The Bengal School of painting and the nationalist-revivalist movement in Bengal

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dc.contributor.authorBhattacharjee, Barunaen_US
dc.date.accessioned2024-08-13T00:08:27Z
dc.date.available2024-08-13T00:08:27Z
dc.date.copyright1988en_US
dc.date.issued1988
dc.degree.departmentDepartment of History in Art
dc.degree.departmentDepartment of Art History and Visual Studies
dc.degree.levelMaster of Arts M.A.en
dc.description.abstractThe Bengal School of painting, which sought to express nationalism through revived techniques and subject matter taken from ancient artistic and literary traditions, has been claimed as a " new national style" for India by critics such as E. B. Havell and A. K. Coomaraswamy. This thesis argues that such a claim is untenable, and that the dichotomy between revivalism and nationalism- - inherent in the basic philosophy that fuelled the Bengal School- - also caused its failure to create a " new national style." In other words, t he basic inconsistency in the desire to revive forms of the past to express the current emotions of nationalism at a time when the country was undergoing revolutionary changes resulted in an art which was weak and moribund, feeding as it did on subjects with which the artists themselves had no personal contact. The thesis consists of five chapters, the first of which examines the emergence of Swadeshi (nationalist) and revivalist sentiments as a result of English education and the discovery of India ' s literary and artistic heritage by orientalist scholars like William Carey and Sir William Jones . This movement peaked in the latter half of the nineteenth century in what is generally known as the Bengal Renaissance, the highlights of which are the creation of modern Bengali literature and the Hindu reform movement , the Brahma Samaj. Chapter Two goes back to examine the degeneration of indigenous artistic traditions that had resulted from the westernization of Indian art and artistic taste in the eighteenth century. Chapter Three focuses on the role of Havell and Coomaraswamy as catalysts in the artistic revival of the late nineteenth century that led to the founding of the Bengal School by Abanindranath Tagore. Chapter Four examines the development and character­istics of the Bengal School and evaluates several represen­tative Bengal School painters and their work . In conclusion , Chapter Five discusses the failure of the Bengal School to create a national style .
dc.format.extent107 pages
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/1828/17244
dc.rightsAvailable to the World Wide Weben_US
dc.titleThe Bengal School of painting and the nationalist-revivalist movement in Bengalen_US
dc.typeThesisen_US

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