Ashmolean Eastern Art Online, Yousef Jameel Centre for Islamic and Asian Art

By the beginning of this century the old styles of Indian court painting had all but disappeared. The first developments of a recognizably Indian modern school were taking place in Bengal, where a group of artists associated with the Calcutta School of Art under E.B. Havell (Principal, 1896-1906) were turning away from the Western academicism represented by Ravi Varma’s work [EAX.2502] and were seeking to achieve a new synthesis based partly on indigenous traditions. The most influential of these painters was Abanindranath Tagore (nephew of the poet Rabindranath), who pioneered the eclectic “neo-Bengal” style, with its borrowing from European and Japanese art as well as the Ajanta wall-paintings and later Indian miniature painting. The subject matter typically consisted of somewhat sentimental renderings of mythological, literary and historical themes.

While many of the members of this new school belonged to the urban intelligentsia of Calcutta, Ishwari Prasad (1870-1950) was a notable exception. According to information recorded in the Havell papers at Santinketan, he was descended from a line of Mughal and Company artists who had worked at the court of the emperor Muhammad Shāh (1719-48) and later at the provincial centres of Lucknow, Murshidabad and Patna. In his youth Ishwari Prasad was trained in the Patna Company style [EA1966.232] by his grandfather Shiva Lal, one of the leading 19th century artists. Lacking adequate patronage, he went to Calcutta, where he was discovered by Havell drawing patterns for a European textile importing firm. He is also said to have been employed as a lithographer and worked for Abanindranath Tagore in this role. With Havell’s help he joined the staff of the Calcutta Art School in 1904 and painted there in a wide range of styles, from pure neo-Bengal to an archaistic Patna manner.

This water-colour painting of Kṛṣṇa, playing his flute, enthroned with Rādhā on a stone plinth set in a luxuriant, craggy landscape, is a skilful imitation of Abanindranath’s style. It is interesting to contrast it with one of Ishwari Prasad’s more old-fashioned works, an unpublished painting in the Indian Museum, Calcutta, depicting Śiva on Mount Kailāsa with Nandī below him and Pārvatī standing with a garland in her raised hand (both pictures are signed: Īśvarī, in devanāgarī script). Although there are clear similarities between the two compositions, the Calcutta picture, with its conventional figures and rocky landscape with diminutive trees, is rooted in the late Provincial Mughal tradition. It is revealing that when Ishwari Prasad retired to Patna in his old age he preferred once again to work in a version of the local Company style of which he was the last living exponent.