The Dreamer

The progenitor of the Bengal School, Abanindranath Tagore made this work, The Dreamer, as a wedding present for contemporary artist Dhirendra Krishna Deb—among his last major works, it marks a significant shift in the artist’s visual language. A middle-aged man, the dreamer, gazes into the distance; the deep red and a brown background establish the melancholic mood of the painting, along with the subject’s pensive expression. The darker, ‘muddier’ palette sets the work apart from Tagore’s earlier Bengal School phase, though some elements like the Japanese perspective of dissolving distance are retained from that period.