Kumaon Hills

Bireswar Sen, a twentieth-century painter from Bengal, was the student of Abanindranath Tagore— a pioneering modern Indian artist and an active proponent of nationalist revivalist art, who was the founder of what came to be known as the Bengal School. Sen began painting in the traditional style of his teacher and drew inspiration from the Japanese masters Yokoyama Taikan and Kampo Arai. A meeting in 1932 with the Russian painter and philosopher Nicholas Roerich proved to be a turning point in Sen’s life. He began to paint Himalayan landscapes in the miniature format, marking a new era in Indian landscape painting. Sen evolved a unique style of painting vistas of gigantic mountains and deep valleys on a minuscule scale, whose tiny size was belied by the lofty spaces he evoked, depicting the Himalayas as reserves of great spiritual power as they stood out in his nuanced depictions of light and colour. Like his painting of the Kumaon Hills here, Bireswar Sen’s landscapes are neither realistic nor entirely imaginary, choosing instead to evoke the essence of the mountains, wishing not to imitate but take from nature that which ‘best accords with his own intentions’.