Lot 2374: Attributed to Asit Kumar Haldar (1890-1964)

Oil on canvas, unsigned, framed.
56 1/4 x 26 1/4in (142.9 x 66.6cm)

Provenance:
From the present owner's great great grandfather, Sir Afsar ul-Mulk, the commander-in-chief of the Hyderabad Army from 1897-1927. A member of Nizam Mir Osman Ali's court, he was knighted by Queen Victoria and served as a representative from India to the English court.

Asit Kumar Haldar was born in 1890 in Calcutta. He was the grand-nephew of Rabindranath Tagore, the well known poet, philosopher, novelist and artist who was Asia's first Nobel laureate, winning the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913. Asit Kumar Haldar attended the Government College of Arts and Crafts when he was 16, studying under his famous grand-uncle.

In 1909-1911, he was a member of a trip to the Ajanta Caves, sponsored by the Indian Society in London and led by Lady Herringham. The purpose of the trip was to study and copy the cave's magnificent frescoes. This was an important trip for Haldar as it opened his eyes to the beauty and spirituality of traditional Indian art.

From 1911-23 he helped Rabindranath Tagore establish the Kala Bhavan (School of Fine Arts) in Santiniketan. Tagore and Haldar were proponents and pioneers of the Neo-Bengal School which promoted Indian nationalism and rejected the predominant European Academic style in favor of the traditional methods utilized in Indian art.

In 1923 he was appointed Principal of the Maharaja's School of Arts and Crafts in Lucknow. He was the first Indian to be awarded a position as principal of a Government Art School. He was also the first Indian to be elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Art in London in 1934.

He was a well loved and highly respected artist, inspiring and influencing younger artists such as Mukul Chandra Dey, Ramandradra Nath Chakravarti, Binod Behari Mukherjee, Hirachand Dugar and others.

The present work is a study from his trip to the Ajanta Caves. It is a faithful rendering of the 'Black Princess' which is one of the cave's more graceful paintings. Despite it being a copy of another work, it represents an influence that would greatly affect the methods and inspiration for Haldar's future work.

For a photographic image of the fresco itself, see, Benoy K. Behl, The Ajanta Caves: Artistic Wonder of Ancient Buddhist India, New York, p.68.