Smart people became doctors and engineers and a few joined the IAS. But within two-and-a-half years, I knew it wasn’t for me,” is how Brijinder Nath Goswamy’s journey to the discipline of art history began. What Goswamy, who died on November 17, will be most remembered for, is pursuing a line of inquiry that unravelled the identities of artists, rather than the patrons, thereby busting the myth surrounding the anonymity of Indian artists, created by Ananda Coomaraswamy, a pioneering historian of art in the subcontinent.
“Coomaraswamy’s narrative proposed that Indian artists, unlike their western counterparts, found contentment in anonymity, detached from fame and vanity. This misleading tale asserted that Indian artists intentionally chose obscurity,” says art historian Parul Dave Mukherji. Goswamy’s doctoral research, ‘Social Background of Kangra Valley’, was a work that gave Indian art history a new orientation, especially in the scholarship on Pahari painters and Indian miniature paintings.
Locating artists in art
Born in present-day Pakistan’s Sargodha, Goswamy’s family migrated to Amritsar. After graduating with a master’s in history from Panjab University in 1954, he joined the Indian Administrative Service. After he quit the IAS, he began to trace the lineage of Indian artists, and proved that these family workshops, or as Mukherji says, “gharanas”, were the sites of emerging painting styles. He categorised these painting styles by family and geography.
In 1968, Goswamy’s Pahari Painting: The Family as the Basis of Style used the inscriptions on the back of miniatures and matched them with 18th-century pilgrim records of Haridwar. This painstaking work, however, is a documentation of an entire family network of India’s greatest painter families—Pandit Seu, his sons Nainsukh and Manaku, and their artist grandchildren. In an earlier interview with TMS, he had admitted that locating information on such 18th century painters, was always going to be difficult: “What we know about Manaku’s life is little compared to his younger brother Nainsukh.”
It all started in London, at the Victoria and Albert Museum, where Goswamy met British art historian WG Archer. Goswamy recalls Archer calling Indian painters “wretched artists”, hidden, as it were, from public view. Realising this gap, Goswamy tapped into pilgrimage records and used his knowledge of local languages. For example, he dug out information, often with dates, of the Pahari painters’ families as he could read the local Takri script of Himachal.
“Styles do not belong to states, but to the families of artists. I am happy to say that a work is in the hands of an artist belonging to the Seu-Manaku-Nainsukh family workshop based in Guler,” he had told TMS.
Bridging past and present
Goswamy’s work continues to inspire many. His The Spirit of Indian Painting attempted to place these Indian artists in a historical context; he tried to understand the motive behind their paintings. Explaining what he is dealing with, he writes: “A world of silence in which one has to strain very hard to pick up whispers from the past...a layered world that does not reveal all its treasures.”
He deeply studied the intricacies and layers of paintings, succinctly writing about the rasa in these layers of art. “His attempt to bridge the gap between the past and the present is what has stayed the most with me,” says art exhibitor Saurabh Singh. While curating an exhibition, Singh, too, tries to link the present with the past to tell a story of art.
Getting ready for a lecture on the challenges of officiating art, Mukherji found Goswamy’s research particularly helpful. He illustrated how stereotypes influenced artists who worked for western patrons in an attempt to cater to western audiences. Mukherji suggests considering Goswamy’s doctoral research and his Pahari Masters: Court Painters of Northern India for a deeper understanding of how it challenges the concept of Indian painters choosing anonymity.
Pillar of strength
Goswamy authored over 20 books and dedicated his life to unravelling the lesser-known facts of Indian paintings. The Indian Cat: Stories, Paintings, Poetry and Proverbs was his last book. In an October 2023 interview with TMS, he mentioned getting involved with Indian paintings and not remembering seeing cats. For nearly two years of going through more than 58 paintings, he was finally able to write this book, which is for “cat lovers. Cat haters. Anybody who enjoys a good story. Anybody who is curious. Like a cat”.
Recipient of the Padma Shri and the Padma Bhushan, Goswamy is known for his lucid scholarship, his key attention to painterly details; his work was equally rewarding for both academicians and lay people interested in art. “Goswamy was a strong pillar in the field of art, and he will continue to remain so,” says Udaipur-based visual artist Haimee Dwivedi.