Page 26 - Eye of the beholder

body of the woman. He consciously contrasted the play between opposition of texture as smooth and rough made obvious in the sensitive smooth skin and textured sartorial attire through his masterful and dexterous controlled brush strokes. This resulted in visual titillation reinforcing the sensuality. Mazumdar was adept at handling all media, oils, water colours and crayons and his principle emphasis had been the study of the female form.
It was the simplicity of his vision that dynamically powered his composition, which though overtly sensuous was neither erotic nor sexual. He made this possible by his sensitivity towards women, whom he depicted not as brazen and bold locking her gaze with the viewer. Rather as demure and shy, with her eyes averted in an expression of self introspection or contemplation. Her involved acts of self adornment, lost in a reverie, or at the river after a dip has always been representative of her serenity and calmness, as there is nothing serendipitous about her activities. A resonance to nayikas in Indian poetry and particularly in pictorial art from Rajput miniature tradition was obvious. Would this be a reflection of the artist’s persona? Undeniably concealed within the layers of his subconscious was the desire of the artist in sublimating the beauty and grace of the woman with dignity, which also inscribed his visual aesthetics. Yet it is also possible to read the power of patriarchy in a male dominated middle class Bengali society. Hence the male gaze was made manifest, a voyeuristic display through the objectification of the female body.
Considered one of the finest Bengali artists, but was not sufficiently recognized, as he remained in the shadow of academic realism of Ravi Varma. The images of women with their ‘wet look’ was based on his expertise in the creation of the true Bengali romantic language in visual arts, which had varying moods of languor or states of undress, yet through their suggested identities as wives and mothers and ideal feminine types he kept up a respectable veneer and came to occupy ‘legitimate’ areas of middle class taste. This genre of women studies by Mazumdar fed directly into the genre of the ‘calendar art’ stereotype spreading through prints and repeating itself through a host of other obscure artists.
Tanmoy (The Rapt Lady)” is my first acquisition of a work by Hemen, made much later in my collecting career. This is among the most important and popular of paintings by Hemen. It is a well known fact that Hemen often revisited themes and subjects that had become very popular. As a result, multiple versions of his importamt works exist. In addition, various studies in watercolor and crayons also exist of the important works. The different versions of Hemen’s
painting of the same subject are never identical. There are distinct differences in the backdrop as well as in the main subject. These paintings are treated by collectors as unique and individual works in their own right.
This particular work was originally sold by the famous delhi based private dealer Mr. Vikram Singh around 1995, and since then has been in the same private collection before coming to me. It is well known that Hemen painted multiple versions of this work. However, this is perhaps the most vivid and certainly the biggest version. It is also a signed version, unlike some of the other ones. Taken together, this strongly hints towards this being the primary or most important version of the painting.
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