Artist Hemendranath Majumdar (Bangladeshs artist)

Artist Hemendranath Majumdar 

Born in 1894, in what is now Bangladesh, Hemendranath Mazumdar was a painter of exceptional talent. Although he was praised for his fine treatment of pastels, watercolors and chalks, his real skill lay in the way he handled the oil medium.Women of his native (erstwhile) Bengal, most bathing or draped in wet saris are considered Mazumdar`s classical trademark. A renowned and thriving painter of the European academic style in the Kolkata of 1920s, Hemendranath was a close associate of Abanindranath Tagore but was never won over by the ideals of the Neo-Bengal School that the Tagores founded. aking inspiration from this incident, many academic artists, such as Hemendranath, Bhabani Charan Laha and Atul Bose joined the Ranadaprasad Gupta`s Jubilee Art Academy, which was founded in 1897, in a break away gesture. This taking control of events and defying authority made Mazumdar aware of the necessity to follow one`s own instincts rather than sticking to a particular movement or group. He became one of the few Indian artists of the early twentieth century who enjoyed both monetary success and critical appreciation. In 1921, Mazumdar won the gold medal for his painting `Reminiscence` at an exhibition in Mumbai. In the same year another of his paintings was awarded the first prize by the Society of Fine Arts in Kolkata.After Independence, in 1947, Hemendranath was invited to paint a mural to decorate the All India exhibition, in which he excelled all his previous work. He painted its panels with several scenes of the life in Bengal he grew up with. Painting this large mural drained much of the old artist`s health, and after a year, in 1948, he passed away, leaving only an amazing heritage of works behind for his admirers.