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.
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