House at Jamshedpur

Jamini Roy’s impressionistic House at Jamshedpur has all the magic of memories—daubs of sunlight on its fence, shadowed spots under a remembered tree, windows pierced into walls that are left open, a sense of children’s voices and languid conversations. This is a home of happiness and laughter. A zamindar’s son, Roy’s childhood in Bengal’s Bankura district would have been spent in reasonable comfort in a home not unlike this one. His decision to study art brought him to Calcutta where, despite training in Western realism, he preferred to work in a style that was distinctive and drawn from folk traditions. Impressionistic works of this nature are, thus, rare and exemplify the work undertaken by the artist before his adaptation of the style familiarly associated with him.