• NGMA India

    Jamini Roy

    Accession No . 3110 Artist Name. Jamini Roy Title. Mother and Child Medium. Watercolour on paper Size. 10.2 x 10.8 cm

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    Probably, it was 1919 or 1920 that Jamini Roy moved away gradually from European naturalism in search of his own idiom. The Mother and Child image is one of the favourite themes of Roy and here he evokes the mother's protective tenderness towards her child with great sensitivity. There are infinite variations of the mother and child figures. It is difficult to gauge at this distance of time what thoughts led him to experiment with this theme. One wonders whether the subject had an emotional charge for him. Were his experiments with the theme an outcome of Bengal's obsession with mother worship? Or was it just an interesting juxtaposition of forms which helped the possibility of endless explorations? This monochromatic drawing of a mother and child is highly stylised and executed using red colour with probably a hut in the backdrop.