JYOTIRINDRANATH TAGORE: TWENTY-FIVE COLLOTYPES FROM THE ORIGINAL DRAWINGS
Jyotirindranath Tagore (1849–1925) was not so much celebrated as an artist and a painter as he was for being a playwright, a musician, a composer, an editor, and a scholar. Born in Jorosanko, in Calcutta, in the year 1849, Jyotirindranath completed his primary education at home, he was taught by his elder brother Hemendranath.
He began to pursue the discipline of Fine Arts and soon his studies escalated to the understanding of theatre. He left his education and focused on stage productions at his family home, Jorosanko.
In 1867, while he was staying with his elder brother, Satyendranath, in Ahmedabad, Jyotirindranath learned many finer skills. This was the time he started practicing art more conscientiously. He painted and drew no lesser than two thousand sketches, all of which are preserved at Rabindra Bharati University.
He painted an array of portraits, was an avid portrait artist, He almost exclusively worked on pencil on paper. He drew everyone in the Tagore family and people who would visit him at Calcutta or at his Morabadi Hill residence in Ranchi.
Among these portraitures, twenty-five drawings were selected by Sir Emery Walker of London. These exquisite portrait drawings were then printed in 1914, using the collotype method.
Collotype is generally used to retain the absolute fidelity of the originals. It is a dichromate-based photographic process that gives the feeling and texture of the original artwork. If one runs their finger over these prints, it would be a pretty similar experience to that of touching the originals. The method was introduced by Alphonse Poitevin back in 1855. It was useful to print images in a wide variety of tones, and for that halftone screens were no more needed. Most of the collotypes were produced between the 1870s and 1920s.
The album of Jyotirindranath Tagore’s art carried a delicate Foreword by William Rothenstein. This book of portrait collection was titled “Twenty-five Collotypes from the Original Drawings by Jyotirindranath Tagore”, 1914.
JYOTIRINDRANATH TAGORE: TWENTY-FIVE COLLOTYPES FROM THE ORIGINAL DRAWINGS
A true Bengali poly-math, Jyotirindranath was all in one; a brilliant playwright, a musicologist, a lyricist, a composer, a painter, an editor, and a scholar. Born in Jorosanko, Calcutta, in the year 1849, Jyotirindranath was elder to the prodigy of the generation, Rabindranath Tagore. Jyotirindranath was home-schooled by his elder brother Hemendranath when he began his education. He pursued Fine Arts and then gradually became drawn to the performance arts section of the stream. He pursued studying theatre and began to practice and stage plays that he wrote, at his family home, in Jorosanko. Jyotirindranath and Rabindranath’s cousin, Ganendranath, established the Jorasanko Natyasala in 1865.
In the first play that was staged, there was not a writer by him. It was the celebrated play “Krishnakumari” by another stalwart of the time, Michael Madhusudan Dutta. Jyotirindranath’s taking part in the play in the role of Ahalyadevi, a brave queen, drew him closer to the stage, and ever since he had the aspirations to become a playwright. His works include plays like Purubikram (1874), Sarojini (1875) — both of which features songs written by Nobelauriet Rabindranath — other than that, Ashrumati (Woman in tears, 1879), and Swapnamayi (Lady of Dream, 1882).
Jyotirindranath moved to his elder brother Satyendranath’s Ahmedabad residence in 1867. He spent most of his time there learning to play the sitar, and trained in his artistic practices, including learning to paint and draw. During this time, he produced around 2,000 sketches. These works by Jyotirindranath Tagore are preserved at Rabindra Bharati University. He also learned two languages, French and Indian.
Jyotirindranath was a brilliant scholar and translator as well. While he spent his days with his elder brother in Ahmedabad, he completed translating several books, among which Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar and Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations were notable. He translated many other novels, as well as publications on plays, philosophy, history. He translated from English and French to his mother tongue, Bengali. His language skills were impeccable, be it English or French, or Bengali. Gradually he worked with many Sanskrit dramas as well and translated the works. Among them is Kalidasa’s Shakuntala which he translated from Sanskrit into Bengali. He was celebrated for his satires on social evils. Jyotirindranath is notable for another breakthrough work in Bengali literature, he founded the celebrated “Bharati” magazine with his brother Dwijendranath.
He was a brilliant musicologist. He played the piano beautifully. He was especially skillful with playing harmonium, violin, and sitar. He was majorly responsible for Jorasanko’s musical atmosphere. He would always compose a piece of music to which his friend Akshay Chandra Chaudhuri would find the words and later on, his dear brother ‘Rabi’.
Jyotirindranath once, from 1869 to 1888, held the position of the secretary of Adi Brahmo Samaj. And he helped to organise the Hindu Mela in Kolkata. He also wrote the opening song for the occasion, titled ‘Udbhodan,’ in 1868. Moreover, he was claimed to have instituted the secret society called Sanjibani Sabha in the year 1876. The nationalistic approach of the secret society was dedicated for the betterment of the country.
JYOTIRINDRANATH TAGORE: TWENTY-FIVE COLLOTYPES FROM THE ORIGINAL DRAWINGS
‘Two or three years ago I noticed, in a Bengali Review sent me by a friend, some small reproductions of shat appeared to me to be remarkable drawings. When Mr. Rabindra Nath Tagore was in England last year I discovered they were done by one of his own brothers. He immediately wrote for some of the originals, and I received from the artist, Mr. Jyotirindranath Tagore, the generous loan of a number of his sketchbooks. Mr. Tagore is not an artist by profession. He has long been in the habit: of making drawings of his friends and relations, for his own pleasure and interest, and these drawings seem to me to show just those qualities of concentration and sincerity which we should expect, but so rarely get, from the amateur. The heads show a sensitiveness to form which is unusual. They seem to me also to be drawn with the most perfect naturalness. Here is neither preoccupation with Western models nor a conscious attempt to follow a Mogul tradition. The drawings of Indian ladies are especially remarkable. The 17thand 18thcenturies imposed so weak and characterless a vision of woman on the European artist, that one has almost to go back to Durer and Holbein to find such frank and sincere portraits as these. Seeing the extraordinary variety and interest of the life about them, I have always wondered why the younger Indian painters adopt both the subjects and the formulas of the Mogul and Rajput traditions.
This is probably a momentary phase in the growth of modern Indian painting and is clearly due to a gallant desire to resist the thoughtless adoption of bad European workmanship and travel and stupid subject matter. But there is good European painting and drawing and no lack of noble vision, and the influence of these would perhaps not be harmful, though probably few, if any, examples of this kind have reached India. If no vital school can be founded on the conscious adoption of an alien style, it is not likely to be brought to life by the practice of conscious archaism. It is not art which produces art, but passion. Art is the cultivation, of passion, which like all cultivation of passion, which like all cultivation, demands infinite labour, skill and patience, as well as infinite will, if it is to bear ripe and wholesome fruit. Something of this passion I feel in the drawings of Mr. Jyotirindranath Tagore. It is of a simple and modest kind, but in each of the drawings one feels he was absorbed by the unique desire to express something of the delicacy of form and gravity of character of his sitter.
We are so used to seeing portraits of Maharajahs in their state apparel, or photographs of unusual types in books of travel, that this straight forward portraiture of cultured Indian ladies and gentlemen, of whom we in England head and know so little, is a new delightful thing. Mr. Jyotirindranath Tagore has allowed some twenty-five of his drawings to be reproduced by Mr. Emery Walker, and I believe these will give to many of us the human and intimate picture of Bengali character we get from the novels of Bankim Chandra Chatterjee.
I know of few modern portrait drawings which show greater beauty and insight.
W. Rothenstein
