Rabindranath Tagore was an artist of all seasons. The ideas that did not make it to his prose and poetry, what he called the ‘casualties in my manuscripts,’ were reborn when the Bard of Bengal took to painting in his late sixties.
It was in 1928 that Tagore first took to the brush with no formal schooling. To him, painting had always been the domain of his brother, Jyotirindranath. His early attempts were little more than doodles, and Tagore knew this. His early attempts were often reflected on with a degree of self-deprecation:
You will be surprised to hear that I am sitting with a sketchbook drawing. Needless to say, the pictures are not intended for any salon in Paris, they cause me not the least suspicion that the national gallery of any country will suddenly decide to raise taxes to acquire them. But, just as a mother lavishes most affection on her ugliest son, so I feel secretly drawn to the very skill that comes to me least easily.
He was particular about neatness, and when he struck out words from his writing, he tried to mask it by enmeshing them within doodles. He joked that Raphael could rest still in his grave.
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