Religious Art & Worldviews · Artists
Founder of the Bengal School, whose Bharat Mata (1905) gave Indian nationalism a goddess's face — and swadeshi art its emblem.
Tagged: Painting Modern Political Iconic Bengal School Hindu
Tagore, nephew of the poet Rabindranath, rejected the oleograph's glossy naturalism for a wash technique drawn from Mughal and Japanese models, and taught a generation to paint India in India's own idioms. He founded the Bengal School around that conviction.
The pictured Bharat Mata — Mother India as a saffron-clad ascetic bearing food, cloth, learning, and prayer — was painted in the swadeshi agitation of 1905 and became its icon.
References
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