Indian Art and Letters

Author(s): India Society
Publisher: India Society

Page 10

India Society's Exhibition of Modern Indian Art in so many vigorous examples that they are bound to affect the artists of those centres. At Delhi, now the capital of the whole of India, there has also in recent years grown up a strong local artistic movement in which the brothers Ukil, themselves offshoots of the Bengal School, have taken an active part. Finally, one might perhaps again refer to Hyderabad and say that the interesting collections of pictures, assembled by that great art lover Sir Akbar Hydari, and the researches to which they have led, have made it clear that there has existed in the Deccan a local tradition of painting holding an intermediate place between the Moghul painting of the North and the Southern Schools and which has persisted with an unbroken tradition, if not always at the same level of achievement, down to our day.
The problem of the India Society in arranging the present Exhibition has been to try to combine within one London art gallery a bird's-eye view of so much of all these different schools of thought and achievement as has preserved or recently developed its strength and vigour.
For this purpose the Council of the Society got in touch with its good friends in all parts of India with a view to forming Regional Committees which were to arrange for really representative collections being sent from their respective regions. In Bombay the assistance of Mr. Gladstone Solomon, the Principal of the Bombay School of Art, and Mr. Kanaiyalal Vakil was forthwith secured on the practical side, while Sir Pheroze Sethna, Mr. Jayakar and others extended the benefit of their experience and their enthusiasm as art lovers to the undertaking, with the result that an influential Regional Committee was formed for Western India under the patronage of the Governor of Bombay, Lord Brabourne. In Calcutta, with the support of Mr. Mukul Dey, the Director of the School of Art, various members of the Tagore family and other art lovers in Bengal, a similar Representative Committee was formed under the patronage of Sir John Anderson.
In Madras equally satisfactory and helpful arrangements were made for us through the kind assistance of Professor Krishnamaswami Aiyengar and Mr. Roy Chowdhuri, the Principal of the Madras School of Art, with the support of the Madras Government.
At New Delhi we were fortunate in securing the energetic services of Mr. Barada Ukil, one of three artistic brothers, to whom the present art movement in that part of India owes much of its vigour. Through the support of Mr. J. N. G. Johnson, the Commissioner for Delhi, and many influential art lovers, both Indian and British, Mr. Ukil was able to bring to London a very noteworthy collection of works not only from Northern Indian artists, but also from the private collections of Their Highnesses the Maharajas of Patiala and Indore. 88