Page 79 - Eye of the beholder

One of the myths of art collecting is that each piece of art is an unique piece made by the artist himself - unique in the details of execution, and ideally in the concept and theme too. Nothing however, can be further from the truth. From the time of the old masters of the orient and the occident, artists, their apprentices and their workshops have executed paintings in repetitive themes.
Because of his prolific oeuvre, Jamini Roy(1887- 1972) has been compared to Andy Warhol. The only difference is that unlike Warhol, Jamini actually painted each of the pictures himself. A protege of Abanindranath Tagore, Jamini chose a unique medium and an idiom quite early on in his career and stuck steadfastly to it. His subject matter predominantly revolved around the socio-religious aspects of rural Bengal. For substrate,he often chose paper, and the medium was generally tempara. Therefore, large format works on canvas(cloth) are all the more desirable, rare and expensive.
Though Jamini’s idiom was very local, his appeal was global. He had received international fame and popularity already midway through his career. Apart from the wealthy zamindari families of Bengal who patronized him and commissioned his works, foreigners visiting India in various capacities brought back his works to Europe and America.
Jamini’s works were put on the ‘Heritage List’ in the 1970s, which meant that they could not be legally exported out of India. Thankfully, the substantial body of works that already existed in the West has kept the secondary market alive and growing. Large format works on canvas, like this one were mostly done on commission, and are particularly rare and desirable these days.
Though Jamini revisited a particular theme multiple times, it is not justified to refer to his works as copies. Each painting has a certain freshness, individuality and uniqueness, which is indicative of the fact that he saw each one of them as separate works and approached them with dedication. Indeed,there are significant differences in the details, expression, tonality, medium and size of the paintings even within the same subject matter and theme,which makes each work unique.
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