If one word could describe 20th-century artist Lalit Mohan Sen’s oeuvre, it would be ‘diversity’. From Western academic realism to Indian styles of paintings and commercial art like posters, everything is visible in the late master’s artworks recently showcased by the Kolkata-based Emami Art exhibition—Lalit Mohan Sen: An Enduring Legacy.
Comprising over 115 works and archival material, the show puts the focus on his multi-dimensional art that draws from the trans-regional styles, themes, techniques, and purposes through which the larger configuration of 20th-century modern Indian art flourished. Put together after extensive research by archivist Arkaprava Bose in consultation with art historian Debdutta Gupta and the KCC Conservation Lab team for over a year, it posits itself in a sine qua non-paradigm of archival interventions in contemporary exhibition-making.
The artist’s range included prints, design patterns, book illustrations, varied graphic printmaking techniques and sculptures. He is considered a pioneer in woodcut printmaking and some of his early portraits of Tagore and Gandhi are in the permanent collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Bose says, “Sen worked in many styles and mediums. We witness him wrestling with what it means to be a modern artist while remaining sceptical about modernism’s desire for stylistic singularity and hierarchy of values.”
Sen’s extraordinary artistic intervention has been particularly in photography. He was made a member of the Royal Photographic Society of Great Britain in 1925 and established the medium as a taught course at the Lucknow College of Art & Crafts. The exhibition showcases an extensive range of experiments he undertook through his series of images captured in Kashmir and the Garhwal Himalayas of Uttarakhand, contrasting it with his array of urban life images. The play of light and tint in his bromoil silver gelatine print of a Portrait of a Man is evocative of his unique approach towards personification. The series along with some rare glass negatives, his notes, and a camera on display, offer an opportunity for a dedicated study of Sen’s experiments.
The other noticeable theme emerging from his oeuvre is nude figure study, prevalent across European art institutions. This had a clear impact on Sen, as he explored the subject through watercolours, conte drawings and photography. The vivid detailing in landscape painting was introduced in India by European artists, and we get to see some of its impact on Sen.
A tempera on board, titled Clouds Gathering, portrays the landscape in perspective and naturalism. Here, the depth of the field is enhanced by the reflecting light from the cloud in the middle ground, binding the mountain range in the background with the vibrant rural landscape in the foreground. Portrait study, however, emerges as a compelling theme across Sen’s career. He explored the subject through pencil sketches, dry pastel and pigment on paper, oil on board and most prominently through photography. Portrait of a Young Woman, painted in the 1940s in oil, has a semblance of distinct charm. His portraits as well as some of his landscape paintings have an impressionist sensibility, championing the play of natural light through textural pigment application. It is interesting to observe that most of Sen’s portraits have a sense of identity and a subtle range of intimacy to them. “This project seeks to reinstate Sen’s versatility and ability to experiment, especially in an age when art has become increasingly impacted by digital technologies,” says Gupta.
Born in the Nadia district of Bengal in 1898, the artist shifted to Lucknow in 1909 and eventually enrolled as a student at the Lucknow College of Art & Crafts. After his graduation in 1917, he joined the institute as a teacher. Later with a government fellowship, Sen went to study at the Royal College of Art, London in 1925, under the mentorship of artist and pedagogue William Rothenstein. Expanding on this international exposure, Sen, along with Ranada Charan-Ukil, Dhirendrakrishna Deb-Barman, Shudhanshu Choudhury and others, was selected to paint the historically significant murals at London’s India House, initiated by the India Society in 1930.
On his return, he found himself within a new liberal energy of artistic collaborations, which was evolving in the country. The artist, who died in 1954, established a sort of ease with the people he captured, binding them to a relationship with the spectators. Artistic interventions like that of Sen enrich the layers of modernism in Indian art, and the exhibition has contributed to that narrative.