Page 103 - Eye of the beholder

ANTONIO xAVIER TRINDADE [1869-1930] REALISTIC PORTRAYAL
He was an important painter of the Bombay School in the early 20th century. This was a period when academic naturalism was vigorously pursued as pedagogy at the Art Institution and well supported by exhibitions that were held at Bombay Art Society. Trindade was given the epithet of ‘Rembrandt of East’ according to Partha Mitter. Born in Asnova village in Goa to catholic parents, and when he lost his father, he decided to move to Bombay at the turn of the century, and pursue his art education thus obtaining admission to J.J. School of Art in 1887. While a student, he won many prizes at the Bombay Art Society’s exhibitions. After his graduation, he took up a job tinting photographs at the studio of the well-known photographer Raja Deen Dayal, but soon discontinued as he obtained a post of a teacher at the J.J. School of Art and immediately appointed Superintendent at the Reay Workshops in preference to his Maharashtrian colleague M.V. Dhurandhar. The Raj policy offering incentives to Christians and children of mixed race seemed to have worked in his favor. Along with Archibald Herman Muller and the Parsi exemplars Pestonji Bomanji and Manchershaw Pithawalla formed the vanguard of an emergent phenomenon namely the democratization of connoisseurship.
According to Partha Mitter, “The remarkable success of salon art followed a social revolution”. “The patronage of artists by individual aristocrats was on the decline, and was replaced by the support of an art-conscious public, the rise of the art exhibition and art criticism was consequent to a change in the public’s relationship to art and in the role of the artist himself.” These so called Salon or Exhibitions modeled on French Salons of 18th century were held at Shimla, Calcutta, Bombay and Madras serving as spaces for the visual exposure for the artists.
Trindade specialized in portraits as the Art Institution imparted firm skills in the use of perspective, knowledge of human form through nude studies and manipulation of chiaroscuro to obtain volume and three-dimensionality, which enabled students passing out from the Institution to take up portrait commissions, a genre that was very popular among the social elites. Trindade oeuvre included landscapes, everyday life, nude scenes, still lifes, and religious paintings. A catholic, Trindade was unique among Indian artists in treating Christian subjects. The most moving among these was the Ecce Homo he painted on the eve of his death following the amputation of his gangrenous leg on 16 March 1935.
A versatile artists he showed his capabilities in other mediums as wood carving, engraving and sculpture. In 1920, Trindade won the Gold medal of the Bombay Art Society for his painting Flora which depicted a reclining model that was his wife Florentina who posed for this intimate work.
Trindade with his brilliant artistic acumen synthesized the culture of his land with Western European artistic traditions and worked towards it with a dedicated passion to ensure that his works would not only be accepted and acclaimed but it was vitally important to win honours as well. The criterion of winning prestigious medals from various institutions, which hosted the shows as the Bombay Art Society or the Governors medal and others largely established an artist’s reputation. Influenced by his western upbringing and European artistic trends of the
97