he countdown to a talk by Dr BN Goswamy, the illustrious scholar of Indian miniature painting, is an exercise in stretching time. It’s also one of many closely observed techniques much favoured by the traditional painters he has studied for more than 50 years.
For, the art historian and author of The Spirit of Indian Painting: Close encounters with 101 Great Works , a masterful collection of Indian paintings going back 800 years from 1100 to 1900, published to wide acclaim in 2014, is the rarest of scholars. His writing on Indian art rests on a deep interest in aesthetics and is suffused with a love for the pleasures of subtle refinement. But, it is also in constant communion with the lives, times and mundane troubles of his painters and the politics of patronage. Goswamy is able to make well-judged imaginative flights to get his readers and listeners under the skin of the artist in the very moment that he lifts his brush or makes a creative decision.
This evening, Goswamy will take us through the Nala Damayanti miniature painting series. These are paintings in the Guler style from the 18th century. The selections comprise 47 finished paintings from the Karan Singh collection that he first saw and wrote about in 1974, as well as a set of 30 finished drawings and 110 initial drawings. A lecture by Goswamy doesn’t just give you the facts and dates; he uses them to speculate and empathise with the countless social and cultural mores which defined the world of the Indian painters. By the end of a lecture, the audience have been delivered to the heart of imaginative truth. A narrative fluidly filled in with Persian, Sanskrit, Urdu and sometimes sun-filled Punjabi phrases and poems, a lecture from him becomes a heightened experience of literature, art, storytelling and history.
Very much the scholar gypsy, Goswamy freely admits that the inexact science of speculation is necessarily a part of his work. In the Nala Damyanti paintings for example, he had previously believed that they might have been created by the celebrated painter Nainsukh’s younger son Ranjha. He has since come to believe that the works were probably beyond Ranjha’s capabilities.
A singular focus on academic learning, or living the dedicated life of an art historian in dusty museums and libraries would not have made a career like his possible. But when the young IAS officer decided to leave the coveted service in 1958, to take his love for history further, Goswamy was already quite certain that he was interested in social history.
This was an unusual concern for a historian to espouse in the late 50s. But it had stayed with him even as he went on to complete his PhD in history on The Social Background of Kangra Valley Painting at Panjab University in Chandigarh. A brief stint at Kleve University in Germany as a lecturer on Gandhi followed. “My eyes opened there. Art was everybody’s concern. People talked about museums and concerts constantly unlike India,” he recalls.
Art historian WG Archer had been one of his examiners for his PhD and Goswamy met him in the early 60s at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. That association strengthened when Archer turned to him for help in deciphering inscriptions on some Indian paintings. Back in India, Goswamy spent most of the early to mid 60s searching for more clues on the lives of Indian painters. Often these took him on long field visits to small towns and villages across Punjab and Himachal Pradesh. “I wanted to know what kind of lives they lived to create the kind of art they did. You need to be slightly sirphira to really find things”, he laughs. And find he did. Recalling a visit to Haridwar with his father where pandas or priests keep meticulous family records for centuries, he wondered if this might get him some new leads. For two and a half years Goswamy spent most of his time on field visits which included speaking to carpenters, postmen, school teachers, and learning languages like Takri spoken in the hill regions.
And then on a four-day visit to Kurukshetra (sometime in the mid-1960s) looking for Chitere records (community of painters), a priest finally made it happen. Turning the pages of an old record book, Goswamy found a nine-line inscription by Nainsukh. Mentioned alongside were his patrons and family members. The painter had also added a drawing of Shiv Parvati and Bhagirath. “What more does an art historian want. That is how it all started falling into place…,” he says.
Artist Gulammohammad Shiekh adds that Goswamy has also curated several exhibitions, the most notable one being, The Way of the Masters, The Great Masters of India, 1100-1900 at Museum Rietberg in Zurich (2011) in collaboration with Milo C Beach and Eberhart Fischer. “This exhibition contested the idea that Indian artists were anonymous. In most cases they were able to locate artists and their works,” says Sheikh.
Adding the literary dimension to his talk on Nala Damayanti, Goswamy says that the story that formed the basis of the great 18th century series of Pahari paintings was the theme of one of the most difficult of Sanskrit texts, counted in fact among the five mahakavyas (epic poetry) in that language: the Naishadhacharita that Sriharsha wrote in the 12th century. At 82, Goswamy says he can still recall about 1,000 paintings in detail. Even today if someone were to give him a framed painting, he will turn it over to trace any forgotten inscriptions that might have been there.
Dr BN Goswamy’s talk, ‘Light as Breeze, Colourful like the Rainbow’ will take place at the Experimental Theatre, NCPA at 6.30 pm. Tickets available at in.bookmyshow.com
The author is an arts writer, editor and founder of First Edition Arts
