National Gallery of Modern Art-Parikraman

Nandalal Bose

A Sketch from Album No. 11 (A Portrait Study) 7229 Nandalal Bose Pencil on postcard

Nandalal had firm belief that for the creation of art an intimate understanding of the nature and its ways is imperative. His smaller sketches are testimony of Nandalal's keenness to observe and his empathy for the environment in which he lived. The above drawing is a pencil portrait of a turbaned man. Dinkar Kowshik in his article 'Drawings and Sketches of Nandalal in the book titled "Nandalal Bose - A collection of Essays" has elucidated about the sketches of Nandalal in the words, "Nandalal's sketches in fact provide a moving record of a humble life and natural environment in which he lived. These are not in any way preliminary studies for his larger finished compositions in black and white or in colour. They are finished and self-contained in themselves like a Japanese 'Haiku'. Their spacing, their distribution of black and white, their linear or tonal accents and the signature all form a part of a single unit."