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Few people know that the
Indian Society of Oriental Arts, which was
probably the first Art group in India was against the use of Oil
paints. this was simply because the Oil paints were imported from
abroad and the Oil painting was the predominant British School
technique, taught in art-schools. It is surprising that this
immensely significant group with memebrs like
Abanindranath Tagore and
Nandal Bose
was to treat a medium of art as
anti-Indian. But the rules of the Society was so strict that it did not
allow young artists to exhibit their works if they indulged in Oil
paintings.
Some of these unknown young artists were
therefore forced to form a new group which was then called the
Rebel Centre of Art.
Jamini Roy went to call this "the revolution
against revolution". The Group had some of the most promising names
like Ramkinkar Baij
and Abani Sen.
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A rare oil painting
of Jamini Roy |
Training in Oil paintings was also kept to the
minimum at the
Santiniketan while the
College of Art and Crafts in Calcutta
, run in those days by the British
Government continued to impart rigorous training in Oil. In course of
time the college gained popularity over Santiniketan's Kalabhavan as an
institute of training.
In post independence-era the distinction between
mediums of art
declined and
artists freely worked in mediums of their choice and differed only in
their subject matters.
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Oil painting has remained the most important
medium
for painters since time immemorial. Oil is the most versatile
of all medium too. And it was the only medium that could be
used to paint photographic realistic images. It got replaced
by acrylic
finally in terms of
versatility only in the later half of twentieth century. Thus most
painters born before
Indian
independence are found to be oil painters.
The majority of comany School works of Bengal are in Oil. Though
it was shunned as a western medium by many the early Shantiniketan
artists, it could never be ignored by the later day artists of the same
school. |
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And
though many painters in Bengal had attempted other medium like
conte
(Ganesh
paine ,
Sunil
Das ), gouache (Ganesh Haloi ),
tempera, water
colour etc, oil remained the most important of all
medium.
Almost
all major painters of the
Santiniketan
School from
KG
Subbhramaniayan
,
Benode Bihari , Sailoz Mukherjee, or the
Calcutta
Group Painters like
Paritosh Sen had worked in oil.
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A company school oil
work |
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Oil can
be used on canvas, board, on any hard non-absorbent surface but not that
effectively on paper. In the 60s and the 70s, many painters had tried
mixing oil with other media like acrylic and pastel. These paintings
were initially called mixed media works. Suvaprasanna and for
some time
BR Panesar created some very good such works.
The
problem with oil are however many. They do not mix well with
any other medium. They take long time to dry, and they don’t
allow use on paper and other absorbent bases.
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A Oil painting by
artist Sailoz Mukherjee |
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In the
post-liberalization phase of
India, when artists are getting exposed to a variety of new material,
the handicaps of oil are proving too daunting, which is why most young
generation artists like
Devajyoti
Ray do not work much in this medium. They are
now moving towards the more versatile
Acrylic
.
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Modern Bengal's Oil
paintings. Artists: Suvaprasanna (on left) and Suhas Roy (on right) |
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