Untitled

This remarkable painting by National Treasure artist Abanindranath Tagore—almost abstract in its treatment—is a landscape of great ingenuity. Tagore was the creator of the Bengal School wash technique that he applied equally to his figurative as well as landscape works, but in this painting he uses the barest intervention to create a reflection of light in what is clearly a body of water, with a row of boats anchored in its stream. The minimal use of colour and the expressionistic rendering alone lift it up into a class of its own as a work of compelling interest.