Bengal School/Revivalism

In the early 20th century though, the emerging educated middle class began to rise above the internal divides and identify itself as a national entity. The Indian intelligentsia coalesced as a result of technological advancement and greater intercommunication, and searched once more for a forgotten cultural heritage and it's riches. This rediscovery inspired a fresh assertion of Indian talent which began to manifest itself through songs, poetry, street plays and paintings, resulting in a lively current of artistic activity.

At the fountainhead of this revivalist celebration was a single aristocratic family of Bengal, called the Tagores. This multi-talented family is credited with contributions to not only painting, but also poetry, fiction and playwriting, and even singing, acting and designing. It was headed by the most celebrated member of the family, Rabinandranath Tagore (1861-1941) who became the first non-white and first Indian Nobel laureate. He was India’s Grand Old Man of Letters, who also founded a unique University, called Visva Bharati at Shantiniketan in 1917. His nephews the brothers Gaganendranath and Abanindranath earned the distinction of being India’s first Modern Artists an art also taken up by their uncle much later in life at 65 years of age. With the support of E.B. Havell, then British principal of Calcutta School of Art (the first Briton to declare British art education unsuitable for Indians), Ananda Coomarswamy, India’s great art-critic, and Nandalal Bose, the gifted painter, it was Abanindranath who breathed a new life into Indian painting.

The Revivalist art was deeply influenced by the glorious past and heritage of India, by it's great epics and it's transcendental philosophy, by the frescoes of Ajanta and the Mughal Rajput miniature paintings.

Very little of Indian sculpture, though, was visible during the nineteenth century. The iconoclastic armies of the Mughals had systematically razed to ground hundreds of Hindu Temples which were treasure houses of Indian sculpture. The first attempts to resuscitate Indian sculpture in 1930, under the missionary leadership of Ramakinkar Vaij, were seen at Rabindranath Tagore's university at Shantiniketan. Yet, after stalwarts like Somnath Hore and Sankho Chaudhry, although there were other prominent sculptors, it would be another half century before India could boast of fine sculpting talents of international repute like Anish Kapoor and Dhruv Mistry.

The regimes and influences of the British art school, though stifling and sterile, inspired one vibrant artist whose career became a memorable success. A minor princeling Travancore House, Raja Ravi Varma (1848 – 1906), was the first Indian to master the technique of oil painting. He learnt his craft from a European visiting artist at the court of Maharajah of Tranvacore. His dazzling works depicted scenes from the great Indian epics and other literature and the dress and form he gave to his characters in these works continue to influence the Indian film industry immensely till date.