National Gallery of Modern Art-Parikraman

Nandalal Bose

A Sketch from Album No. 71 8842 Nandalal Bose Watercolour on postcard

Nandalal was indefatigable in his sketching routines which formed an adjunct part of his daily life. Making instantaneous visual records of anything amusing happening in his surround dings or of social events, or observing the demeanour and mannerisms of people, the cattle and observing intently the ways of nature was inspiring and a source of delight for Nanadalal. His smaller sketches are testimony of Nandalal's keenness to observe and his empathy for the environment in which he lived. In this watercolour drawing the artist has delineated the structure of the hut and the contouring form of the tree arising from within the hut with fine calligraphic style lines. That the artist observed and studied carefully the minutest of details as the shape of the trunk of tree or the leaves they bore can be ascertained in his own words in his book 'Vision and Creation', 'A tree grows upward; it is driven by a singular urge to spread towards the sky - trunk, branch and leaf. The trunk is like the tree's backbone; so its characteristic rhythm has to be drawn first; then its main structure with branch and twig; and finally the total image with its bunches of leaves and shoots....' The fluid handling of the line and their strong delineation used for the drawing was the influence of the Far Eastern art practices. Nandalal understood the significance of the use of lines and experimented frequently in their execution from fine lines to being thick contouring lines and executed in a calligraphic fashion.