Abanindranath Tagore (1871-1951), was the principal artist of the Bengal school and the first major exponent of swadeshi values in Indian art. He was also a noted writer. 1871 was a common year starting on Sunday (see link for calendar). ... 1951 was a common year starting on Monday; see its calendar. ...

Tagore sought to modernise Moghul and Rajput traditions in order to counter the influence of Western models of art, as taught in Art Schools under the British Raj. Such was the success of Tagore's work that it was eventually accepted and promoted as a national Indian style within British art institutions. The Mughal Empire (alternative spelling Mogul, which is the origin of the word Mogul) of India was founded by Babur in 1526, when he defeated Ibrahim Lodi, the last of the Delhi Sultans at the First Battle of Panipat. ... A Rajput (from Sanskrit rāja-putra, son of a king) is a member of a prominent caste who live throughout northern and central India, primarily in the northwestern state of Rajasthan, although not all Rajputs find their origin in Rajasthan. ... Western can refer to: A Western blot is a method in molecular biology to detect a certain protein in a sample by using antibody specific to that protein. ... The British Raj is an informal term for the period of British colonial rule of most of the Indian subcontinent, or present-day India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. ...

Life

Tagore was a member of the distuinguished Bengali family, and a naphew of the poet Rabindranath Tagore. His grandfather and his elder brother Gaganendranath Tagore were also artists. Tagore learned art when studying at Sanskrit college in the 1880s. In 1889 he married Srimati Suhasini Devi, daughter of Bhujagendra Bhusan Chatterjee, a descendant of Prasanna Coomar Tagore. At this time he left the Sanskrit College after nine years of study and studied English as a special student at St. Xavier's College, which he attended for about a year and a half. Rabindranath Tagore (রবীন্দ্রনাথ ঠাকুর, rabIndranAth thhAkur) (May 7, 1861 – August 7, 1941) (in the Bangla Calendar, 25 Baishakh, 1268 – 22 Srabon, 1348), also called Gurudev, was a Bengali poet, Brahmo philosopher and nationalist who was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1913, becoming the first Asian to be awarded... The Sanskrit language ( संस्कृता वाक्) is one of the earliest attested members of the Indo-European language family and is not only a classical language, but also an official language of India. ...

In the early 1890s several illustrations were published in Sadhana magazine, and in Chitrangada, and other works by Rabindranath Tagore. He also illustrated his own books. About the year 1897 he took lessons from the Vice-Principal of the Calcutta Government School of Art, studying in the traditional European academic manner, learning the full range of techniques, but with a particular interest in watercolour. At this time he began to come under the influence of Mughal art, making a number of works based on the life of Krishna in a Mughal-influenced style. After meeting E. B. Havell, Tagore worked with him to revitalise and redefine art teaching at the Calcutta School of art, a project also supported by his brother Gaganendranath, who set up the Indian Society of Oriental Art. Academic art was an art movement, and a style of painting that was in fashion in Europe from the 17th to the 19th century. ... Lord Krishna Krishna (कृष्ण, Sanskrit for black), is, according to common Hindu tradition, the eighth avatar of Vishnu. ...

The publication of his book Gitanjali in English brought Tagore international renown, which helped to make his artistic projects better known in the west.

Art

Tagore believed that Western art was "materialistic" in character, and that India needed to return to its own traditions in order to recover spiritual values. Despite its nationalism, this view was quite commonplace within British art of the time, stemming from the ideas of the Pre-Raphaelites. Partly for this reason many British arts administrators were sympathetic to such ideas, especially as Hindu philosophy was becoming increasingly influential in the West following the spread of the Theosophy movement. Tagore believed that Indian traditions could be adapted to express these new values, and to promote a progressive Indian national culture. Nationalism is an ethno-political ideology that sustains the concept of a nation-identity for an exclusive group of people. ... The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was a group of English painters, poets and critics, founded in 1848 by John Everett Millais, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and William Holman Hunt. ... This article is about the Hindu religion; for other meanings of the word, see Hindu (disambiguation). ... Seal of the Theosophical Society Theosophy is a body of belief which holds that all religions are attempts by man to ascertain the Divine, and as such each religion has a portion of the truth. ...

With the success of Tagore's ideas, he came into contact with other Asian artists whose work was comparable to his own. In his later work, he began to incorporate elements of Chinese and Japanese calligraphic traditions into his art, seeking to construct a model for a modern pan-Asian artistic tradition which would merge the common aspects of Eastern spiritual and artistic culture. The term Asian can refer to something or someone from Asia. ... Calligraphy in a Latin Bible of AD 1407 on display in Malmesbury Abbey, Wiltshire, England. ...