| Medium | : | Tempera |
|---|---|---|
| Height | : | 4 inch / 10.2 cm |
| Width | : | 17 inch / 43.2 cm |
| Dimension | : | W: 43.2 cm × H: 10.2 cm |
This untitled tempera on board by Jamini Roy presents a devotional scene with stylized figures and sacred cows, rendered in his folk-inspired modernist style. With bold outlines, flat colors, and rhythmic symmetry, the painting captures both spirituality and simplicity, making it a quintessential example of Roy’s iconic aesthetic.
Jamini Roy | Untitled | Tempera on Board | 4.4 x 18.2 inches | Circa
Jamini Roy’s Krishna Balram and Both Sided Bull exemplifies his mastery in merging folk traditions with modernist aesthetics. The painting features Krishna and Baloram, rendered in bold, simplified lines with vibrant earthy tones. The symmetry of the bulls surrounding the figures reinforces the rhythmic composition, evoking a sense of balance and harmony—an essential theme in Roy’s work. The greenish skin tones, deep ochres, and warm yellows highlight his departure from Western realism, embracing indigenous visual traditions instead.
Created during India’s early modernist movement, this work reflects Roy’s commitment to reviving Indian folk art while modernizing its presentation. His rejection of academic realism and embrace of flat, decorative styles, shaped his artistic identity. By depicting mythological narratives through abstraction, Roy ensured that traditional aesthetics remained integral to modern Indian art, making his legacy a cornerstone of India’s cultural heritage.
This delightful tempera on board painting by Jamini Roy reflects his mastery in reinterpreting Indian folk traditions into a modernist idiom. The composition depicts two stylized figures offering worship before a symbolic shrine, flanked on either side by white, decorated cows—sacred animals in Indian culture. The figures, with their almond-shaped eyes, bold outlines, and simplified forms, exemplify Roy’s signature visual language inspired by Bengal’s patachitra and Kalighat paintings. The restrained earthy palette of browns, whites, yellows, and reds, combined with rhythmic symmetry, gives the work both ritualistic solemnity and folk charm. This piece not only embodies devotion but also celebrates the rural and spiritual ethos that Jamini Roy sought to immortalize through his art.
One of india’s most loved artists, Jamini Roy is remembered for forging a unique indian aesthetic for modern art by bringing together elements of traditional bengali folk art and kalighat patachitras, rendered in clean lines and earthy colours.
Born on 11 April 1887 in a landowning family in Bankura district of Bengal, Roy trained in European academic-realist painting at the Government College of Arts and Crafts, Calcutta, and began his career painting landscapes and portraits.
Soon, moving away from these, he started experimenting with a more indigenous visual vocabulary. Level surfaces, flattening of design in depth, and the use of dissonant primary colours were aspects of folk painting that Roy incorporated in his work. Also, he took up the volumetric forms of the Kalighat patachitras. However, unlike the spontaneous brushwork of the traditional patuas, Roy’s lines were more restrained and precisely delineated.
Roy would paint several versions of a subject, breaking and reforming the theme over months. Turning his family into a production unit, he tried to emulate a craft-guild mode of artistic production. He painted on a wide range of themes—common people, mythological tales, Christian iconography, as well as visual characteristics of home-sewn Bengal quilts and Byzantine icons.
Roy was awarded the Viceroy’s gold medal in 1935, the Padma Bhushan in 1955, and elected a fellow of the Lalit Kala Akademi in 1956. Declared a National Treasure artist in 1976, his works cannot be exported. He passed away on 24 April 1972.
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