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Two Pictures
THE
Modern Review and Prabasi are doing
monthly a service to the country the importance of which cannot
be exaggerated. The former review is at present the best conducted and the most full of valuable matter of any in India. But
good as are the articles which fill the magazine from month to
month, the whole sum of them is outweighed in value by the
single page which gives us the reproduction of some work of art
by a contemporary Indian painter. To the lover of beauty and
the lover of his country every one of these delicately executed
blocks is an event of importance in his life within. The Reviews
by bringing these masterpieces to the thousands who have no
opportunity of seeing the originals are restoring the sense of
beauty and artistic emotion inborn in our race but almost blotted
out by the long reign in our lives of the influence of Anglo-Saxon vulgarity and crude tasteless commercialism. The pictures
belong usually to the new school of Bengali art, the only living
and original school now developing among us and the last issues
have each contained a picture especially important not only by
the intrinsic excellence of the work but by the perfect emergence
of that soul of India which we attempted to characterise in an
article in our second issue.
The picture in the July number is by Mahomed Hakim
Khan, a student of the Government School of Art, Calcutta, and
represents Nadir Shah ordering a general massacre. It is not
one of those pictures salient and imposing which leap at once at
the eye and hold it. A first glance only shows three figures almost
conventionally Indian in poses which also seem conventional.
But as one looks again and again the soul of the picture begins
suddenly to emerge, and one realises with a start of surprise that
one is in the presence of a work of genius. The reason for this
lies in the extraordinary restraint and simplicity which conceals
the artist's strength and subtility. The whole spirit and conception is Indian and it would be difficult to detect in the composi-
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tion a single trace of foreign influence. The grace and perfection
of the design and the distinctness and vigour of form which
support it are not European; it is the Saracenic sweetness and
grace, the old Vedantic massiveness and power transformed by
some new nameless element of harmony into something original
and yet Indian. The careful and minute detail in the minutiae of
the dresses, of the armour of the warrior seated on the right, of
the flickering lines of the pillar on the left are inherited from an
intellectual ancestry whose daily vision was accustomed to the
rich decoration of Agra and Fatehpur Sikri or to the fullness
and crowded detail which informed the massive work of the
old Vedantic artists and builders, Hindu, Jain and Buddhist.
Another peculiarity is the fixity and stillness which, in spite of
the Titanic life and promise of motion in the figure of Nadir,
pervade the picture. A certain stiffness of design marks much of the old Hindu
art, a stiffness courted by the artists perhaps in order that no insistence of material life in the figures
might distract attention from the expression of the spirit within
which was their main object. By some inspiration of genius the
artist has transformed this conventional stiffness into a hint of
rigidity which almost suggests the lines of stone. This stillness
adds immensely to the effect of the picture. The petrified inaction
of the three human beings contrasted with the expression of the
faces and the formidable suggestion in the pose of their sworded
figures affects us like the silence of murder crouching for his leap.
The central figure of Nadir Shah dominates
his surroundings. It is from this centre that the suggestion of something
terrible coming out of the silent group has started. The strong,
proud and regal figure is extraordinarily impressive, but it is the
face and the arm that give the individuality. That bare arm and
hand grasping the rigid upright scimitar are inhuman in their
savage force and brutality; it is the hand, the fingers, one might
almost say the talons of the human wild beast. This arm and
hand have action, murder, empire in them; the whole history of
Nadir is there expressed. The grip and gesture have already
commenced the coming massacre and the whole body behind
consents. The face corresponds in the hard firmness and strength
of the nose, the brute cruelty of the mouth almost lost in the
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moustache and beard. But the eyes are the master-touch in this
figure. They overcome us with surprise when we look at them,
for these are not the eyes of the assassin, even the assassin upon
the throne. The soul that looks out of these eyes is calm, aloof
and thoughtful, yet terrible. Whatever order of massacre has
issued from these lips, did not go forth from an ordinary energetic
man of action moved by self-interest, rage or blood-thirst. The
eyes are the eyes of a Yogin but a terrible Yogin; such might
be the look of some adept of the left-hand ways, some mighty
Kapalik lifted above pity and shrinking as above violence and
wrath. Those eyes in that face, over that body, arm, hand seem
to be those of one whose spirit is not affected by the actions of the body,
whose natural part and organs are full of the destroying energy of Kali while the soul, the witness within, looks on at
the sanguinary drama tranquil, darkly approving but hardly interested. And then it dawns on one that this is not so much the
Nadir of history; unconsciously perhaps the artist has given a
quiet but effective delineation of the Scourge of God, the man
who is rather a force than a human being, the Asura with a mission who has come to do God's work of destruction and help
on the evolution by carnage and ruin. The soul within is not that
of a human being. Some powerful Yogin of a Lemurian race
has incarnated in this body, one born when the simian might
and strength of the vānara had evolved into the perfection of the
human form and brain with the animal still uneliminated, who
having by Tapasya and knowledge separated his soul from his
nature has elected this reward that after long beatitude, prāpya punyakrtām
lokān usitvā śāśvatīh samāh, he should reincarnate
as a force of nature informed by a human soul and work out in
a single life the savage strength of the outward self, taking upon
himself the foreordained burden of empire and massacre.
From Nadir the coming carnage has passed into the seated
warrior and looks out from his eyes at the receiver of the order.
The gaze is contemplative but not inward like Nadir's, and it is
human and indifferent envisaging massacre as part of the activities of the soldier with a matter-of-fact approval. The figure is
almost a piece of sculpture, so perfect is the rigidity of arrested
and expectant action. The straight strong sword over the
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shoulder has the same rigid preparedness.
There is a certain defect in the unnatural pose and obese curve of the hand which is
not justified by any similar detail or motive in the rest of the
figure. We notice a similar motiveless strain in the position of
Nadir's left arm, though here something is perhaps added to the
force of the attitude. A standing figure receives the sanguinary
command. The folded hands and the scimitar suspended in front
are full of the spirit of ready obedience and there is an expression
of pleasure, almost amusement which makes even this commonplace face terrible, for the decree dooming thousands is taken
as lightly as if it were order for nautch or banquet. The three
mighty swords, by a masterly effect of balanced design, fill with
death and menace the terrace on which the men are seated.
Behind these formidable figures is a part of the palace gracious
with the simple and magical lines of Indo-Saracenic architecture
and in the distance on the right from behind a mass of heavy impenetrable green a slender tapering tower rises into the peaceful
quiet of Delhi.
On another page of the same review we have a picture by
one of the greatest Masters of European Art, Raphael's vision
of the Knight. The picture is full of that which Greece and Italy
perfected as the aim of Art, beauty and such soul-expression as
heightens physical beauty. It is beauty that is expressed in the
robust body and the feminine face of the armed youth both full
of an exquisite languor of sleep, in the sweet face, the voluptuous figure, the
gracious pose of the temptress offering her delicate allurement of flowers, in
the other's grave, strong and benign countenance, the vigorous physique and open gesture of
promise and aspiration extending a book and a fine slender
sword, in the delicacy of the landscape behind and the tree under
which the dreamer lies. There is suggestion but it is the suggestion of more and more beauty, there is harmony and relation but
it is the harmony and relation of loveliness of landscape as a
background to the loveliness of the nobly-grouped figures. There
is an attempt to express spiritual meanings but it is by outward
symbols only and not by making the outward expression a vehicle
for something that comes from within and overpowers impalpably. This is allegory, the other is the drawing and painting of
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the very self of things. Only in the delicate spiritual face of the
Knight is there some approach to the Eastern spirit. This is one
kind of art and a great art, but is the other less? Beauty for
beauty's sake can never be the spirit of art in India, beauty we
must seek and always beauty, but never lose sight of the end
which India holds more important, the realisation of the Self
in things. Europeans create out of the imagination. India has
always sought to go deeper within and create out of the Power
behind imagination, by passivity and plenary inspiration, in
Yoga, from Samadhi.
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