Jamini Roy and his paintings...

Indian painter Jamini Roy was born in Bengal. He went on to study at the Government School of Art in Calcutta. He initially worked in a Western style modeled after the Post-Impressionists but eventually developed the style he worked most successfully in and is best known for, based on the simple, stylized Kalighat Pat tradition of paintings. These paintings are typically made of simple materials, such as silk or other fabrics on board and pigments made of minerals and vegetables from the earth in the traditional manner.
In 1995 he received the Padma Bhusan. Jamini Roy has been widely collected, especially by the middle classes in India during his lifetime. His work was in a number of international exhibitions and is housed in many collections, among them the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.
The paintings of Jamini Roy (1887-1972) are among the most recognizable of Indian paintings. Roy was a very important Indian artist of the 20th century. His works have since been declared as national treasures of India and are gaining international acclaim as well. One can see large influence of Bengali tradition in his works, even when the portrayal is of European saints.

Jamini Roy was trained in his formative period in the Bengal school style of painting and his painting represented as much a revival of folk art as a rebellion against the delicate drawing and hazy colors of the Bengal school. He gradually evolved the highly individual medium of expression in his later paintings.
Roy achieved success first as a portrait painter. Then in he changed his style to use elements from Bengali peasant art. This led to a period of great poverty, but he persevered. He had to make his own paints from basic materials. In 1929 he had his first one man exhibit in Calcutta, sponsored by the artist Mukul Dey. Jamini Roy's work at the time was influenced by Abanindranath Tagore's Bengal School. In the 1930s, leading Indian writers and critics began to recognize that Roy was forging a new style of art, intrinsically Indian and original. Ultimately Roy gained international fame for his distinctive style.

You must judge for yourselves how far Mr. Roy has been able to achieve the ends at which he is obviously aiming. His work will repay study. I see in it as I see in much of the painting in India today a real endeavour to recover a national art that shall be free from the sophisticated tradition of other countries, which have had a continuous art history. Whatever direction Indian art may take in the future it cannot, if it is to have value, go wholly back to the past any more than it can become merely imitative of the Western outlook. It must have a vision of its own.

 All Indian art today is in the stage of experiment. Its exponents are seeking some firm ground on which they can stand, and they are seeking it by numerous paths. It is that fact which makes the present period so intensely interesting to the student of art. Failures there must be, but any day may emerge the man who is to set Indian art on the road of high accomplishment.

Let me tell you the truth. Art in any form cannot progress without encouragement. The artist must live and he/she must live by the sale of his work. In India as elsewhere the days when the churches and the princes were the patrons of art have passed. Encouragement today must come from a wider circle. I would say to those who have money to spare buy Indian art with courage.

You may obtain some things of little worth; you may, on the other hand, acquire cheaply something that is destined to have great value. What does it matter whether you make mistakes or not. By encouraging those who are striving to give in line and colour a fresh expression to Indian thought you are helping forward a movement that we all hope is destined to add a fresh lustre to the country."