Nandalal Bose, popularly known as the Master Moshai, was born on December 3rd, 1882 in Kharagpur, Monghyr District, Bihar. A disciple of Abanindranath Tagore, he graduated from Government School of Art, Calcutta in 1910. Nandalal was fascinated by the potential of folk art and indigenous modes of expression and inculcated them in his works although stylising them in a unique representation for depiction and narration of local life. His explorative temperament with the artistic materials allowed him to create a vast body of work with printmaking techniques as lithography, linoleum prints and Sino- Japanese techniques while remaining faithful to his narrative subject: India's environment and its ethos.

Nandalal Bose's art conjures newness unbound but still flushed with the memories of yesterday. Inspired by Far Eastern sensibilities that celebrate the traditional, the genius of his art's lies in the interplay of sensual silhouettes and his powerful rendering of contemporary themes with the traditions, customs and sensibilities of Indian heritage. It is this intermingling that invigorates his works and captures the minds of his viewers. He began his artistic career in the fervour of Swadeshi movement, rejecting western colonial norms of art and taking inspirations from the ancient murals of Ajanta and Bagh caves as well as Mughal miniatures.

In 1919, Nandalal Bose accepted Rabindranath Tagore's invitation to become the Principal of the newly established art school Kala Bhavan at Visvabharati University in Santiniketan. He travelled in and out of India including places like Burma, China, Japan, Malaysia, Java and Sri Lanka seeking artistic stimulus from observing different cultural traditions. He also painted a series of posters for the Indian National Congress at Haripura in February 1938. The range of Nandalal's artistic expressions is seen in his various landscapes with human figures, his varied images of nature and the Santiniketan Murals.

His works reflect the changing landscape, portraying people and places at a time when modern India's cultural development was at its threshold. Nandalal Bose died on April 16th, 1966 in Santiniketan, West Bengal. He won several accolades including the Padma Vibhushan by the President of India in 1953. He was awarded with an honorary Doctorate in Letters (D. Litt.) from Banaras Hindu University in 1950 and Calcutta University in 1957. The NGMA has over 6800 of his works in his collection.

Nandalal Bose's exploration of the different ways of delineating a line allowed him to experiment in representation of lines in its varying forms adding rhythm, vigour and life to the form of the figures. The above postcard depicts the portrait of a man, probably laughing. The fluid handling of the line and their strong delineation was the influence of the Far Eastern art practices in the works of Nandalal. The artist understood the significance of the use of lines and experimented frequently in their execution from fine lines to being thick contouring lines and executed in a calligraphic fashion.

Dinkar Kowshik in his article, 'Drawings and Sketches of Nandalal Bose', has written- "His drawings often on card size format turned into independent works of art; they were fresh and vivid because of their immediacy and rapport with felt reality. They were not preliminary sketches to be developed later into paintings. In fact most of these drawings and sketches were an end in themselves. Their compositional relation to the blank space, their shrewd sense of observation, and their living organic quality make his sketches far more absorbing aesthetically than many of his finished paintings."

National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi acquired the largest collection of 6744 artworks of Nandalal Bose from his family, some of which were exhibited in the Centenary celebratory exhibition organised by the museum in 1983. A major portion of the museum's collection includes monochromatic pencil sketches, pen and ink drawings on postcard and paper, watercolour paintings and sketches apart from the more detailed and elaborate tempera and wash paintings, Haripura posters and prints from the artist's extensive oeuvre.

Nandalal had firm belief that for the creation of art an intimate understanding of the nature and its ways is imperative. The range of Nandalal's artistic expression is seen in the changing Indian landscapes, his varied images of nature and the portrayal of people and places.