National Gallery of Modern Art-Parikraman

Nandalal Bose

A Sketch from Album No. 64 8665 Nandalal Bose Watercolour on postcard

Nandalal Bose, adept in the Chinese and Japanese brush techniques has in this monochromatic painting emphasised on the tonal variations of the distinctive form of a traveller on a mountain pony in the foreground. As inscribed by the artist himself, Nandalal executed this hilly landscape from his memory, depicting his probable sojourn to Rajgriha hills (now Rajgir hills, a Buddhist pilgrimage site in the Indian state of Bihar. Art historian, R. Siva Kumar in the book, 'Rhythms of India: The Art of Nandalal Bose' writes, "In spite of specificities of location, not all of his drawings were done on location. Nandalal used drawing as a part of his pedagogic method, as a technique to awaken students' impulses to explore experiential realities, but at the same time he insisted that they do both, studies from nature and drawings from memory.....Much like Chinese and Japanese painters (and Rembrandt, for that matter), he gave to works done in the studio the same vividness found in his studies done directly from nature."