FOUR
Contested Nationalism: The New Delhi and India House Murals
In spite of the dominance of the local and the quotidian in the art of the 1920s and ’30s, historicism continued to display an amazing resilience. Its final efflorescence gave rise to two competing definitions of nationalism, as advocated by the artistic rivals, Bombay and Bengal, between the years 1912 and 1931. In these crucial years, the two provinces fought tooth and nail to win lucrative Raj commissions for the grand historical murals in the New Delhi Secretariat and in India House in London. This section unfolds the story of these murals, bringing out the ambivalent relationship between the British overlords and their Indian subjects, throwing into bold relief the complex interface of colonialism and nationalism. This is also a story of rivalry and ambition, intrigue and character assassination; it is above all the story of one man’s determination to win the primacy of his institution by any means. The man was Gladstone Solomon, the Principal of Sir Jamsethji Jijibhai School of Art in Bombay in the crucial years 1918–36.
THE PRIX DE DELHI AND THE MURALS FOR THE NEW CAPITAL
Competition among artists for decorating the public buildings of New Delhi became inevitable once the decision to build the new imperial capital was made public by King George v at the magnificent Durbar held in Delhi in 1911. Almost immediately, a heated controversy broke out over the choice of style: Western or Eastern? The influential E. B. Havell, Principal of the government art school in Calcutta (1893–1906), led those who championed a purely Indian style, to be realized by indigenous craftsmen, as the only way to promote India’s much-needed artistic revival.1 However, attempts to win the main urban plan for Indian architects ultimately failed, because the weight of opinion was in favour of a European architect. The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) nominated Sir Edwin Landseer Lutyens in 1912, an eminent architect who had acquired a high reputation as a builder of elegant English country villas, a nomination eagerly accepted by the Indian government. A dyed-in-the-wool Classicist, Lutyens abhorred any form of decoration in his buildings, especially Hindu decoration, stating, ‘Personally I do not believe there is any real Indian architecture or any great tradition.’ Hence, he insisted on ‘the influence of a Western style – i.e. logic, and not the mad riot of the tom-tom’. Armed with this ‘rational’ style, he wished to encourage India’s ‘amazing sense of the supernatural, with its compliment [sic] of profound fatalism and enduring patience’.2
Viceroy Lord Hardinge, weighing the political cost of openly flouting Indian sentiment in a period of mounting political unrest, favoured a strong indigenous element in Delhi. Imposing a European style would also be a betrayal of imperial trusteeship. The trauma of 1857 had dented Raj confidence in fashioning India in the progressive Western image. Henceforth, Indo-Sarasenic architecture came to symbolize the ‘Oriental Raj’ that held together the conglomeration of races, castes and religions under stern paternalism.3 The compromise solution for Delhi was ‘Western architecture with an Oriental motif’, reflecting the notion of senior and junior partners in the empire. Indians were to take charge of decoration in which they excelled, whilst the conception, design and overall control should and must remain with Europeans.4
Sir Herbert Baker, who had become celebrated for his public buildings in South Africa, volunteered his own views on the envisaged capital in The Times of 3 October 1912. Lutyens, he ventured, ‘concentrated his extraordinary powers . . . on the abstract and geometrical qualities, to the disregard of human and national sentiment’.5 Not that he disagreed with Lutyens on the guiding principles, which must be modern and Western. But Baker was prepared to incorporate certain resonant elements from Indian architecture because ‘sentiment and tradition have such a deep signi-ficance’ in the sub-continent. Like a number of romantic imperialists, Baker saw the Empire as a true successor to Pax Romana, with its medley of cultures and races. Since nowhere was this more true than in India, Baker wished to seize this opportunity to celebrate the unity gifted to India by Pax Britannica and the imposition of Western rational order on the Eastern riot of imagination.6 The letter also made clear that he would be the ideal choice to soften Lutyens’s uncompromising Classicism, an argument that won him the collaboration with Lutyens. The senior partner would design the urban layout and the Viceroy’s House, the seat of imperial authority, while Baker would be responsible for the two wings of the Imperial Secretariat flanking the processional avenue leading up to the House. These two eminent architects had been friends for many years. Hardinge, who took the credit for this compromise solution, was in accord with the Raj view that the main architectural plan was to remain European, while Indians could profitably be employed in many of the details.
Next came decoration. In 1913, the pro-Indian lobby in Britain, led by the influential India Society, published a substantive report on traditional Indian masons, carvers and master-builders. In response to a petition drawn up by this lobby and signed by prominent figures in Britain, the government gave public reassurance of its intention to use New Delhi as a ‘school’ for encouraging Indian decorative skills.7 A studio for Indian craftsmen, supervised by an Indian, to work on wood and stone carvings for the buildings, was one of the ideas mooted by the government. In 1912, Percy Brown, Principal of the Calcutta art school, proposed a workshop for architectural decoration in order to train his students for New Delhi. Hardinge, aware of the orientalists’ disappointment at Brown’s recent appointment to the school (see Chapter Three), cold-shouldered the idea, proposing instead Abanindranath’s pupil Samarendranath Gupta, Deputy Principal of the Mayo School of Art in Lahore, as supervisor of the studio.8
These plans were interrupted by the Great War of 1914–18. But as the official buildings reached an advanced stage of completion in the early 1920s, the question of decoration once again loomed large. Special consideration was given to the Durbar Hall in the Viceroy’s House, conceived as the ritual centre of the imperium, its symbolism derived from the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan’s Diwan i-Aam i-Khass at Agra. Lutyens contemplated a continuous frieze adapted from indigenous art, but clearly recalling Roman narrative cycles. The work would serve as a school for Indian artists, for without ‘the benefit of such a school or meticulous tutoring and supervision . . . no Indian painter was sufficiently imaginative and adaptable to create a coherent design’.9
Lutyens was well aware of Indian nationalist sentiment through his wife Emily, their friend Annie Besant and the Theosophists, all of whom closely identified with Indian culture. His wife, a niece of Lord Lytton (Viceroy 1876–80) and a pioneering suffragette, represents British imperialism’s obsession with the spiritual alternative to material progress, as exemplified, for instance, by Sir Francis Younghusband. An aggressive imperialist, he had brought Tibet to its knees and yet longed for the spirituality of this defeated nation that he found lacking in the West. Luytens’s own ambivalence towards Indians was not helped by the growing crisis in his marriage. His view is summed up in a letter to his wife: ‘No one seems well here – no vigour . . . The squalor, unkempt ugliness, the dirt, the lassitude is depressing – and oh the flies wherever natives are left alone – horrible.’10 Hence he was keen to use the Delhi project as an education for Indian artists, a missing counterpart to ‘the immense material and intellectual benefits brought to India by the English’. In 1916, he sent a memorandum to the Committee in charge of Building the Capital, proposing an applied Indian School at Delhi, in the medieval European guild tradition, to promote the fine arts of painting. On 30 March 1922, Lutyens presented a ‘Joint Memorandum for the Encouragement of Indian Art’ to the same Committee, this time signed also by Baker and Hugh Keeling, Chief Engineer in charge of building the new capital. The memorandum put forward the Prix de Delhi scheme for decorating the capital. The prize students would be offered government commissions, helping this Indian school in the capital to spread its ‘influence and labours over the whole subcontinent’.11
There were compelling precedents for the choice of mural decorations for New Delhi. To nineteenth-century nationalists, nothing less than historic murals on an epic scale adorning public spaces could truly serve the nation. The political potential of murals was fully realized with the spread of Gesamtkunstwerk ideas in architecture, an example of which was the Palace of Westminster, completed in the 1840s. (Gesamtkunstwerk or the marriage of the different arts was a Wagnerian idea that affected William Morris’s notion of architecture as the mother of all the arts, for instance.) Ruskin had described the architect as a mere large-scale frame-maker unless he was also a painter and a sculptor.12 By the 1860s even the Royal Academy, the bastion of easel painting, judged artists by their ability to produce decorative murals.13 The patron saint of murals was the Frenchman, Puvis de Chavannes, whose murals for the nation in the Panthéon in Paris had become justly celebrated. Take also the case of Alphons Mucha. The Czech poster artist had made his fame and fortune in fin-de-siècle Paris; in 1899, in a fit of conscience, he pledged that ‘the remainder of my life would be filled exclusively with work for the nation’. His impressive murals on the Slav nationalist struggle adorn the Municipal Building of Prague.14 The Mexican murals of Diego Rivera, Alfaro Siqueiros and José Clemente Orozco in the 1920s were surely the apotheosis of the public mural project and yet unknown to India until as late as the 1940s.15
In 1902–4 E. B. Havell, head of the art school in Calcutta, who put forward the idea of decorating Indian homes with murals in the manner of Gothic Revivalists, first planted the idea of nationalist murals. In order to equip his students with indigenous fresco techniques, Havell brought in traditional muralists from Rajasthan. His efforts were unfortunately confined to a few experimental fresco buono slabs in the Jaipur method produced by his young collaborator, Abanindranath. A master of delicate miniatures, Abanindranath did not have much luck with large-scale works.16 During the Swadeshi unrest of 1905, Nivedita, the Irish disciple of Vivekananda and a mentor of the nationalist artists of Bengal, proposed that public buildings be decorated with epic murals to serve as modern temples to the nation. The ancient Buddhist frescoes at Ajanta, rediscovered in the nineteenth century, were promptly adopted by the nationalists as a model for emulation. In 1909–11, Christiana Herringham, a moving force in the English mural movement and a translator of Cennini’s Il libro dell’ arte o trattato della pittura (c. 1390), visited India in order to copy the Ajanta frescoes. Nivedita arranged for Abanindranath’s pupils to assist her so that they might gain first-hand experience of these ancient achievements.17
Abanindranath Tagore, Kacha o Devjani, 1906, fresco on stone slab. |
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THE WISDOM OF SOLOMON
When the Raj decided on embellishing the New Delhi buildings with murals, it naturally turned to the two leading government art schools in Bombay and Calcutta. By 1915 Calcutta had stolen a march on Bombay, establishing non-illusionist oriental art as the true expression of the Indian spirit, its claim heartily endorsed by the colonial regime, the self-appointed guardians of ‘traditional art’. In the darkening political horizon, the regime considered artistic nationalism to be a safer alternative to terrorist ‘outrages’.18 As the art establishment, the Bengal School creamed off lucrative state patronage, causing widespread envy or emulation by artists in other regions. The orientalist art theory penetrated even Bombay, the bastion of the ‘Westernizers’. Ravi Shankar Rawal, a promising student of the Bombay art school, defected to the orientalist camp, sacrificing his promising career as a portrait painter. An admirer of Mahatma Gandhi and Rabindranath Tagore, he set up a modest art school in Ahmedabad in 1919, which gave rise to a Gujarati version of orientalism. Rawal won the coveted gold medal of the Bombay Art Society with a picture treated in a ‘flat’ Rajput manner, which however was dismissed by a disgruntled Parsi artist of Western persuasion as merely ‘a printed label on mill cloth’.19
With Calcutta’s unimpeded ascendancy, Bombay’s decline was widely accepted as inevitable. The situation was dramatically reversed in 1918 with the retirement of Cecil Burns as Principal (1896–1918), which ended the era of the old guards, haphazard developments and endless vacillations over the school’s objectives. William Ewart Gladstone Solomon, the son of a South African politician of Jewish extraction settled in Britain, arrived from London to take charge of the school on 25 November 1918. The Indian Headmaster M. V. Dhurandhar vividly recalls the day in his memoirs. As he was the senior Indian teacher at the school, his new boss curtly instructed him to submit his works for inspection.20 This assertion of authority by European superiors to remind the Indian staff of their subordinate status was a routine practice in government institutions. Being sufficiently impressed with his works, Solomon mellowed, thus laying the foundations of future collaborations on a series of key projects. In time, Solomon even came to treat the Indian teacher with affection. Ambitious, bristling with energy, relentlessly pursuing his objective of undermining Bengal’s artistic pre-eminence, Solomon left his personal stamp on the school in its crucial years.
Solomon was determined to inject a new energy into the moribund art school and provide a persuasive ‘indigenous’ alternative to Abanindranath’s orientalism, the favoured recipient of imperial largesse: Abanindranath’s pupils, for instance, ran premier art institutions in Jaipur, Lucknow, Madras and Lahore, to name only the major ones. But such favours paled into insignificance with the announcement of the government’s ambitious mural project. Solomon resolved to wrest as large a slice of the imperial cake for his students as possible. This he did in well-planned stages that involved making mural painting the cornerstone of art teaching, in order to bid successfully for the New Delhi murals. Solomon enjoyed an advantage. The ground had already been prepared by Solomon’s predecessors at the school, Lockwood Kipling and John Griffiths, who had secured commissions for their students to decorate public buildings.21 Solomon himself had the advantage of training at the Royal Academy in marouflage (a mural technique consisting of attaching large painted canvases on to the walls as part of decoration instead of painting directly on to the wall). In 1900 his wall panel won him an RA travelling scholarship to study historical murals in Italy. The Studio published it in 1902, with the complaint that the young man was a realist ‘who does not see’.22
W.E.G. Solomon, The Masque of Cupid, c. 1902, oil on canvas (from The Studio, XXV, 1902).
A veteran of World War I, Captain Solomon’s war experience had prepared him for planning the school’s future with military efficiency, each measure a step towards making it the leading art institution in India. However, in order to carry out any reform at all he needed a free hand within the school. This involved the tricky business of divesting the all-powerful Director of Public Instruction (DPI) and his cronies of their hold over the school.23 Events, however, played into his hands. In 1915, the DPI had appointed R. W. Hogarth, a corrupt and incompetent man, as Inspector of Drawing to exercise control over the school.24 Solomon found this situation intolerable. Being a consummate strategist, he had an instinctive grasp of the precise source of power. Having gained the ear of the Governor of Bombay, Solomon succeeded in curbing not only Hogarth but also the DPI’s control over the school. Impressed with Solomon’s single-mindedness, Sir George Lloyd became a fervent champion of his reforms.25 Nor did Solomon underestimate the importance of the local press in shaping public opinion, taking the two leading dailies, the government mouthpiece Times of India and the local nationalist paper the Bombay Chronicle, into his confidence.26
Fresh from this strategic victory, Solomon divested the school of the foundational South Kensington curriculum with decorative arts as its cornerstone. This is unsurprising since Solomon had been nurtured at the rival institution, the Royal Academy, with its fine art bias. In December 1919 he made the revolutionary break by introducing drawing from the nude as a sine qua non for large-scale, many-figured mural compositions. The occasional employment of undraped models was not previously unknown, and indeed under his predecessor Cecil Burns students had turned out life-size figures for mural decoration, but the systematic use of nude models was new.27 The early history of South Kensington, the mentor of Indian art schools, had been one of resistance to this central doctrine of the Renaissance. Solomon’s reform also challenged the prevailing opinion that Indians were capable only of flat decorative drawing. This ‘naturalization’ of the Royal Academy practice finally consecrated the school as a ‘fine arts’ institution, a process that had started in the late nineteenth century. Solomon’s task was made easier by the fact that his Indian deputy Dhurandhar was a devotee of the nude.28
The year was barely out when Solomon set in motion his pivotal scheme of starting mural painting as an advanced specialist course. The first generation of students, notably S. Fernandes, A. R. Bhonsale, G. H. Nagarkar and N. L. Joshi, undertook the decoration of the school walls in earnest, the crowning achievement being an experimental lunette, Kala Deva Pratistha (Installation of the God of Art), measuring 308 m2. Executed in the central hall, it marked the ritual inauguration of the school’s new calling. The Governor duly unveiled the murals at a prize-giving ceremony in 1920, offering a generous sum to the school as an encouragement. The public viewing of the murals soon followed.29
The murals aimed at combining European naturalism with Indian decorative ‘sensibility’. Solomon, who had a weakness for allegories in the manner of Alphons Mucha, encouraged students to paint personifications of the four quarters of the day and the four [European] seasons.30 Two prizes were instituted, one for mural design and another for enlarging figures to scale from small sketches to life-size, a prerequisite for any large figure composition. Drawing and painting from the nude now occupied the pride of place in the school. As Solomon was to argue later, every ‘student’s colour is his own. But he may be taught to draw correctly . . . [When] a student can draw the human head and the human figure accurately [he] has mastered the grammar of the language of Art.’31 The visiting English portrait painter Oswald Birley wrote approvingly in 1935 that ‘the work of the Life classes in the Bombay School of Art is well up to the level of the standards of European Schools of Art’.32 In 1923 a commission to decorate the Government House in Bombay followed. A medallion and three panels on the theme of personification were executed in its Durbar Hall, the four of them measuring 396 x 213 cm each, with life-size figures, demonstrating the success of the new department.
Art School, Bombay, Drawing from the Nude, c. 1920s, pencil on paper.
However strongly Solomon may have stressed the importance of naturalistic drawing for large-scale murals, he must have known that even in Bombay winds of orientalism had been blowing for some time. The journalist Vasudev Metta, otherwise sympathetic to the murals, commented on their ‘un-Indian’ character.33 Back in 1904, the Times of India, the official organ of the province, had made unflattering comparisons between Bengal and Bombay on grounds of cultural authenticity, dismissing Dhurandhar’s paintings as lacking in national characteristics.34 In 1907 the paper again castigated Dhurandhar, as well as M. F. Pithawala and Rustam Seodia. Instead it praised Jamini Prokash Gangooly, an ally of the Bengali orientalists, who had ‘the same decorative arrangement of line and harmony of colour . . . so much prized in the ancient Persian and Indian pictures’. The reviewer concluded:
V. G. Shenoy, The Gupta Period, c. 1920s, watercolour on paper, student work for Delhi murals inspired by an Alphons Mucha poster. |
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Unknown artist, Composition with Figures, 1926, gouache on paper, student work. |
It is a scathing commentary upon the standard of taste possessed by the princes and wealthy merchants of India, that, at a time when the voice of the swadeshiwallah is heard so loud in the land, the walls of their palaces and houses should be lined by third class European originals, or cheap reproductions of the vulgarities of Italian or French painting, while imaginative and beautiful works . . . by painters like [Abanindranath] Tagore and Gangooly, are neglected.35
Abanindranath Tagore, Female Figure in Landscape, c. 1910, watercolour on paper.
With such a powerful body of opinion, one simply could not ignore the ‘language’ of Indian art, as enunciated by the Bengal School. Solomon proceeded to learn it with alacrity if only to beat the enemy at his own game. Ajanta murals, the national symbol, had been copied by John Griffiths’s students in Bombay between 1872 and 1881, but it was only in 1909, under the impact of the Bengal School, that ‘pilgrimages’ to this nationalist ‘shrine’ became de rigueur. Solomon took his students to the caves in 1921 in order to study the paintings, claiming that these paintings vindicated his own approach to art. Rejecting orientalist ‘pretensions’ that such art could spring from religious dedication alone, he argued that they demonstrated a ‘scientific’ approach and the constant use of living models:
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[in] every phase of these decorations pulses a throbbing, vigorous, energetic life . . . They were a band of tremendously practical hard workers. This is a point that cannot be too strongly insisted upon today when there exists a tendency to approach Indian art from the mystical or antiquarian rather than the genuinely artistic point of view.36
Solomon’s target here was the denigration of life drawing as un-Indian and grossly materialist by the orientalists. Solomon questioned the orientalist abolition of life classes in Calcutta, vigorously defending Bombay’s curriculum with its core teaching of drawing from the antique and from life. The ‘Classic’ styles of Europe and India, he contended, could be combined without any harm to the student. If indeed Greek theory was understood better, it would help the Indian student tackle his own ‘decorative’ heritage more effectively.37 In short, figure study could only strengthen Indian decorative skill, since ‘the inherent love of . . . decorative drawing has been a religious ordinance ever since Vedic times [and was a] deeply-rooted national talent’.38
In keeping with the tradition of British art teachers in India, Solomon published a number of books on Indian art, including Ajanta, partly to propagate his own ‘Indian Art Renaissance’.39 Solomon’s basic credo was that style, whether Eastern or Western, must be chosen in accordance with the needs of a specific mural. But regardless of style, it must be grounded in Western ‘scientific’ figure drawing. He mocked the orientalists ‘who profess to foresee deadly danger in progressive discoveries in art such as drawing a life size figure accurately from life’. Yet Solomon refused to face the uncomfortable fact that the new generation of students was drawn to oriental art as a nationalist discourse which he dismissed as mere expediency.40
Not only through his writings but also through his speeches Solomon engaged in shadow boxing with his orientalist adversaries, constantly challenging their claims to cultural authenticity. Open hostility between him and the orientalists of Bengal broke out almost the moment Bombay’s mural department gained publicity. In October 1921 O. C. Gangoly, editor of the orientalist organ Rupam, took up the cudgels on their behalf.41 Havell, the mentor of the Bengal School, had returned to London in 1906, but continued to make vigorous interventions in Raj art policy from there. He was plainly outraged by the developments in Bombay. It particularly galled him that Solomon had won government support for public murals, the very genre that Havell had sought to make the cornerstone of his own revival. Conversely, to Solomon and his ally, Kanhaiyalal Vakil, the waspish journalist at the Bombay Chronicle, Abanindranath’s mentor was their natural target. Vakil was to unload his vitriol in ‘Humours of Havellism’.42
In 1920 no sooner had the mutual back-slapping over the murals of the Government House in Bombay died down, than the state visit of the British Heir Apparent offered Solomon’s students a particularly ambitious public project. Outraged by the Amritsar Massacre of 1919, Mahatma Gandhi launched his Non-Cooperation movement the following year against what he dubbed the ‘immoral’ empire. On 21 October 1921, the Congress Working Committee passed a resolution that ‘it is the duty of every Indian soldier and civilian to sever his connection with the Government and find some other means of livelihood’.43 The visit of the Prince of Wales in November, which was a gesture to mollify Indian public opinion, was seen for what it was, and boycotted by the Congress. Bombay, being close to Gandhi’s power base in Gujarat, was chosen as the likely site for the demonstration of loyalty to the crown. The provincial government embarked on a lavish welcome with the help of the art school, a state institution. Dhurandhar, entrusted by Solomon with realizing the ambitious project, describes it in his memoir. What a difference it was from Dhurandhar’s earlier work in 1905 for the Principal Cecil Burns. For that royal visit, Dhurandhar had prepared a sizeable ‘bird’s-eye view’ perspective drawing of the Alexandra Docks of Bombay. For his efforts he received a small fee and an impersonal letter of thanks from Burns.44
Because of the political stakes involved, the Bombay reception committee of 1921 conceived the idea of massive pylons (rather than arches) to be placed at prominent street corners in Bombay to give scope for ambitious decoration. A modest sum of 8,000 rupees was initially allowed for the entire work. On Dhurandhar’s advice, however, Solomon approached the committee for the much larger sum of 20,000 rupees in order to carry out the job properly. This was sanctioned on condition that the work be completed in eight days. Dhurandhar was the right choice for such a large-scale work, as seen earlier in 1905 and later in New Delhi. Because of the short time within which he had to deliver, Dhurandhar farmed out the work among local artists in addition to his senior students so that each one of them had to execute only two to four paintings within the deadline.45
The decoration of the pylons was finished within a record six days. The 54 m high figures, inspired by the Hindu pantheon, stood on 1.5 m high plinths, ‘displaying multifarious emblems’. When they were complete, Solomon took the Indian Headmaster in his automobile to admire them, declaring that ‘the emblems . . . of the Gods, far from being a complex burden seemed in this instance a pure joy and solace to their delineators’.46 That joy was short-lived. Of course, as the main author of the venture, Dhurandhar received the encomia of the pro-government press. Solomon seized the opportunity to publicize the pylons in the Times of India. However, furious letters from the Hindu nationalists to the Bombay Chronicle excoriated Dhurandhar for the depiction of Hindu gods on the pylons, demeaning them by making them wait upon the mleccha (polluting foreigner) rulers. (In the late nineteenth-century the Maharastran revolutionary terrorist Chapekar had publicly branded the British as mlechhas.) As the main identifiable ‘perpetrator’, Dhurandhar was forced to seek police protection after receiving anonymous death threats. On 31 October 1921, Solomon asked Dhurandhar anxiously whether the head-dresses and the familiar symbols should be removed from the figures so that they could no longer be identified as Hindu gods. They could then represent abstract qualities like ‘justice’, ‘love’ or ‘art’. On the day of the Prince’s visit, the streets of Bombay were deserted except for pitched battles between the loyalists who came out to welcome the Prince and their nationalist enemies.47
In spite of the debacle, the art school collected rich dividends from this display of loyalty. Solomon proclaimed himself a facilitator of Indian nationalism, viewing the project as a triumphal union of naturalism with Indian decoration. The presence of nationalist politicians at the school prize-giving ceremony the following year further vindicated the ‘nationalist’ character of his efforts: ‘the School’s compound is neutral ground where rival factions fraternally mix, where Cosmopolitan hearts beat in unison to the gentle but irresistible music of Saraswati’s Vina which can still the pulsations of Politics . . .’.48 Grateful for this demonstration of loyalty, Sir George Lloyd proclaimed that ‘the lines upon which the Principal and the School then chose to work were emphatically the right lines – the lines of assimilating to the national Indian genius the best in modern art . . . I have always held that successful art in India must be . . . backed by national enthusiasm.’49 Since Bombay had made European drawing the foundation of Indian art, Indianization had not taken ‘the form of a return to a hide-bound convention, but is acquiring a real sense of form and colour, and at the same time developing the decorative instinct, which so strongly national in character’. It is well to recall here the 1935 Act, offering autonomy to Indians, which was delayed for at least two years by the determined resistance of the ‘“die-hard” group led by . . . Churchill and Lord Lloyd’.50 A romantic imperialist, Lloyd had his own ideas about promoting cultural nationalism in the empire, art being one of his pet projects. In appreciation of Solomon’s efforts during the royal visit, Lloyd declared eight scholarships for the fledgling mural class.51
Solomon was acutely aware of the economic implications of the school’s success, firmly setting his sights on public commissions for the mural class. In a public lecture in September 1923, he appealed to the municipal authorities to offer his students public spaces to paint and to hold public competitions to select art works for them.52 The appeal in itself was not that different from the concerns of the previous art teachers who had consistently secured public commissions. But Solomon had his sights beyond mere local sponsorship. He wanted a larger share in the British Empire Exhibition planned for Wembley in 1924. Such a coup would strike at the very heart of Bengal’s domination of the art world. Equally important, the exhibition would also enable Solomon to enlist the support of the influential India Society of London in his bid for the Delhi murals.53
THE BRITISH EMPIRE EXHIBITION
The Government of India planned an ambitious display of the natural and artificial products of the empire in 1924, including contemporary Indian art, as a triumph of enlightened patronage. What better way to publicize the success of the new mural class than to win a prominent place in this lavish imperial showcase? Prima facie this was an uphill task for Solomon because in official circles the Bengal School was synonymous with contemporary art in India. Sir William Rothenstein, head of the Royal College of Art, wrote to his friend Rabindranath Tagore on 6 April 1923:
[Laurence] Binyon, [William] Foster & myself are acting as official advisers in the matter of Indian representation in the Fine Art section at next year’s Exhibition. We feel that if your nephews could send over their collection of paintings we could show a portion of them & give our people here a chance of seeing the extent and quality of the portfolios.54
Abanindranath’s disciples, a number of whom headed government art schools, were entrusted with the selection of works for Wembley. A Fine Arts Committee was formed which included two orientalists, O. C. Gangoly, the ideologue of the Bengal School, and Samarendranath Gupta, Deputy Principal of the Mayo School of Art in Lahore. However, in order to appear even-handed, Lionel Heath, Principal of the Mayo School, and Solomon were also nominated to the committee. Once there, with the dedicated support of Lloyd and his own forceful canvassing, Solomon was able to secure a strong representation for Bombay.55 His students were invited to send an entire Indian Room, decorated by the different departments, in a triumphant demonstration of Gesamtkunstwerk. Dhurandhar organized the work, which took nine months to complete. On the eve of his retirement, Lloyd paid a last visit to the school to admire the Indian Room before it was shipped to London.56
Entirely built of Malabar teak, the Indian Room boasted a richly painted ceiling, depicting the Hindu sun god Surya and the eight planets, and was embellished with decorative borders of Ajantan inspiration.
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The Indian Room at the Empire Exhibition, Wembley, 1924, photograph. |
Though Solomon claimed to have preferred actual frescoes to prove Bombay’s credentials in this area, for convenience of shipping the students used the marouflage technique. However, we must not forget that Solomon’s speciality was marouflage. The seven main oil panels of different dimensions, executed by the senior students, were of individual inspiration to emphasize the range at the risk of sacrificing overall unity. The carpets, furniture and sculptures were contributed by different departments. To put a final touch to the school’s claims to excellence, Mhatre’s celebrated student work, the plaster sculpture To the Temple, originally exhibited in 1896, greeted the visitors at the entrance.57 To coincide with the exhibition, Solomon’s book The Bombay Revival of Indian Art was on sale in London. Before leaving for Wembley, he had sent an inscribed copy to Dhurandhar in appreciation, ‘A souvenir of the sunshine and gloom through which we have passed together since Nov 25th 1918.’58 Ostensibly the story of the developments at the school, its true purpose was to make the case for a rival ‘renaissance’. Each chapter relentlessly trumpeted the superiority of Bombay’s naturalist methods over those of Calcutta. In a comparative account of different mural traditions, the chapter on Bombay was placed judiciously next to ancient Ajanta, inviting the intelligent reader to draw the obvious conclusion.59
Despite Solomon’s efforts, it must be said that orientalism remained the acknowledged style of contemporary Indian art at Wembley. Bombay was only a small part of this vast imperial exercise. The exhibition aimed at catholicity in not excluding any established artist, but the colonial art centres dominated.60 Salon artists from Bombay included Dhurandhar and his colleague A. X. Trindade, the veteran portraitists Pestonji Bomanji and M. F. Pithawala, the ‘Open Airists’ S. L. Haldankar, R. D. Panwalkar and M. K. Parandekar as well as S. P. Agaskar, L. N. Tasker and M. V. Athavale. The Last Touch by Pestonji was priced at 200 guineas, and the much-praised Glory of Pandharpur by Dhurandhar at £150. The Empire Review described it as a ‘remarkable pictorial record of a no less remarkable scene. This widely known artist gave us . . . a vivid glimpse of a celebrated place . . . The crowd he has depicted . . . with such wonderful fervour.’61 The aristocratic amateur Panth Pratinidhi of Aundh also managed to be included. Punjab was represented by Allah Bukhsh, Thakur Singh and A. R. Ashgar, while Calcutta sent members of the Indian Academy of Art, Hemendramath Mazumdar, Jamini Roy and B. C. Law.
Asit Haldar, Shiva and Parvati, c. 1924, watercolour on paper.
The orientalist heavyweights included Gaganendranath, Abanindranath and his disciples, Kshitindranath Majumdar, Nandalal Bose, Sailendranath Dey, Sarada Ukil, Asit Haldar and K. Venkatappa, as well as the younger generation, namely Samarendranath Gupta, Roop Krishna, Bireswar Sen and the precocious Deviprosad Roy Chowdhury. We have already encountered his self-portrait (p. 169) and Lotus Pond (p. 30) shown at Wembley. His supple, erotically charged figures were a departure from the Bengal School that anticipated his powerful fleshy sculptures.62 The prominent orientalists from outside Bengal were Samuel Fyzee-Rahamin and Abdur Rahman Chughtai. The ‘naïve’ paintings of Sunayani Devi, who was by now a modernist icon, also featured at Wembley, as well as the work of the Andhran Damerla Rama Rao. Mukul Dey, already a familiar figure in the art world of London, was entrusted with decorating the exhibition site with murals, receiving wide publicity in the process. Atul Bose, who was at the Royal Academy at the time, was also invited, possibly by Dey, to decorate the exhibition pavilion. His refusal to do so caused a lasting enmity between them.63
The contemporary Indian art section was well covered in the press. In Rupam, Vasudev Metta gave a favourable account of Bengal’s contribution.64 In the Empire Review, Lionel Heath, Principal of Lahore art school, paid a tribute to the Tagores as the main artistic inspiration in India, while singling out the independent orientalist from Lahore, Abdur Rahman Chughtai, for his ‘beauty of line and composition . . .’.65 The Studio, the oldest ally of the orientalists, invited their chief ideologue, O. C. Gangoly, to review the show. Refusing to acknowledge the presence of any other style, Gangoly repeated what had become a well-worn cliché: ‘the coining of types from the inner vision, untrammelled by the limitations of a living model, is a distinguishing feature of orientalism’.66 Gangoly then proceeds to play courtier to his imperial patrons:
It is said that the supreme significance of the British connection in India is to help modern India to recover the glories of her ancient culture. In the sphere of art, the sleeping princess is opening her eyes to the golden touch of British sympathy. She appears to have sent precious jewels to add to the lustre of the Imperial crown.67
The Bengal Government under Lord Ronaldshay (now the Marquess of Zetland) had been the champion of the Bengal School whose achievements seemed to be self-evident in Wembley. In Rothenstein’s letter of 6 April we learn of plans to acquire the works of the Bengal School at Wembley ‘for a national museum’ in London.68 A letter from the members of the India Society was published in Indian Art and Letters, backing the purchase of these works for a nominal sum of £200 to be the nucleus of a permanent gallery of modern Indian art in London. It was signed by powerful figures, including its President, Sir Francis Younghusband, intrepid explorer, ruthless imperialist and a devotee of Eastern spirituality, as well as E. B. Havell and Lord Carmichael, former Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal.69 Wembley was the first grand display of imperial patronage in which Bombay received considerable recognition but it still had an uphill task against the orientalist hold on Western imagination.
THE BATTLE FOR THE NEW DELHI COMMISSION
Wembley became a battleground for the rival schools of Bengal and Bombay. Havell penned a scathing attack in Indian Art and Letters on the ‘schoolboyish’ work of the Bombay students. They, he complained in Rupam, filled nearly half the gallery, the remaining space being divided between Bengal and the Punjab. However,
in spite of the unsympathetic atmosphere in which they are placed, a few of the exhibits of the Bengali artists stand out from the rest and dominate the whole Gallery as the work of artists who have something to tell which is worth telling, who are sure of themselves and of their art – artists who have ‘arrived’.70
Solomon visited London in 1924 ostensibly to attend the empire spectacle but also to win over the India Society, the redoubt of orientalism which had a ‘casting vote’ in the decision on the New Delhi murals. On 23 October he addressed the Society, countering Lord Ronaldshay who had recently reminded the Society of the importance of the Bengal School. Solomon concentrated on two of Bombay’s claims: they were the first to discover Ajanta and they had a systematic training in sculpture, both of which qualified them for their ‘alternative’ mural project. In addition, Solomon’s Royal Academy experience of figure study reinforced the existing Indian talent for decorative murals, correcting the tendency to ‘overspiritualize’. Offering economic reasons for the present artistic stagnation in Bombay, he demanded that Bombay be made the ‘spokesman for Indian artists’, in India’s artistic revival.71
A conference on future government art policy centring on state patronage, organized by the India Society, was held at Wembley on Monday, 2 June 1924. Recently ennobled Lord Lloyd and Solomon dominated the conference from the start, since the orientalists and their well-wishers had been unprepared for the onslaught planned by the duo. Only Rothenstein raised a lone voice of protest.72 Chairing the meeting, Sir Francis Younghusband addressed the need to pay attention to the artistic development of India in a tone of benign paternalism. As the chief speaker, Lloyd began by re-affirming his faith ‘in the Indian artist and in the value on his mission to the world’, in a tacit acknowledgement of the orientalist contribution.73 Since the meeting was organized by the India Society, he felt he needed to make this diplomatic gesture towards the Bengal School. Art schools in India, Lloyd reminded his audience, occupied ‘a very unique position, because in that country there exist no salons, or academies, or rather Art Control apart from these institutions’. Lloyd was simply reaffirming the propaganda value of art institutions for the colonial government, a cornerstone of imperial art policy since the 1850s. Despite recent eclecticism, he admitted, the Bengal School had retained its oriental (though not always Indian) flavour, as well as its immediately recognizable conventions. Lloyd then proceeded to expatiate on Bombay’s unique position by invoking Mhatre’s famous work. Except for Calcutta, no other art school practised the fine arts. Not only was the city close to Ajanta but it enjoyed active public patronage, and had a fund of unexpended energy which could be usefully applied to awaken ‘Indian artistic sense’. He readily accepted that Bombay had lost its artistic purpose for a while and took the credit for encouraging ‘Solomon to start murals with stipends and strong life study’ because the murals would compensate for the lack of public art galleries. Lloyd’s talk received the endorsement of the Indian commissioner on the Wembley committee, who was also keen to see Bengal’s monopoly ended.74
Following Lloyd’s ‘temperate’ yet persuasive presentation of Bombay’s case, Solomon introduced his favourite refrain, the success of naturalism at the school: ‘some of the drawings and paintings of the undraped figure compare favourably with some of the best art schools in the West, considering it has been such a short time’.75 Was he causing the ‘de-orientation’ of the student body? Solomon reassured his audience: ‘No – there is no fear of that. They are being taught to copy not Europe but nature, and Nature cannot be a faulty teacher.’76 It is worth pondering that until the 1950s, nature was considered by art critics to be a neutral domain that needed to be reproduced faithfully in art, a notion of the unbiased ‘innocent’ eye that has been seriously questioned in the post-war years.77
The high point of the session was the passing of the Prix de Delhi resolution proposed by Lloyd and seconded by Solomon, an idea that had originated with Lloyd’s friend Lutyens, as we have seen. The prize was conceived along the lines of the French Prix de Rome, the successful candidates spending three to four years at a central postgraduate institution, a kind of tropical Villa Medici. These trained students could then be utilized for decorating the public buildings of the new capital. A second resolution was passed aiming to prevent Indian art from being confined to one school, which implied Bengal though it was not mentioned by name. O. C. Gangoly described the Prix de Delhi resolution in Rupam as grossly inadequate, demanding a complete revamping of art education (perhaps wishing to see a more thoroughgoing orientalism in art schools). Dismissing Solomon’s claim that Bombay enjoyed an enlightened public patronage, Gangoly repeated his idée fixe of inviting the government to assume the role of an enlightened patron ‘in the absence of a cultured public in India’.78
At Wembley, Solomon had the satisfaction of ensuring the success of his proposals. Let us now retrace our steps to the events that led to the Prix de Delhi. In 1916, Lutyens, we may recall, had presented a memorandum on the decoration of his buildings by Indian artists to the New Delhi Committee, accompanied by a note on craftsmanship by Baker. When Solomon took up his position in India in 1918, the debates surrounding New Delhi were quite intense given the advanced state of its construction. Lutyens had already visited art schools in India to examine their fitness to embellish his buildings. In 1921, Solomon approached Lutyens to consider the students of the Bombay art school for the Delhi murals. Dhurandhar took the students to Delhi, where they were invited to lunch by the great man. The students were then asked to draw from a piece of Hindu sculpture, kept in an octagonal cabinet in his bungalow. Lutyens’s purpose was to test their competence to carry out the decoration of his buildings.79
Meanwhile Lutyens was having second thoughts about the Indian contribution. On 30 March 1922, he presented a Joint Memorandum with Baker to the New Delhi Committee, elaborating the idea of the Prix de Delhi. It was this that Lloyd had unveiled at Wembley. Significantly, Baker had added a dissenting note in the Memorandum that it did not embody his view of what was essential and of immediate significance. Not only was Baker keen on the Gesamtkunstwerk principles popular in Britain at the time, but he regarded Indian participation in decoration as vital to his buildings. The 1922 Memorandum thus amounted to a compromise solution in response to the wishes of the New Delhi Committee. Subsequently, in deference to Lutyens, plans for the mural decoration of the Viceroy’s Residence, which was to be Lutyens’s main architectural endeavour, were dropped. Only the Viceroy’s Council Room would display a map in oils showing the full extent of the empire.80 Why did Lutyens change his mind? This had partly to do with his own aesthetic preference even in his English domestic buildings since he discouraged any contribution of painters and sculptors except under the strictest supervision. He had also accepted the New Delhi commission on condition that his architecture followed a severe Neo-classical style.81
More intriguingly, Lutyens began to display a growing anxiety about the Indian artists’ ability to decorate his buildings. Indeed, his own outlook was one of the reasons for Baker’s eventual rift with him. During their travels through India, Lutyens and Baker paid a visit to the Tagores, the ‘ideal community of culture’. This left a more noticeable mark on Baker, who quotes Rabindranath’s poems movingly in his memoirs. India hardly touched, let alone moved, Sir Edwin perching on his lofty heights. The architect’s unhappy conjugal life, exacerbated by Emily’s infatuation with the adolescent Indian ‘messiah’ Krishnamurti, may have had something to do with his insensitivity. Lutyens’s feelings are captured in a letter, probably not meant to be sent, mocking what he saw as the pretensions of an Indian artist (perhaps Samuel Fyzee-Rahamin) who wished to be employed in New Delhi:
My Dear Michael, (May I drop the Angelo?) I thank you so much for your letter. The only remark I can make is what a pity it is you cannot design, draw, or observe.82
Indeed, the only Indian artist he ever showed warmth towards was the academic painter Atul Bose, who was invited to sketch his likeness. Baker was ultimately responsible for the decorative experiments in seven rooms of the Imperial Secretariat, representing Indian history and mythology. From his school days Baker had been open ‘to the influences of foreign ideas and methods’.83 As he confides in his memoirs, ‘content in art, national and human sentiment, and their expression in architecture, seem to me to be of the greatest importance’.84 To bring out the peculiarly ‘Indian’ character of the Raj, he delved into Mughal history and Hindu epics with enthusiasm. A firm believer in craftsmanship and the ‘marriage of the arts’, in 1912 he had stated what was to be the architect’s credo in New Delhi, ‘he [the architect] must so fire the imagination of the painters, sculptors, and craftsmen of the Empire, that they may, interfusing their arts with his, together raise a permanent record of the history, learning, and romance of India’.85
To return to Bombay, Solomon was fully aware of the economic benefits of the New Delhi murals for his students. On 27 February 1923 Lloyd in his speech to the school fully supported Solomon’s economic argument:
But the greatest opportunity of all is the one which your Principal has mentioned at length in his report. And let me assure you at once that I have supported and shall continue to support as strongly as possible your desire to be admitted to a part in the decoration of New Delhi.86
By further suggesting at the Wembley conference in 1924 that those responsible for planning the capital would not wish to thwart the revival of Indian art, he implied that support for Bombay was tantamount to guaranteeing Indian artistic revival. He also informed the conference that Sir Phiroze Sethna, a member of the Indian Council of State from the Bombay Presidency, had already pledged his support at a Council meeting in 1922.87
Following Wembley, the India Society held discussions on the Delhi murals and the Prix de Delhi resolution, the topics that were also debated in the Council of State for India. Speaking at the India Society, Lord Birkenhead, Secretary of State for India, lent his support to the Wembley resolutions, but felt the need to limit the damage caused to the orientalists. After stressing the non-political nature of the Society, he reminded his audience of the contribution the Tagores had made to Indian culture.88 The lecture was widely reported in the Indian press, prompting the Bombay Chronicle to read a sinister motive in Birkenhead’s talk. On 13 December 1924 it accused the government of arrogance in refusing to listen to Indian opinion (read Bombay opinion) on the mural issue. If its intentions were truly serious, the paper declared, it would heed the suggestions made by Lord Lloyd at Wembley.89 Solomon, who had taken the Bombay public into his confidence before his departure for the Empire Festival, drummed up support for the Wembley resolutions on his return. He addressed the nationalist Art Society of India and the Bombay Architectural Association in order to publicize the Wembley resolutions. Announcing his Wembley success, he declared that the art school’s unfair neglect had at last been rectified by the publicity received at the Empire Exhibition. He painted an optimistic picture of the vast undecorated wall spaces in India waiting to be filled with nationalist murals.90
On Wednesday, 28 January 1925, the Council of State for India considered the resolution of Haroon Jaffer, the honourable member from the Bombay Presidency, to appoint a committee in order to implement Lloyd’s Wembley proposals. These, Jaffer claimed, would promote art throughout the empire, which would also have commercial implications. India was undergoing an artistic renaissance, even though a national art was yet to emerge, and the Raj should provide cultural stability by centralizing artistic enterprises. The call for a central authority to oversee artistic progress seems to have been a leitmotiv in discussions in the 1920s. Jaffer’s statement also implied that oriental art had failed to create conditions that would make it truly pan-Indian.91 Sethna, another member from Bombay, added the amendment that the envisaged institute would not engage one permanent principal, but have rotating ones, each in charge of a particular region. This was to demonstrate that Bombay was acting from selfless motives, although he did not hesitate to add that Solomon was the most able among the heads of art schools.92
A. H. Ley, Secretary to the Department of Industry and Labour, the government spokesman on the Council, expressed his reservations about centralization, suggesting that funding should not be shouldered either directly or entirely by the Central Government. His view was that the whole Prix de Delhi question should be examined further by the Standing Advisory Committee of the Department of Industries and Labour, charged with building the capital. This was passed by the Council.93 At the Legislative Assembly session of Friday, 6 March 1925 N. L. Joshi, another Bombay member of the Council, put a question to Sir Bhupendranath Mitra, the government spokesman, on the progress of Lutyens’s 1922 memorandum. Mitra confessed that nothing had as yet been done, promising to consult the Standing Advisory Committee on the matter.94 The next day Mitra gave the following answer to Joshi: although the Government had not yet accepted the Council resolution of January, it would abide by the decision made by Lutyens and others in 1922. On 12 March, following the deliberations in the Legislative Assembly, the Prix de Delhi resolution passed at Wembley was approved, and a small committee was formed to consider it.95
Solomon had received endorsement for his efforts to prevent modern Indian art being a monopoly of Bengal. He also had the satisfaction of seeing the progress of the Prix de Delhi resolution. In anticipation of success, Solomon engaged, as Havell had done before him, a traditional fresco painter from Jaipur to instruct his students. The artist decorated a lunette at the school with earth pigments transported from Jaipur. It was at this time that J. M. Ahivasi, one of the traditional Nathdwara painters in Rajasthan, was admitted to the school. He later won a government scholarship to study traditional mural techniques. His painting, which won the Bombay Art Society gold medal in 1927, was one of the most successful in capturing the ‘flat’ Rajput style (see p. 206).96
The Bombay Chronicle too kept up the pressure on Solomon’s behalf. On 20 March 1925 it fired a salvo against the Government and its chief architect, Sir Edwin Lutyens, who had now turned totally against decoration by Indians. Quoting Lutyens’s Memorandum of 1922, it claimed that Bombay had proposed mural decorations for the state buildings long before him. In addition, both Sethna and Jaffer had been pressing for the rights of Indian craftsmen in the Council of State, but their efforts had been stalled by the authorities. Meanwhile, the paper clamed, Lutyens’s rejection of Indian decoration was suddenly sprung on the unsuspecting public.97 Solomon and his ally Kanhaiyalal Vakil, the acerbic journalist with the Chronicle, managed to pack the entire Prix de Delhi Committee with members from Bombay, with the sole exception of the stunned O. C. Gangoly. Not only was Sethna on the Committee, but it also had the dominating presence of M. R. Jayakar, a vociferous member of the Legislative Assembly. Jayakar was a high profile Swarajist politician from the Pathare Prabhu caste in Maharastra, a caste to which Dhurandhar and the sculptor Mhatre belonged, as well as S. A. Brelvi, the editor of the Chronicle. To clinch the matter, Vakil was made Secretary of the Committee.98
The Committee met on 2 April 1925 to pass the Prix de Delhi resolution. Its ostensible purpose was to campaign for the Delhi murals to be offered to Indians. But crucially, national art was to be fostered by encouraging regional differences rather than opting for a superficially ‘attractive’ unity, for there was no single definition of oriental art. Centralization was to be prevented by frequent exhibitions not only at the new capital but in the provinces as well. The hidden agenda of this ‘decentralization’ of art was to undermine Bengal’s favoured treatment by the Raj. The Committee decided that the ‘Prix de Delhi’ was to be a separate issue from the mural commission itself. This last was to ensure that even if the prize scheme failed (and it eventually did) this would not affect the mural commission for Bombay artists.99
On the same evening in Bombay, a public meeting held at the Parsi Rajakeya Sabha gave an enthusiastic welcome to the resolution. Jayakar made a blistering attack on the ‘rival’ scheme of Lutyens and Baker, dismissing Lutyens as a ‘builder of English country villas’. Vakil followed with an assault on Lutyens. He had meanwhile written to the India Society in London to seek their support for the Indian artists against the architect.100 The Bombay Chronicle described Lutyens’s 1922 scheme as ‘an insult too glaring and obvious to be tolerated by a self-respecting nation’.101 Finally, in November, Solomon forwarded his plan for a central art institution in Delhi, in which postgraduate students from each region would work for two to three years, to the government. Modestly, he nominated himself as its director and Dhurandhar as his deputy, describing him in the memorandum as ‘affable in his manners [with] a distinguished career behind him . . . a member of the Pathare Prabhu caste which has reputation for devotion to art for art’s sake’. He also recommended that Dhurandhar be appointed Superintendent of the Bombay section of the Central Art Institute for a term of three years.102 The institute never saw the light of day.
Havell was watching these developments with mounting indignation. Solomon’s success in winning government funds was a glaring reminder of his own failure with public murals. He held Lutyens and Baker personally responsible:
who as universal providers were commissioned to restore the arts of the Empire, commend these paintings and propose that the same rhythmical formula, which can be adjusted to all the races of mankind, as an ingenious rhymester turns out limericks, shall be taught in an Imperial School of Design at Delhi by European masters who have acquired ‘reputations in a world-arena’.103
Declaring that Abanindranath was not ‘unrecognized in a world-arena’, he blamed circumstances beyond their control that prevented the orientalists from becoming successful mural artists. On 29 August 1925 he dismissed Solomon’s claim that he had the unanimous support of the members of the India Society, remarking that not a single picture of the Bombay art school shown at Wembley had an Indian outlook.104 In the 1927 edition of his classic Indian Sculpture and Painting, Havell once again questioned the legitimacy of the Bombay revival; while professing to admire Indian art, art teachers now sought to impart ‘universal’ principles of art, insisting on a faithful study of nature, ‘through the paraphernalia and technique of modern European academies’. Havell simply disliked Solomon’s particular definition of nature, offering this verdict: ‘The mural paintings of the Government House, Bombay, the latest and technically perhaps the best products of the system, are a facile parody of Leighton’s fresco of The Arts of Peace . . . but they are neither Indian nor true to nature.’105
Between 1929 and 1930 Havell and Solomon’s close ally Vakil engaged in an open feud in the periodical Roopa Lekha. In response to Havell’s letter to the editor dated 1929, complaining that the indifference of the Public Works Department (PWD) towards Indian art was painfully conspicuous in the building of New Delhi, Vakil accused him of an ‘anaemic attachment to ancient canons’.106 Havell rejoined, with some justification, that Vakil’s writings on architecture threw ‘no light on India’s peculiar architectural conditions and needs’. Had the journalist paid attention to Havell’s books, he would have appreciated the problem.107 Not wishing to be branded a déraciné, Vakil protested profusely that not only was he devoted to Havell’s works, but unlike the orientalists, he alone had been trying to put his precepts into practice. On the other hand, his followers have ‘obstructed hitherto all attempts for a systematic, nation-wide, programme for reconstructive efforts’.108 In 1931, Vakil published a damning judgement on orientalism. Its stagnation, Vakil wrote, was caused by its doctrinaire archaism, which had failed to inspire the younger generation. Indian artists were encouraged to appreciate everything – archaeology, iconography, mythology, philosophy, history and theology – all except the values of art. Once again, he claimed that the English art teacher’s followers had stuck to the letter of his inspiration, but not the spirit. Sensing that the feud had gone on long enough, Havell finally extended an olive branch to his opponents, blaming government indifference for the ‘status quo’ in modern Indian art.109
For their part, the orientalists had not remained silent during the rise of Bombay as an alternative nationalist style which threatened their very existence. As early as 1921, Gangoly had dismissed Solomon’s efforts. Reviewing Solomon’s book The Charm of Indian Art in 1926, he took him to task for daring to use the frivolous word ‘charm’ with regard to Indian art. Questioning the claims of Bombay as the new Ajanta, Gangoly queried, ‘if the Indian artist was as imaginative as claimed by Solomon, why impose life classes on him?’110 In that year, Vakil paid a visit to Calcutta to gain first-hand knowledge of his adversaries. He described the atmosphere in the Tagore residence with a touch of irony as ‘the realm of fancy and beauty where logic and routine purposely fear to tread’.111 He particularly resented the reverential attitude the Tagores seemed to generate in people, though reporting favourably on their endorsement of the newly founded Benaras Hindu University as the best antidote against public indifference to art.112 Rabindranath’s open-mindedness about art made a strong impression on Vakil, whilst Gaganendranath’s Cubist experiments fascinated him. O. C. Gangoly he could not stand, but then they held irreconcilable views. In 1929, at the height of the Bengal–Bombay rivalry, Vakil described Gangoly’s lecture at the Bharat Kala Bhavan in Benaras as full of vague generalizations and lacking any concrete plans.113 However, by the 1930s, the animus had died down considerably and Vakil wrote sympathetically on Gangoly’s lecture at the newly formed Rasa-Mandal, yet another society to rival the established Bombay Art Society.114
THE MURALS OF THE IMPERIAL SECRETARIAT
In 1927 the Government of India held an open competition for decorating the Imperial Secretariat designed by Herbert Baker with murals. Well primed by Solomon, in January 1928 Dhurandhar paid a visit to Delhi with his students to study at first-hand the architectural plan, elevations and other details. Dhurandhar measured the dimensions of the Law Members’ Chamber, in order to prepare the preliminary pencil, water-colour and oil sketches for the murals. His experience with large aerial drawings for Cecil Burns, followed by the pylons, had equipped him for large-scale work. The deadline for submitting the coloured sketches to the judges was 7 March 1928, which barely left him a month. But capable of working at great speed, he completed four water-colour sketches, each measuring 183 x 30cm. In August the Department of Industries and Labour asked him to submit the preliminary cartoons for the murals. The senior students of Solomon’s mural class also submitted preliminary watercolour sketches to the committee. As widely expected, in 1928 the Government of India, on the recommendation of the Advisory Committee chaired by Sir John Marshall, offered the lion’s share of the murals to Bombay artists, especially the art school.115 In 1928, the government sanctioned fifty lakhs of rupees (5,000,000), of which one lakh (100,000) was to be divided among the artists in proportion to their importance. Dhurandhar was entrusted with the important murals in the Law Members’ Chamber, for which he received the handsome fee of 17,000 rupees.116
The government expected Dhurandhar to complete the paintings by September 1929, leaving him approximately a year. Although Dhurandhar was able to keep to the deadline, he suffered ill health and even despaired of completing the work on time. However, after taking several months off from work, he was able to regain his confidence. Dhurandhar was assigned two generous wall spaces in the chamber, each 7.3 m long and 1.5 m wide, divided into three parts, each to accommodate a 2.4 m long canvas. Dhurandhar’s theme was the dispensation of colonial justice: two laws from the Hindu Civil Code, Bride Wealth (stridhanam) and Adoption (datta vidhana), and an example of the Muslim Shariah law, Last Will and Testament. ‘Framing’ these scenes of civil law was an East India Company court scene, celebrating the empire as an impartial upholder of law and justice.
These marouflage panels for the Law Members’ Chamber, consisting of over 300 figures, were completed in the third week of July 1929 in his studio, well ahead of schedule. An informal exhibition, on the eve of their transportation to Delhi, was attended by his close allies, including the politician M. R. Jayakar and Vakil. Explaining his success, Dhurandhar made a public statement that his student experience at Ajanta had left a lasting impression, a somewhat unconvincing statement in view of his lifelong love affair with Western art. Dhurandhar’s friezes in the Law Members’ Chamber were praised by Percy Brown for their draughtsman-ship, colours and symbolism.117 Dhurandhar personally accompanied the works to Delhi in order to supervise their attachment to the walls with the help of his students. Solomon, who was directing his own mural students in Delhi, congratulated him with the wish that 50 years hence the Maharastran would be known as the Titian of India.118 Solomon’s senior students were awarded the decoration of the North Block of the Secretariat. As a preparation for the murals, special drawing courses, using Dhurandhar’s large drawing of an undraped figure as exemplar, were conducted at the school. Students also studied details from living models and learned to enlarge sketches to scale in order to produce life-size watercolour cartoons for the murals.119
The upshot of the Lutyens–Baker clash was that only one of the 340 rooms in Lutyens’s vast palace for the Viceroy was adorned with a visual image: an ambitious map in oil colours of the largest empire in the world, designed by Percy Brown, head of the Calcutta art school, and executed by Munshi Gulam Husain of Lucknow with his assistants. The rest of the murals found a home in the North Block of Herbert Baker’s Secretariat, which was conceived as two massive blocks, with myriad chambers, flanking the ceremonial King’s Way. The uppermost impression created by the motley subjects was one of conscious Raj attempts to put Hindu, Muslim and Western elements through a paternalist sieve to produce a cultural purée. Miran Baksh, Assistant Principal of the Mayo School of Art in Lahore, and his students decorated the domes of the loggia of the North Conference Room with Quranic inscriptions, sinuous arabesques and Buddhist geese (hamsa). The narrative murals were executed entirely by artists from Bombay. The veteran Rustam Seodia, the first Indian painter to be trained at the Royal Academy, depicted the four seasons (a European version of four, unlike the Indian six). Four additional lunettes sported a cultural mishmash such as an oriental slave market, Bluebeard, Cinderella and stories from Harun al-Rashid.120
Bombay art school’s contribution, including Dhurandhar’s, was mainly in the marouflage (oils) method, introduced by Solomon, though tempera murals were not entirely absent. The South Loggia was in the care of G. P. Fernandes, one of the first students to be trained by Solomon. He used marouflage on the dome but had the versatility to paint the rest in tempera. The lantern of the dome was brightened by the use of colourful costumes for the artisan figures. G. H. Nagarkar, another senior student of Solomon’s, covered the dome, arches and spandrel with an elaborate series on ‘Hindu Aryan life’, represented by well-drawn figures in low-key colours. The lofty dome crowning the North Block was decorated by Solomon’s students under his supervision, with figures representing different periods of Indian history (see The Gupta Period, p. 185). Eight further lunettes were filled mostly with female figures personifying themes of painting, architecture, music, dancing, poetry and drama. A typical lunette, for instance, on the theme of music represented the classical Indian Todi ragini in the manner of miniatures. J. M. Ahivasi from traditional Nathdwara, who painted the lunette ‘Drama’, was versatile enough to range from a Rajasthani miniature style to deeply modelled figures.121
Poetry, fresco lunette, Secretariat, North Block, 1929, oil on canvas. |
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With a few exceptions, the main problem faced by Solomon’s students was their lack of experience in handling large-scale projects of this kind. Solomon tried to rectify this by seeking the assistance of the students of the Architectural School, who helped with the decoration of the dome.122 Nonetheless, the paintings, completed in Bombay and transported to Delhi to be attached to the walls of the Secretariat, did no service to them. Although the individual figures were often attractive, overall the paintings failed to blend in with the surrounding architecture. Frequently the proportions looked distorted from below on account of the great height at which these paintings were placed. Even a senior artist like Seodia, basically an easel painter, lacked experience with heights and large spaces, which required compensatory optical devices. (Exceptionally, one of the most successful with the heights was G. H. Nagarkar.) Yet Solomon was convinced that the Indian students’ ‘love of decoration’ was vindicated in the New Delhi murals. His formula, as we have seen, was to meld Indian decorative talents with Western figure drawing, dismissing the
G. H. Nagarkar, Vaishya caste, detail from the Ceiling, Secretariat, North Block, 1929, fresco buono. |
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theory that an Indian Art student should be able to evolve a life-size figure entirely out of his inner consciousness, because he is an Indian, means that his art must degenerate into the repetition of conventions, as did the art of Egypt. There may be a good philosophy in it, but it is not a working proposition.123
The story of the New Delhi murals would not be complete without a consideration of the work of a ‘heavyweight’ from Bombay among the chosen. Trained at the art school earlier in the century, Samuel Fyzee-Rahamin did not belong to the Solomon coterie and indeed became his implacable enemy. As a wit once quipped, Bombay was not big enough to hold these two supreme egotists. Solomon’s first public clash with Fyzee-Rahamin took place in 1924, when he approached Solomon with a view to being the acting head during his absence at Wembley. On Dhurandhar’s advice Solomon decided not to recommend him. Feeling slighted, Fyzee-Rahamin started a vendetta against the school in the Times of India. The feud lasted two years, until the weary editor refused to publish any further letters on the subject.124
The Solomon/Fyzee-Rahamin conflict also had a deeper ideological reason. Trained at the Royal Academy under the fashionable portrait painter John Singer Sargent, Fyzee-Rahamin began his career as a successful portrait painter.125 He was among those who sacrificed their lucrative ‘Western’ career under Mahatma Gandhi’s inspiration. However, he did not simply turn out historicist subjects in the manner of Ravi Varma or Herman Muller. Fyzee-Rahamin renounced naturalism in order to revive the two-dimensional character of Rajput painting, somewhat in the manner of Bengal. It is difficult to establish the precise date of his conversion. His romantic liaison with the classical singer Atiya Begum in 1913 may have been a catalyst. The artist from the ancient Bene Israel community of Maharastra converted to Islam and added his wife’s surname ‘Fyzee’ to his own. One of the fruits of their joint explorations of the delights of Indian classical music was Music of India, written by the diva and illustrated by the artist in 1925.126
Fyzee-Rahamin enjoyed a high reputation in London in the inter-war years. Having held a successful one-man show at the Goupil Galleries in 1914, he showed his watercolours of Rajput inspiration in 1925 at Arthur Tooth’s Gallery under the rubric ‘Indian Vedic, Mythological and Contemporary Watercolours’. A leading English critic, Herbert Furst, praised his portrait of Gandhi as ‘a masterpiece of characterization’ in Apollo, in one of his several essays on the artist.127 A Ragamala painting from the album Amal i- Faizi-Rahamin was gifted by the industrialist Victor Sassoon to the Tate Gallery. Another, The Rajput Sardar, was acquired by the Tate at the same time.128 Queen Mary lent Fyzee-Rahamin’s portrait of Veena Sheshanna, the famous musician of Karnataka admired by Venkatappa, to the exhibition of modern Indian art held in London in 1934. The following year, he showed 45 pictures at a one-man show at the Arlington Galleries.129 These works expounded Fyzee-Rahamin’s vision of artistic nationalism, claiming to offer a viable alternative to both the ‘archaistic’ Bengal School and the ‘Western’ approach of Bombay. However, in a penetrating though favourable review, Furst diagnosed the predicament of the erstwhile pupil of Sargent. The uneven mixture of Western ‘realism’ and flat ‘decorative’ elements appeared to him to indicate a clash of Western and Indian approaches, the artist revealing an acute hesitation in seeking ‘to turn his view into vision’. Sargent’s ‘realist’ training was incompatible with Eastern ‘decorative’ sensibility, concluded Furst, a problem not faced by traditional Mughal artists.130
Samuel Fyzee-Rahamin, Rajput Sardar, c. 1925, watercolour on paper.
Fyzee-Rahamin was among those from Bombay selected to decorate the Imperial Secretariat but he carefully distanced himself from Solomon’s entourage. On 17 June 1926, after winning the commission, he published an article, ‘On Indian Art and Burne-Jones’, in the Times of India, questioning the Bombay art school’s nationalist credentials for the murals, holding naturalism to be incompatible with Indian idealism. In passing, he took a dig at J. A. Lalkaka, an academic portraitist belonging to his own generation. In a sarcastic response, Lalkaka demanded to know the ‘message’ emanating from Indian art. His friend Rustam Seodia, one of the Delhi muralists, then joined in, commenting that to ‘establish painting methods on the idealistic basis – as according to Fyzee-Rahamin, Indian art was supposed to have been based on it – would be impracticable and ridiculous as the ideas of a red hot communist’.131
Samuel Fyzee-Rahamin, detail figure, Secretariat, North Block, 1929, fresco buono. |
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Samuel Fyzee-Rahamin, Knowledge, Secretariat, North Block, 1929, fresco buono.
Fyzee-Rahamin’s treatment of Hindu and Muslim allegories in a linear style in two domes of the North Block gives us an insight into his particular approach. Aiming to revive the ancient methods of Ajanta and Bagh, ‘and to preserve only the absolute flatness of Oriental art’, Fyzee-Rahamin mentioned having consulted an ancient text on mural techniques, the Karmabuddhisara. Choosing a limited palette based on finely ground precious stones, he applied them straight on to the dry plaster. Fyzee-Rahamin’s four major themes were inspired by the Western allegorical tradition: Justice, Knowledge, Peace and War. Justice, for example, was visualized as a raven-haired, rather European-looking female figure draped in white, standing on a white lotus and holding in her right hand the scales of justice. Following the tradition of symbolic art, Fyzee-Rahamin made the central allegorical figure, such as Knowledge, larger than the ancillary ones. Below the main personifications he painted six seasons in the Sanskrit tradition, in contrast to Seodia’s four seasons of Western inspiration. The smaller dome contained the images of the Hindu trinity, Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva, while the spandrels were adorned with ashtanayikas (eight conventional heroines of ancient Sanskrit literature).132
Furst, this time reviewing Fyzee-Rahamin enthusiastically, observed that the strength of oriental art was its flatness, whereas modern European artists were caught in a dilemma over whether to eliminate depth altogether. However, tradition had collapsed in both East and West and all ‘artists of today come to their task primarily with the intellect, and consequently, with a self-consciousness that prevents them from doing what their forebears were able to do; that is to say, to ply their art as trade naturally, without doubtings and questionings’. Convinced that no genuine Indian style could survive in the cultural tide of colonialism, he welcomed Fyzee-Rahamin’s attempts to create a unified expression in New Delhi that avoided the drawbacks of both Calcutta and Bombay, which was in his view, ‘the only sound alternative’.133 Percy Brown, who also made a careful analysis of the murals in Delhi, complimented the artist on his delicate drawing and painting. Solomon’s cantankerous ally Vakil however rubbished them: ‘they were distinctly Western . . . his figures of women are uniformly wooden [with] apparently no mural feeling in the work . . .’.134
The murals, on view from 1931 following the inauguration of New Delhi, did not win universal approbation. Baker initially felt that the murals would inspire Indians for generations. He even urged the government to print a small explanatory pamphlet. Arthur Gordon Shoosmith, builder of public edifices in India, criticized the faulty draughtsmanship and cloying romanticism of some of the works.135 And Baker soon had private misgivings. In 1931, the Secretary to the Department of Industry and Labour confided to the President of the Bombay Art Society that Baker had found the work in New Delhi to be ‘very unsatisfactory’ and the outcome of ‘the first impatient efforts’.136 Baker later reflected:
In the buildings of New Delhi, where I felt that encouragement should have been given to India’s great traditional art of mural painting, my advice as to the training and selection of artists was not taken, and painters with no thorough training in the difficult technique were for political reasons turned loose and uncontrolled upon my walls, and the architect was ignored.137
As we shall see, this may have been one of the reasons for leaving out both the Bombay art school and the ‘marouflage’ method for the murals of India House, London.
THE INDIA HOUSE MURALS
Unquestionably Solomon had pulled off a spectacular coup for his students, which had followed inexorably from the Wembley resolution of 1924. However, during the same period, another important project was being hatched: the decoration of India House at the Aldwych in London. The building was conceived by Sir Atul Chatterjee, the first High Commissioner for India in London, designed by Baker and Gilbert Scott, and completed in 1928. Baker had become good friends with Chatterjee during the period that the Bengali was Minister of Public Works in Delhi. Chatterjee shared Baker’s vision of ‘romancing’ India through her craftsmen and when he was transferred to London, ‘some of the work of artistic expression, [which] we might have done in the Delhi buildings, happily found place on the walls of the India House’.138 Baker and Scott’s attention to the details of Indian history as well as of Indian architecture is evident in the building. As a leading colonial architect, Baker had also been involved with the neighbouring South Africa House. In both projects, the imperial government sought to give scope to the local mural painters. South African artists, Baker concluded, had by and large failed because they produced the work before undergoing rigorous training. The architect was convinced that in order to execute the murals successfully Indian painters required the necessary training.139
On Baker’s advice, Chatterjee approached the government in August 1927 with a scholarship scheme for decorating India House. Sir William Rothenstein, head of the Royal College of Art, was the right person to consult. He had been active in the British mural movement, and had set up an experimental mural studio in the college. Moreover he was a friend of the Tagores as well as of Baker’s. Four successful candidates were to train under him in painting on plaster, followed by a year in Italy studying old masters, before embarking on the actual murals at India House. On completion of the project, these artists could expect further work in the new capital.140
The New Delhi murals had whetted Fyzee-Rahamin’s appetite and he considered himself to be best suited for the London project. Rothenstein was not actually on the selection committee, but his opinion was known to carry weight. Fyzee-Rahamin decided to make a personal plea to him. On 6 March 1928, when the deliberations were going on, Fyzee-Rahamin despatched a letter to him that was a mixture of transparent flattery, moral outrage and blatant self-promotion. He began by suggesting that four young students would be incapable of executing murals along ‘Indian lines’ after only eighteen months experience in England. Continuing in an indignant tone he alleged that the proposal would impede the progress of Indian art because a European training was bound to destroy ‘whatever Indian element may still have remained with them’. Rothenstein, he added flatteringly, was one of the few who knew the importance of preserving the Indian tradition, which would suffer if students were to rush to foreign countries for training.141 Finally appealing to the English artist’s good sense, he suggested that the best alternative would be to entrust the work to those who were already experienced in the indigenous tradition. Although a senior artist, Fyzee-Rahamin was even prepared to be ‘retrained’ by Rothenstein in order to obtain the commission. Rothenstein poured cold water on this unwarranted solicitation, disagreeing that ‘a little training’ in European mural decoration would ‘blight’ the Indian spirit. ‘I seem to remember that you yourself claimed that you have been a student of Sargent, yet this has not prevented you from adopting Indian conventions’, he wrote.142
The India House Scheme was publicly announced by the Department of Industries and Labour on 9 November 1928. At an open competition held on 12 March 1929 the selection committee chose, on Rothenstein’s advice, four artists out of some 74 contestants. Fyzee-Rahamin was shortlisted, along with Seodia, because of their previous work at the Secretariat. However, in the end the committee turned them down because of their seniority and experience. The scholarships were meant to encourage artists in their early or mid-career who would benefit from further training.143
The chosen four were Bengalis: Sudhansu Sekhar Chaudhury, Ranada Ukil, Lalit Mohan Sen and Dhirendra Krishna Deb Barman. Sen, who was a teacher at the government art school in Lucknow, had already completed a mural course at the Royal College in London in 1926. His works had been acquired by the Victoria and Albert Museum and Laurence Binyon, Keeper of Oriental Antiquities at the British Museum, had engaged him to copy the ancient frescoes of the Bagh Caves in central India. The other three were all trained in oriental art. A prize-winner at exhibitions, Ukil had learned Indian painting at the government art school in Calcutta in 1922–4, followed by tutelage under Abanindranath. Deb Barman had been a student of Nandalal’s mural class at Santiniketan and had accompanied the poet Tagore to Java. Chaudhury had been in prison as a revolutionary terrorist. After his release, as part of rehabilitation, he took up painting under Abanindranath. One may speculate that his selection was meant to be a magnanimous gesture on the part of the Raj. Although it was denied at the time, the choice of the Bengali artists was swayed by the government policy of balancing different interest groups in India. Because Bombay had swept the board in New Delhi, Bengal was to be placated with India House. In any case, Solomon’s students were preoccupied with the New Delhi murals at this time. As they admitted later, they could not prepare for the competition in the short time at their disposal.144
The four arrived at the Royal College on 23 September 1929. In welcoming them, Rothenstein exhorted them to bring out the Indian quality in their work, for all they lacked was a knowledge of modern techniques. They quickly settled down and gained much from the practical advice of Professor Ernest W. Tristram and E. Michael Dinkel in the mural department. Hitherto they had little experience of working together; yet the design made jointly by them for the decoration of the dome of India House was perhaps the most successful of their works.145 One of the artists, Deb Barman, has left us a lively account of his experience in London. At Santiniketan, his teacher Nandalal used to urge students to work in natural surroundings and approach art in a spirit of contemplation. The Royal College was the very opposite, resembling a factory, full of bustle and hubbub, with some 500 extremely keen students jostling for the cramped space. The Bengalis gradually became adept at producing large designs at the college.146 The Times of 30 March 1930 reported Queen Mary’s visit to the college. She was gratified that the Bengalis had ‘kept to the Indian tradition’, purchasing Sen’s work Girl Working in a Potter’s Yard. At a garden party held at Buckingham Palace the artists turned up in white Bengali dhoti and panjabi which was much admired.147
After spending a year at the college, the students visited Florence, Arezzo and Padua in Michael Dinkel’s company to perfect the egg tempera method. Deb Barman was charmed by Florentine maidens, who literally ‘stepped out of the canvases of Raphael and Botticelli’. Later they visited Vienna while Dinkel returned to London. The Bengali artists commenced work at India House on 9 April 1931, coincidentally a few months after the murals of New Delhi were thrown open to the public. A studio was allocated to them in India House where they prepared their preliminary cartoons, measuring between 2.8 m2 and 12/15 m2, with larger-than-life figures. Ten months were spent on designing. The dome posed special problems because of the curvature, a problem that was known to have beset Solomon’s students in New Delhi. Initially, the artists expected to use oils but egg tempera was found to be more suitable as it was supposed to bring out the flat linear quality of oriental art. Twenty-four carat gold paint was lavished on the background.148
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The Dome, India House, 1931, fresco buono, detail showing the emperor Ashoka’s court. |
The iconographic programme for India House decoration was as follows: the lunettes in the exhibition Hall on the ground floor by Ranada Ukil and Sudhansu Sekhar Chaudhury represented Hindu and Muslim subjects. Lalit Mohan Sen was assigned a large space in the library, while Deb Barman was in charge of the pendentives of the Octagonal hall on the first floor, where he depicted the four great classes of Hindu society and the four great stages of Hindu life (varnasramadharma). Then followed the decoration of the quadrants. However, the dome was by far the most ambitious as it represented great moments in Indian history, notably the reigns of the Buddhist emperor Ashoka and the Mughal emperor Akbar. According to The Studio, ‘All four artists are united in the design and execution of the decoration of the dome, which is admirable in its effect of colour and as a complete scheme . . . [The] work carried out is a successful example of traditional Indian painting applied to modern use.’149
The art magazine expressed the hope that the whole scheme would see a successful completion. However, before its completion Sir Atul Chatterjee was replaced by Sir Bhupendranath Mitra, the cautious official at the centre of the construction of New Delhi, whom we have encountered before. Rothenstein complained that the new High Commissioner, ‘a financial expert, with no sense of the arts . . . sent for me constantly, fearful always that the painters were idling, and again doubtful of the reasonableness of their claims to payment’.150 For the head of the Royal College, it was a trying situation. Not only were excessive demands made on his time, but he was also expected to act as a policeman. The political climate in India was changing rapidly as well, prompting the government directive that the artists return to India immediately after completing the painting in the dome, and without further work on the project. Rothenstein tried to interest the Indian leaders attending the Round Table Conference in the future of the artists Deb Barman and L. M. Sen, but they had the future of India on their mind. Rothenstein wrote to the Viceroy on behalf of Ranada Ukil and Sudhansu Chaudhury. However, acutely aware of the ugly controversy raging in Bombay, he added that he did not wish to press the claims of the Bengali artists. Lord Willingdon assured him that something would be done for them on their return.151 This never happened. It is quite significant that Deb Barman is silent on the India House work in his later memoirs.152
The Dome, India House, 1931, fresco buono, detail showing the emperor Akbar’s court. |
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Baker predictably felt disappointed with the murals, as he had done with the New Delhi ones, expressing this in a letter to Rothenstein, ‘What I did see of their colour I did not think very good. It seems to me that all Indian painters make the vital mistake of following the colour scheme of Ajanta, where, accidentally, I think, and due to decay, browns prevail.’153 Baker had correctly noticed that the general predominance of browns in Ajanta had something to do with the fact that the blues and whites had perished. He was convinced that the close imitation of Ajanta had led to the prevalence of red-earth colour at India House. However, the architect did concede that a good start had been made in restoring India’s ‘great tradition’.
In 1930 an exhibition of paintings of the Bombay art school at India House, arranged through the good offices of Chatterjee and the India Society, did nothing to assuage the resentment of Solomon’s allies.154 In 1931 the Times of India unleashed a virulent campaign on the choice of the Bengalis for India House. This led to an acrimonious and protracted exchange between the Times of India, the Bombay Art Society, the India Society of London and the Government of India over claims and counter-claims regarding favouritism towards Bengal that lasted a good part of the year.
The Times of India alleged a conspiracy between the India Society and the Indian government to deprive Bombay of its legitimate prize. On 6 April 1931, three days before the Bengali artists were to commence their work at India House, the Times of India, mouthpiece of the Bombay art-school faction, issued a warning under the heading, ‘India Society’: ‘Bombay should realize that very intelligent forces are mobilizing in Delhi and London to scoop the big stakes in art revival.’155 When constructive efforts in art education were in their infancy and confined to Bombay, the India Society supported the ‘Prize of Delhi’, alleged the paper, but now Baker was playing fairy godmother to Rothenstein’s Indian mural painting class, while Bombay watched helplessly as its scheme was ‘hijacked’ for the benefit of another province. In an allusion to the celebrated passage in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, the paper addressed the Marquess of Zetland and Lord Lytton (a former Governor of Bengal and a former Viceroy), Laurence Binyon, the Keeper of Oriental Art at the British Museum, and Rothenstein ironically as ‘honourable men’.
The next day, Lalkaka, who was chosen to copy royal portraits at Windsor, felt obliged to register his own protest.156 On 10 April, under the heading ‘India Society Again’, the Times of India accused the Bengali High Commissioner, Chatterjee, of securing ‘this regrettable family arrangement’. Nor were the four artists spared. Bombay must insist on her rights, concluded the paper sanctimoniously.157 The paper fired the next salvo on 12 April 1931, claiming a sort of ‘copyright’ for Bombay over the ‘invention’ of Indian murals: ‘It is a fact that Bengal did not compete in the first and then most difficult competition, though criticisms have emanated from that province which now wants to join the competition . . . [as] the initial problems of mural painting on a really comprehensive and unusually difficult scale have actually now been solved.’158
On 24 April, the pugnacious Vakil joined the fray, describing the India Society as a reactionary setup and claiming that ‘its pet henchmen, both in London and in India, have prevented many ideas and resisted many reconstructive endeavours for the advancement of art in India’. Forestalling any rebuttal that Bombay had already won the New Delhi commission, he described the ‘hard earned’ commission as a mere ‘earnest of good intentions of the government of India’. Vakil joined in the personal vilification of Chatterjee, Rothenstein and Sir John Marshall, Director-General of the Archaeological Survey of India and member of the selection committee.159 The India Society, learning that its members had been libelled in the Times of India, issued a formal protest on 6 May, pointing out that it never backed any specific school but only gave general encouragement to Indian art. Nor did it take responsibility for opinions expressed by individual members, reminding the paper that it was through the Society’s efforts that the exhibition of Bombay art students at India House in the Aldwych had been possible.160 There were activities behind the scenes as well. On 7 May, Alan Green, Deputy High Commissioner for India, had sent a confidential letter to Wiles, regretting that the whole affair was based on a misunderstanding, but then ‘it would be too much to expect a journalist to acquire correct information from public records’. Green was especially peeved that the accusation followed closely on the heels of Chatterjee’s generosity to the Bombay art school. He went so far as to suggest that the very limitations of Solomon’s ‘marouflage’ murals in Delhi had led to the decision to train Indians in proper frescoes at the Royal College. ‘I think you will agree’, Green offered, ‘that marouflage is a somewhat unworthy form of mural decor.’ However, as a comforting gesture, he assured Bombay that there was still plenty of room in India House to cover.161
Wiles, who also happened to be a member of the India Society in London, was seen by the art-school faction as an ally of the Society, and complicit in helping the Bengalis. Feeling obliged to clear his name, Wiles sought public clarification about the India House commission from the President of the Society.162 Younghusband wrote to the Times of India on 20 May denying any favouritism shown by the Society. The paper however refused to accept this, assuming a tone of outraged reasonableness: ‘we never asked for more than that Bombay should be allowed to participate with other provinces in the work in London and New Delhi’. Complaining further that the committee for the forthcoming Burlington House exhibition of modern Indian art consisted almost entirely of orientalists, it refused to accept that Bombay had received any special favours in merely being invited to exhibit at India House. Two days later, the combative Jayakar joined the fray, firing at random at a number of favourite targets. He felt it an affront that Indian artists were never shown with contemporary British artists, demanding that the planned museum of ancient Indian art in London must expand to include modern Indian art. The recent publication on Ajanta by Laurence Binyon, a friend of the orientalists, was dismissed as lacking first-hand experience. The Maharastran finally accused Chatterjee of rigging the India House project in favour of Bengalis, the ‘art litterateurs, dilettantes and connoisseurs, who have unfortunately made of Indian art elsewhere a symbol of preciosity and practical ineffectiveness’.163
The next day T. S. Shilton, Secretary to the Department of Industries and Labour responsible for the Delhi and London projects, wrote to Wiles, ostensibly to correct certain ‘misunderstandings’, but in fact to answer Solomon’s faction. In the first of the two government schemes, he pointed out, Bombay had swept the board. In the second, the four Bengalis were chosen at an open competition. Shilton made no bones about the underlying political reason, the balancing of different interest groups in India:
You will thus see that equal opportunities were afforded to all artists and schools of art in India in both the above schemes and there is no justification at all for any heart burning in Bombay over the award of scholarships to Bengali artists. In fact so far as the Government of India are concerned there has been much greater work given to Bombay School of Art than to Bengal.164
Shilton then gleefully informed Wiles: ‘You may be pleased to hear that we have had a protest from Sir Herbert Baker against the decoration of the ceilings and walls of a building designed by him with paintings which he describes as “very unsatisfactory” and to which he refers as “first impatient efforts”. This is of course not for publication.’165
On 29 May 1931, Sir Francis Younghusband, President of the India Society, wrote to George Wiles, President of the Bombay Art Society, insisting that no council member of the India Society was on the selection committee. Wiles decided to go public in the Times of India the very same day. Objecting to the character assassination of individuals, especially of high officials, Wiles sought to cut the ground from under Solomon’s feet. He pointed out that many artists both in India and abroad had doubted whether the methods of training followed by the Bombay School were consistent with the ideals of Indian painting.166 He also revealed that the vociferous Sethna and Jayakar were both on the Finance Committee of the Assembly when the measure was passed, but not a squeak was heard from them. Sethna’s later claim that the presence of the majority of Bombay artists in the New Delhi project was a mere accident was plain poppycock.
The issue was not allowed to die a natural death, for it had opened old sores. Though disappointed at failing to obtain the India House commission, in the Times of India of 4 June 1931, Fyzee-Rahamin aired his own grudge against Solomon, which he had harboured since 1924. His own orientalism, which sought, like the Bengal School and the Gujarati artists, to revive the indigenous tradition of flat decorative painting, had little patience with Bombay’s ‘naturalist’ revival. While Rahamin accepted that the Government communiqué had misled the artists and the public in not making clear that the project was meant for young artists, he deplored the lack of public interest in obtaining the commission for Bombay. He also criticized Jayakar’s conduct as unbecoming in favouring the art school rather than Bombay artists in general, adding:
Mr Jayakar’s assumption that I tried and failed in the competition is amusing . . . I need no certificate from the dilettante and school masters who at their best only entertain the novice. My attempt to compete, as Sir William Rothenstein himself put it, could not be in order to learn from him, but to protect the reputation of Indian art in Europe by representing the best.167
This provoked Sir Phiroze Sethna, Member of the Council of State, to retort:
[Fyzee-Rahamin] as your readers must know, avails every opportunity to attack the art school and its supporters, including myself. As a committee member, I must put right mistakes. The condition was that they must train under Rothenstein and Fyzee-Rahamin was willing to do that. So Jayakar was right to point out his own selfish motives in trying to deprive others. An artist of fifty cannot improve much and young men were taken.
As a member of the government, Sethna also felt obliged to defend Chatterjee against baseless allegations of corruption. Somewhat mistakenly, in his letter of 29 May to the Times of India, he also objected to Wiles’s criticism of the art school, expressing surprise that Wiles, who was Finance Secretary to the Bombay Government, was attacking another government institution. Wiles felt obliged to deny the charge vigorously in the paper of 7 June.168 Realizing his mistake, Sethna apologized to Wiles in a personal letter, admitting that he had been misled by the Bombay Chronicle and Fyzee-Rahamin’s letter. But he urged Wiles to write to the Times of India in support of the Bombay artists, adding, ‘I intend to move a resolution for more help to Indian art and we should all come together.’169 On 13 July, Wiles informed Younghusband of deliberate distortions by the Times of India.170 On 30 March 1932, at the AGM of the Bombay Art Society, it was strenuously denied that the institution was a mouthpiece of the India Society. If some individual members had expressed reservations about the art school, this was not a result of collusion. Lalkaka, who attended the meeting, made another vociferous protest. As for Rothenstein, he was disillusioned with the whole India House affair, showing signs of strain in this clash of two very different cultural expectations, Indian and European. As he complained to Tagore in a rather lofty vein, ‘The paintings [of India House] are among the best I think, of any Indian mural paintings; and these young men have learned something I think: how to work together . . . But I wonder how much aesthetic sense there is in truth among your countrymen.’171 Bombay’s parochialism had soured his view. He also felt used by the government and abused from different quarters for all the trouble he had taken.
The long feud between Bombay and Calcutta over the murals had an amusing sequel. On 15 March 1932, at a Council of State session, Sethna presented a resolution that if the Delhi murals were deemed satisfactory, further work should be offered to Indian artists. Although he was careful not to demand the commission exclusively for Bombay, he suggested that because of its seniority and pre-eminence as well as the burden carried by it during the campaign for New Delhi murals, it ought to be given special consideration. He was astute enough not to deny the success of the India House murals, but suggested that their importance was diminished by the fact they were outside India.172 Sethna’s move stirred a hornet’s nest. While J. C. Banerjea, a member of the Council from Bengal, supported his general plea for Indian artists, he took this chance to air Bengal’s grievance. Describing Bombay as neither Indian nor modern, but a ‘queer amalgam’, he blamed Bombay’s propaganda and provincial rivalry for Bengal’s failure to obtain a just share in the Delhi murals. And yet, he asserted, Bengal had created the renaissance and had moreover Nandalal Bose as a muralist.173 J. A. Shillady, Secretary to the Department of Industries and Labour, responded to Sethna with sarcasm, reminding the house of his blatantly partisan statement made in 1924, ‘the work shall be entrusted to Indian artists, and preferably to the Bombay School of Arts’. Sethna had also been one of the members to complain that Bombay artists could not compete in the India House scheme because they were engaged in the New Delhi murals. This caused some merriment in the house, for it demonstrated to the members that Bombay was not starved of commissions. The resolution was then withdrawn. Shillady, speaking for the government, reassured the members that, funds permitting, it had no objection to helping artists.174
SOLOMON’S MAROUFLAGE: THE FINAL BALANCE SHEET
How successful was Solomon’s mural project and its claims to introduce a new Indian style? Judged by the economic criteria, Solomon was remarkably successful. He ensured the livelihood of his students, thereby reversing Bombay art school’s decline in the early years of the last century. Solomon’s artistic revival also had the ambitions of ‘restoring the traditional entente’ between the painter and the architect as a critical element in India’s artistic revival.175 His much-trumpeted entente through marouflage, which consisted of pasting large canvas panels onto the walls, was dismissed by the Deputy High Commissioner for India as ‘a somewhat unworthy form of mural décor’.176 The late nineteenth-century view of proper murals as painting directly on the walls, as expounded by Cennini for instance, may seem a trifle limited to us today. After all, the great Caravaggio produced canvases to be attached to the walls as part of architectural decoration.177 Nonetheless, one of the serious problems faced by Solomon was that the panels for the Secretariat were pre-painted in Bombay and then taken to Delhi, which contributed to their failure to blend in with the overall architectural design. Their defective proportions arose from the fact that there was no understanding of the architectural peculiarities of the site even though Solomon had consulted students of architecture. Several artists were not even aware that the great height of the dome and the large spaces covered required compensating optical devices. Hence, one of the persistent criticisms of the murals was that, while the details were often attractive enough, overall the works suffered from a lack of experience in working with large spaces.178 Solomon seems to have been aware of marouflage’s weakness, and paid Havell a backhanded compliment by engaging a traditional Jaipur mural painter for his students. But this had only a limited success, since Solomon himself lacked personal expertise in this technique. Only J. M. Ahivasi from Nathdwara in Rajasthan, and Fyzee-Rahamin, who was not part of the faction and appears to have consulted an ancient Sanskrit text, had success in this area.
What about Solomon’s claim that he had created a new ‘national’ style? Here too we are on a slippery ground. He persistently broadcast that a sound understanding of nature, in other words, Western illusionist drawing, enhanced the decorative instincts of Indian students by improving their representational skills. The difference, as perceived by Solomon, lay in the use of naturalistic figures based on a knowledge of anatomy, as opposed to the flat ‘mental’ images of the Bengal School. Yet, when we examine the works of Bombay we cannot escape the fact that they were not that very different from oriental art. Indeed if one were to describe paintings from Solomon’s mural class in a few words, it would be personifications à la Mucha overlaid with traces of Ajanta and the Bengal School.
SOLOMON AND ENEMIES WITHIN
While Solomon achieved national success by his brilliant tactics, his own position within Bombay was far from secure. Among local celebrities, Fyzee-Rahamin took every occasion to denigrate the school in his lectures in Bombay and abroad well into the 1930s. On 27 December 1930 in his talk at the Students’ Brotherhood Hall in London on the ‘eternal’ and ‘divine’ non-representational mainsprings of Indian art, he did not fail to cast aspersions on the Bombay art school.179 Following his Wembley triumph of 1924, Solomon resumed the restructuring of the school.180 In 1925, the University Reform Committee, chaired by Jayakar, proposed a Fine Arts Faculty that would include the art school. Solomon was initially in favour, as this would have raised the status of art students, but quite inexplicably he backed out, claiming that ‘an ounce of practice was better than tons of theory’.181
Between 1926 and 1928 his old enemies, Hogarth, the Inspector of Drawing, and P. Lorry, the Director of Public Instruction, began plotting to crush him. The DPI ordered an audit of the school with a view to forcing Solomon’s early retirement. This, however, backfired. Following an enquiry instigated by Jayakar, Hogarth himself had no option but to take early retirement. In the process, Solomon won total independence from the Education Department in all curriculum and policy matters. In 1928, the Governor, Frederick Sykes, announced at a meeting: ‘In order that the School of Art may develop on its own lines, we have decided that from April 1 next the School of Art is to be constituted into a separate Department, independent of the Education Department.’182 This marked a momentous change, as the school, hitherto an adjunct of industry, became an independent academy, completing a process that had begun way back in the 1880s.
The final threat to Solomon and the art school came in 1932. Faced with an acute financial crisis, a committee appointed by the Bombay government reached the conclusion that the province could not afford the luxury of a fine art institution, whereas its valuable land could be sold for profit. After considering the alternatives, namely charging a higher school fee or staff redundancies, the committee recommended its closure unless it could be taken over by the Federal Government, which was due to be established.183 This drastic recommendation may have in part been prompted by the continued hostility of the DPI. In response, Jayakar launched a campaign to save the school. The Bombay Art Society was conspicuously lukewarm in its support, possibly because of the India House affair. The campaign succeeded, earning the school a reprieve.184 By now Solomon had lost his appetite for controversy. In 1935, the year before his retirement, he penned a letter of thanks to the India Society for all the help extended to the art school.185
Let us finally consider briefly the wider nationalist politics affecting the art school in the crucial decades of the 1920s and ’30s. As the cultural politics of the New Delhi murals were unfolding, the Gandhian movement bit deeply into the daily routine of this colonial institution. In 1921, in nearby Gujarat, in the wake of the Non-Cooperation movement launched by the Mahatma, widespread riots broke out in large towns, culminating in the Chauri Chaura massacre.186 Many students donned khadi (homespun cloth), not only as a way of declaring solidarity with the Congress but also to defy the school authorities. Dhurandhar was a natural target because of his close association with the government, a number of them boycotting his classes. However, most students lacked commitment. As they encountered no opposition from the teachers, they soon returned to class.187 During the Civil Disobedience of 1928–30, Gandhi was thrown into prison, Jayakar being one of the leaders negotiating with the Raj on his behalf. It was an explosive period, hardly a time for students to concentrate on art. Public meetings were convened every day; demonstrations were taken out every morning; many students joined the picket lines. The Congress boycott of law courts, universities, legislative assemblies and other imperial institutions was remarkably effective. The movement peaked in the summer of 1930 with a general strike that virtually paralysed the government.188 A few students initially came to the school. However, from the third day students, led by one Khadilkar, commenced their picketing. Dhurandhar was then the Acting Director. When he learned that Khadilkar was threatening students who refused to join the strike, he successfully reined him in by appealing to his nationalist sentiment and reminding him of his previous kindness to him. According to Dhurandhar, Khadilkar was harassing a fellow Indian who had reached a senior position.189
Dhurandhar’s memoirs claim that the civil agitation failed to disrupt school activities. As a civil servant, he felt it his duty to maintain discipline at the school during the unrest. His contribution to the nationalist struggle, he believed, was through his art and the government commissions he won for his students. He saw no contradiction between his professional ambitions and political conscience, which gives us a glimpse into the complexities of Indian responses to the anti-colonial struggle. Dhurandhar’s confidence sprang partly from the example of the nationalist politicians who were not averse to joining the provincial governments from the 1920s onwards. The peak of power-sharing was reached in 1935 when the Congress formed ministries in the majority of the provinces in India. Even in 1939, when the Congress withdrew its co-operation with the government after it was snubbed by the Viceroy over the declaration of war, other political groups rushed in to co-operate with the regime. For instance, Vasantrao Dabholkar, who had Dhurandhar’s vote, was one such non-Congress politician who stood at the Council of State elections at this time.190
In the 1940s, this accommodation between the Raj and the nationalist politicians became increasingly difficult. Political conditions worsened, polarizing opinions and putting intolerable burdens on Indian loyalties. Few students at the art school in Bombay remained untouched by the tales of the heroism of the Indian National Army in Southeast Asia or the mutiny of the Indian naval ratings and their subsequent repression. A moving testament to this period is a series of paintings produced by the students of the art school inspired by these events.191
THE SWANSONG OF IMPERIAL PATRONAGE
It is appropriate that I end the section on Raj patronage with the exhibition of modern Indian art in Britain in 1934, the largest ever to be held in Britain until the Festival of India in 1982. It was foreshadowed by an exhibition of decorative designs, paintings, architectural drawings, modellings, copies of murals and other products of the Bombay art school which opened at India House on 8 October 1930. As the catalogue claimed, there ‘does not at present exist enough demand for painting in the archaic style [orientalism] to refuse to give training also in portraiture and figure painting’.192 The Morning Post singled out for praise The Creation of Tilottama by D. G. Badigar, a former student of Solomon, who was now studying at the Royal Academy. Not only had this work been enlarged to scale, opined the paper, ‘which confirmed Solomon’s successful training, but its exquisite decorative design was not marked by the distortions and monotonous colours of the Bengal School’.193 Queen Mary, who paid a visit to the show, expressed an interest in Dhurandhar’s sketch for the New Delhi mural Stridhanam (Bride Wealth). The sketch belonged to Leslie Wilson, the former Governor of Bombay, who felt obliged to present it to her. As Wilson cherished the work, Dhurandhar made another copy for him.194 Dhirendra Krishna Deb Barman, one of the artists working on the India House murals at the time, ruefully admitted the success of Solomon’s propaganda in England.195
The India Society had been accused by Solomon’s group of being an obscurantist body obsessed with ancient Indian art. In 1934, it sought to prove them wrong by hosting an immensely ambitious exhibition of modern Indian art at the Burlington Galleries. By this time an undeclared truce had broken out between Bombay and Bengal, leaving the orientalists once again in power. The enterprising brothers Barada and Ranada Ukil (one of the Indian House four) were given charge of organizing the event.196 There were elaborate preparations, a lot of diplomatic flurries and much advance publicity in the press, journalists closely following the brothers’ every move. Notices appeared even in the distant American Art News on 20 June 1932, not to mention the English papers. Both Vakil and Solomon visited London before the exhibition to safeguard Bombay’s interests, but they were now in a more conciliatory mood.197 The opening of the exhibition on Monday 10 December was carefully orchestrated to squeeze in as much publicity as possible. To underscore noblesse oblige, the Duchess of York, who formally opened the exhibition, and the Maharajkumari (princess) of Burdwan posed for press photographs. The President of the Royal Academy was in attendance as the chief guest. The Marquess of Zetland, the loyal friend of the Bengal School, introduced the exhibition. In 1930, he had urged the members of the Round Table Conference, who had met in London to decide the political fate of India, not to neglect art.198 The secretary of the India Society expressed his own satisfaction with the flowering of two vigorous renaissances under imperial patronage though once more reaffirming Bengal’s pre-eminence.199
Notices appeared in a variety of papers, notably the Illustrated London News, The Times, The Sunday Times, The Daily Telegraph and Manchester Guardian, the last admonishing Indians to revive the glories of ancient art by resisting the lures of Western art.200 The 500 works at Burlington House included a number of large format paintings. Augmented by works from the collections of the Queen, the Marquess of Zetland and quite a few Maharajas, the show represented virtually all the reputed Indian artists of older and younger generations that spanned three decades of the twentieth century. The only surprising omission was the controversial Amrita Sher-Gil.201 The Times, which reviewed the show in extenso, failed to discover any masterpieces, though it recognized the abundance of talent, not to mention Bengal’s primacy. Although hesitating to speak with authority on the orientalists’ symbolic colours, since that subject was ‘not to be touched by anybody unversed in Indian philosophy’, it felt dismayed by their misty gradations borrowed from Japan. Gaganendranath ‘excited the greatest interest’, while admiration for Rabindranath had by now been reduced to mere curiosity.202 Ramananda Chatterjee, the veteran journalist from India, who had done much to shape Indian taste, covered the show for his Modern Review.203
A. C. Rodrigues, Scene, 1942, watercolour on paper.
In the wake of this grand spectacle of empire, which had opened with so much fanfare, the memory of Indian artists in Britain gradually faded away. The political situation in India was deteriorating even as the war clouds started gathering on the distant European horizon. This particular swansong of imperial patronage had all the panoply of a state occasion before Raj politics entered its final meltdown. The government expected the grand exhibition to demonstrate the limited popularity of the Congress and highlight its cordial relations with the hereditary princes who trusted the Raj more than the nationalists. For the artists this was the last demonstration of ambitious government patronage. From this moment artists would rely on private patronage and their own resources rather than on the endorsement of the colonial regime.
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