Page 28 - Eye of the beholder

Mazumdar’s academic realism endowed his style with lyricism and poetry. Though his iconography was intrinsically the representation of the female form, he was able to lend power to his compositions through a dignified simplicity. He created an aura of intimacy and immediacy through his subdued play of light which intentionally avoids dramatic tones. The charm of his lighting lay in enhancing the emotions and sentiments of his protagonists. He manifested mastery of expression through postures, gestures and glances that made his female forms more alluring and attractive. The landscapes in which the women are placed are full of nature’s bounty, green glades that are as refreshing as the beauty of the woman. Mazumdar had said, “There are no fixed rules or traditions in the domain of painting, which has got no universally recognized lexicon of its own”. It was this freedom in his thinking that made him evolve the particularized iconography of the women in his art.
The disturbing power of Mazumdar’s women to lay in their palpability and immediacy: his subject either middle class housewife or a mother or a village belle returning home after her bath. The artist’s tantalizing silence about the identity of the model heightened the mystery surrounding her. It is this ambiguity that made such a powerful appeal to the Bengali middle class.
The three paintings in the Sadhus’ collection defines and makes obvious the saliencies of Mazumdar’s individual personal vision in casting the youthful women in a subtle dramatic manner if the poses and postures are taken into consideration The paintings are “Lady by the Mirror”, “Lady wearing the earring” and “The Rapt Lady”.
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