering Haripura Panels: Nandalal Bose

Mahatma Gandhi had wanted something that would be accessible to the common people visiting the session. Elements of the language of the folk arts were skillfully used in defining form.

These bold paintings of common people like the tailer, the drummer, the gardener, the woman cooking and so on have achieved an outstanding stature in the history of modern Indian art.

The NGMA had mounted this exhibition of Haripura Panels for a new generation of art lovers and for a generation who would pleasurably recollect these images, to observe and appreciate this brilliant set of paintings that had been a signpost in the trajectory of Modern Indian art.

In these sketches the artist renders, in subtle yet meticulous line drawings, serene landscapes, bullock carts and the local women of the village, busy in their daily chores.

"For him art was not an elitist activity catering to the dilettante taste of aristocratic patrons. Art was a principle that informed all types of creative activity and it was related to social need."
- Jaya Appasamy

"Nandalal thought of himself as a worker who had a certain responsibility to fulfil. His dharama was to create works that added to and enriched culture, a culture that was not for the few but for the many."
- Jaya Appasamy

"He visited the locale and studied the ethos of the place. He came up with a style that was imaginative, inspired, fluid and spontaneous."
- Jaya Appasamy

He devised an imagery that would communicate itself to the ordinary village folk. Elements of the language of the folk arts were skillfully used in defining form.

"The Mahatma called him to decorate the Haripura Congress pavilion (1938) . He did this with four hundred painted wall-insets (generally referred to as ‘posters’) of which about a hundred he did in his own hand and left the rest to be copied from these by associates."
- K.G Subramanyan

"He considered art as more of a vocation (to answer an inner calling) than a mere profession."
- K.G Subramanyan

In his works, the search for a utopia is informed and directed by a deep consciousness of his immediate environment and surroundings.

"While Nandalal had a great respect for the Indian tradition, he was not a mere copyist as has often been supposed. The past to him was a source of principles and ideas; it had an artistic grammar, that was a discipline for hand and eye."
- Jaya Appasamy

"In spiritual sadhana or discipline the search is for the Unity of creation at the heart of diversity, it is to find the One by knowing which you know the all. In a similar manner art too moves towards its own vision of unity."
- Nandalal Bose

"The past cannot be re-created since the conditions of its history that determined it no longer exist. But like the legacy of our philosophy and music, poetry and drama it is a perennial source of nourishment."
- Jaya Appasamy

"He did not lower himself to the collective consciousness but raised that consciousness to a higher level refining it with taste, order and style."
- Jaya Appasamy

"His themes are imaginative figures, stylized and imbued with his love for decorative form."
- K.G. Subramanyan

"Rhythm was emphasized by the reiteration of lines by curvilinear movements, attenuation, repetition and dots. He did not favour geometrical design or arabesques but preferred the lyrical movements which are characteristic of Bengal."
- Jaya Appasamy

"...he grasps the ethos of Bengal countryside and its human drama with a graphic immediacy born of a sound understanding of Far Eastern brush techniques."
- K.G. Subramanyam

After preliminary interests with the medium of earth paints and folk style painting during his school days in 1908- 1909, Nandalal Bose once again displayed his genius in the same format for realizing the Haripura posters.

It was through drawing that he expressed himself and created a personal idiom. His style is easily recognized by its linear fluency, plasticity and strength.

"The gestures and bodily movements are those seen in our ancient art as much a sin the stance and gait of contemporary people. Nandalal’s achievement was to grasp the essence of form with a minimum of means."
-Jaya Appasamy

"...his works are not mere imitations of form, they are intellectually ordered, controlled by the logic of pictorial necessity and function."
- Jaya Appasamy

"His research and enquiry into animal, plant and bird forms show both analysis and synthesis, a perception of the relationships of parts and their proportions."
- Jaya Appasamy

"The shapes of natural objects were memorized and reduced to design elements that appeared and reappeared in his works. Nature was for him an inexhaustible treasure house of forms."
- Jaya Appasamy

Nandalal Bose, popularly known as the Master Moshai, was born on December 3rd, 1882 in Kharagpur, Monghyr District, Bihar. A disciple of Abanindranath Tagore, he graduated from Government School of Art, Calcutta in 1910.

Nandalal was fascinated by the potential of folk art and indigenous modes of expression and inculcated them in his works although stylising them in a unique representation for depiction and narration of local life.

His explorative temperament with artistic materials allowed him to create a vast body of work. Nandalal Bose's art conjures newness unbound, yet it is flushed with the memories of yesterday.

Inspired by Far Eastern sensibilities that celebrate the traditional, the genius of his art lies in the interplay of sensual silhouettes and his powerful rendering of contemporary themes with the traditions, customs and sensibilities of Indian heritage.

It is this intermingling that invigorates his works and captures the minds of his viewers. He began his artistic career in the fervour of the Swadeshi movement, rejecting western colonial norms of art and taking inspiration from the ancient murals of Ajanta and Bagh caves as well as Mughal miniatures.

His works reflect the changing landscape, portraying people and places at a time when modern India's cultural development was at its threshold. Nandalal Bose died on April 16th, 1966 in Santiniketan, West Bengal. He won several accolades including the Padma Vibhushan by the President of India in 1953.