Footnotes

Provenance:
Private Collection, Singapore.

Published:
Caterina Corsi & Nirmalya Kumar, Hemen Mazumdar: The Last Romantic, Singapore Management University, 2019, Unpaginated.

Born in 1894 in an area now part of Bangladesh, Hemen Muzamdar trained at the Jubilee Art School in Kolkata. He resisted the 'Indianizing' and Orientalist agenda of the Bengal School instead adopting a traditional European academic realism. In the 1920s, he, Atul Bose, and Jamini Roy became close friends, making ends meet with artistic odd jobs, such as painting scenes for the theatre, or producing portraits of the deceased for the family based on photographs, a popular 'Victorian' custom in Bengal.

His works embody the female nude whilst the subjects remain clothed, albeit only just. There is an unmistakable sexuality in these almost naked figures, draped in gossamer fabrics. It was this inexplicit sensuality that allowed him to paint portraits of elite Indian women. Hemendranath Majumdar enjoyed great artistic success. After Ravi Varma, he became the most sought-after artist for oil portraits. His large oils attracted the Maharajas of Jaipur, Bikaner, Kotah, Kashmir, Cooch Behar, Mayurbhanj and other princely states. Among the nobility, the Maharaja of Patiala, Sir Bhupindranth Singh (1891-1938) was the most devoted, engaging him as a state artist for five years on a handsome salary, which enabled him to build his studio in Calcutta.

In 1919 he was one of the co-founders of the Indian Academy of Fine Arts and found critical acclaim in his portraits of women. Muzumdar's depiction of the female form is a narrative of the changing and conflicted attitudes to the nude in a changing and conflicted India. Under the British Raj, Christian missionaries sought to quash the accepted sexuality within symbology in Hindu mythology and impose a puritanical attitude to nudity. New societal norms were instilled around the ideas of decency and modesty. Interestingly this during the Victorian era, a time never more renowned for prudency verses prostitution.

Intentionally, Mazumdar creates a sense of heightened eroticism in his works, the suggestion of nudity in the observed figure more alluring than actual depiction. It is his depiction of women, caught in their private moments, seemingly unaware, loosely clad in diaphanous or wet clothes that influenced the sexually charged but socially restricted cinematography of popular Indian films.