Leader of the Revivalist Movement in the field of Modern Indian
Painting in Bengal, Abanindranath Tagore is also credited with a
key contribution towards ushering in the renaissance in Indian
painting. We see in this painting, intentionally titled with an
aim in mind, a lady carrying hay across a plain field. Her torso
is bare, with only some jewels around her neck, and her
strikingly dark complexion is contrasted against the bright
yellow background. Dressed like a Santhal tribal, this woman
walks towards the viewer, in a misty landscape evocatively
rendered through the medium of Tempera.
Abanindranath's inner urge for liberating Indian art was further
inspired by Okakura, a great Japanese artist and art-critic who
came to India with Swami Vivekananda. His work has a great
delicacy of feeling, unity of concept, a highly sensitive range
of color, tone, texture and poetic depth. His work was a mixture
of traditionalism and innovation. He aimed at comparing nature in
its transient forms and produce an image part object, part
sensuous, both transposed into each other. But his vision on
nature was always poetic, as was his personal form of expression.
