Indian Art and Letters

Author(s): India Society
Publisher: India Society

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Modern Art in Western India restricted sense ; and the combating by critics who live far outside the area of our work, and who never see it, of the constructive ideas put forward from Bombay in recent times, have compelled the workers for art in this very senior province to reply in some degree, though with considerably less asperity. A factor that needs emphasis is that while in recent years the Bombay Presidency has published comparatively few books on art, it has produced practical evidence of the strength of public opinion on the subject, such as no other province in India has approached. The reality of this enthusiasm, as contrasted with literary fashions which have too often passed for the current coin of Indian opinion where art is concerned, has been demonstrated by the agreement of both nationalist and official organs of public opinion on this subject- which is, I think, the only subject on which they do agree—and by the enthusiastic public demonstrations which have occurred whenever the Bombay School's existence has been seriously threatened. It should also b bered that the Bombay Movement in its strongly progressive form is comparatively young ; and that the new Bengal School never had to meet the determined hostility with which we were confronted from the very outset. The School has fortunately survived the onslaught, and is to-day engaged in blazıng a trail for the discovery of new modes of expression in art, whereas the new Bengal School reached the end of its development on the extremely narrow lines its supporters have advocated some fifteen years ago. Bombay has begun the vital movement towards restoration in Indian art, not in a negative process of exclusion, but by an inclusive synthesis.
It was this Province which bore the burden of the attempt to secure opportunities for the Indian art schools and for Indian artists in the decoration of New Delhi. Members of this Society would recall the occasion when, under its benign ægis, a conference was held on the subject at Wembley, and how Lord Lloyd, who had lately finished his term of office as Governor of Bombay, voiced Bombay opinion on the subject of utilizing New Delhi to a moderate extent for the benefit of Indian painters. A lot of work was needed to secure this encouragement, in which eloquent leaders from Western India, like Sir Phiroze Sethna and Mr. M. R. Jayaker, and that most constructive of art critics, Mr. Kanaiyilal Vakil, among many others, played a strenuous part. It is one of the interesting features of this movement, and a great compensation, that the Bombay School has enjoyed support, not only from public leaders in Bombay, but from Governors of that Province. Lord Lloyd, whose wonderful flair for genuine art patronage and work for the Bombay School has caused him sometimes to be compared with Marshal Lyautey, the gifted reviver of the arts and crafts in Morocco, was succeeded by Governors who have been invariably most sympathetic and helpful: Sir Leslie Wilson, Sir
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