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He was the colossus of the Indian art world whose reign over twentieth-century modern art remains unparalleled. M. F. Husain (1913-2011) was the face of Indian modernism and owned it completely. Having started out as a painter of billboards in Bombay, he became its unchallenged monarch as a member of the influential Progressive Artists’ Group in 1947. He claimed the first National Award instituted by the Lalit Kala Akademi in 1955, and went on to become India’s most celebrated artist. In a practice that spanned over seventy years, Husain was playful, experimental, provocative, controversial—but never mediocre.

Rabin Mondal is like a striding colossus of our times, scorching up the firmament with images that reflect societal malaise and his own inner turmoil. His determination to paint in a market-unfriendly manner is characteristic of his resolve. His canvases provide no safety net for the unwary viewer. Here is a confident artist aware of his self and his role with no fig leaf to offer those seeking beauty in art—not that his work is unbeautiful.

From 1797, when British artist Thomas Daniell painted his masterly landscape of Mahabalipuram, to 2003, the year Rameshwar Broota's painting pitching man against metal resulted in a powerful image, the Indian art world has seen a succession of artists and movements that have enriched its vocabulary in more ways than one. Thomas Daniell Sita Ram Early Bengal School Raja Ravi Varma Edwin Lord Weeks Marius Bauer Ustad Allah Bakhsh Studio of Bourne & Shepherd M. V. Dhurandhar Hemendranath Mazumdar M. A. R. Chughtai Nandalal Bose Jamini Roy Laxman Pai J. Swaminathan Francis Newton Souza J. Sultan Ali Rabin Mondal S. H. Raza K. K. Hebbar Akbar Padamsee Tyeb Mehta K. H. Ara S. K. Bakre Bireswar Sen Nirode Mazumdar Shanti Dave Gulam Rasool Santosh Madhvi Parekh Satish Gujral Bikash Bhattacharjee Maqbool Fida Husain Meera Mukherjee Rameshwar Broota

Landscape art arrived in India through travelling European artists who brought the aesthetic of painting mountains, rivers and trees against the sky and a distant horizon—nature as a subject in itself —to Indian art, where it had traditionally only formed a backdrop in narrative-driven, figural paintings. The genre remained popular throughout the nineteenth century with a great demand for landscapes of India both in Europe and among the newly anglicised elite in India. Its popularity began to wane with the advent of modernism and a growing emphasis on the human figure, but several Indian artists, a significant name among them Gopal Ghose, continued to practice the form, now absorbing a wide range of new artistic trends and influences. A.A. Almelkar Abanindranath Tagore Ambika Dhurandhar Amitava Anonymous (Company School) Anonymous (Early Bengal) Atul Bose Avinash Chandra B. C. Gue B. N. Arya Bhupen Khakhar Bijan Choudhary Bikash Bhattcharjee Bimal Dasgupta Bireswar Sen Bishnupada Roychowdhury Chittaprosad D. C. Joglekar D. J. Joshi Devraj Dakoji Devyani Krishna Dharamnarayan Dasgupta Dulal Gue E. A. Dadi Edward Cheney F. N. Souza G. R. Santosh G. S. Haldankar Ganesh Haloi Gobardhan Ash Gopal Ghose H. A. Gade Haren Das Hirachand Dugar Indra Dugar J. P. Gangooly Jamini Roy John Deschamps Jyoti Bhatt K H. Ara K. C. S. Panicker K. K. Hebba K. Laxma Gou K. S. Kulkarni Kanwal Krishna Kisory Roy Kripal Singh Shekhawat L. N. Taskar L. P. Shaw Lalit Mohan Sen Laxman Pai M. F. Husain M. V. Dhurandhar Manishi Dey Mukul Dey N. R. Sardesai N. S. Bendre Nandalal Bose Nikhil Biswas Olinto Ghilardi P. Khemraj Paramjit Singh Pestonji E. Bomanji Prokash Karmakar Prosanto Roy Radha Charan Bagchi Raja Ravi Varma Ram Kumar Ramendranath Chakravorty Ramkinkar Baij Ranen Ayan Dutta Richard Barron Robert Grindlay S. G. Thakur Singh S. K. Bakre S. L. Haldankar Satish Sinha Sudhir Khastgir Sunil Das Thomas Daniell William Carpenter William Hodges

Among all attempts by foreign artists to present a complete view of India, none is so focused on people as the work of François Baltazard Solvyns, who lived in Calcutta for a decade starting in 1791. While picking up odd jobs, he embarked on an ambitious project to produce a comprehensive survey of ‘the manners, customs, and dresses, of the Hindus’. The first edition contained 250 hand-coloured etchings and was published by Solvyns between 1796 and 1799.

Jamini Roy’s was an art of quiet resistance that assimilated so seamlessly into the folk and craft traditions of Bengal that it did not cause any discernible ripples among the prevalent artistic mood. All around him, art was being nurtured, questioned, uprooted—it was, after all, a period when nationalist feelings ran high and a search for an indigenous lexicon was paramount—but Jaminida’s ability to look to tradition for a modern approach, though revolutionary, was instinctively natural and organic. It was art that everyone understood and wanted to take home. No wonder Jamini babu became a household name in his native Calcutta and went on to be honoured as one of the pre-eminent National Treasure artists of the country whose art has the greatest acceptance of any known Indian modernist.

By the end of the century, however, the scene was changing, and infrastructure—following the economic reforms in 1991—began to improve, creating an interest in collecting art. Twentieth century Indian modern art has since been at the forefront of collecting and investing in Indian art, and DAG, which has the largest private collection of Indian art has a marked focus on this period of Indian art. Ambadas F. N. Souza G. R. Santosh George Keyt Jamini Roy K. K. Hebbar Kanwal Krishna Laxman Pai M. F. Husain M. F. Pithawalla M. V. Dhurandhar Madhvi Parekh Nandalal Bose Nemai Ghosh Prokash Karmakar Rabin Mondal