Jamini Roy (1887-1972)

Jamini Roy trained in the Western academic painting styles and initially worked in the Post-Impressionist genre of portraits and landscapes. In the 1920s, he became inspired by the lines and palette of paintings (pattas) sold in bazaars outside of the Kalighat temples in Bengal, India. He soon developed his own unique revival of indigenous painting traditions, as homage to the folk painters of his native Bengal. Depicting the Puranic gods and epics, Roy's works were bathed in the lyric romanticism of his Bengali forbearers. "Roy noted that the art of Metropolitan Calcutta, irrespective of whether it was revivalist or in the western academic style, was dependent not only on elitist but affluent patronage and he wanted art to regain the easy availability and inexpensiveness it had in the traditional life of the people. He was wholly in favour of making art, meant for the collectivity and not for the affluent few." (K. Chaitanya, A History of Indian Painting: The Modern Period, Abhinava Publications, New Delhi, 1995, p. 178)