art

British Premiere of Light of Asia

Date: 
01 Apr 1926
Precise date unknown: 
Y
Event location: 

London

About: 

The German film-maker Franz Osten's film Light of Asia (Prem Sanyas or Die Leuchte Asiens) had its British premiere in April 1926. The film was an adaptation of Edwin Arnold's 1861 epic poem on the life of Buddha. It was a silent film and a German-Indian collaboration between Munich-born Franz Osten and film producer and actor Himansu Rai, who had previously studied law in Calcutta and London and at Rabindranath Tagore's university. The film was celebrated in Germany and found a wide audience in Britain as well. Favourably reviewed in the British press, it ran in London for ten months. George V and his family attended a screening of the film at Windsor Castle on 27 April 1926.

People involved: 

Franz Osten, Himansu Rai.

Secondary works: 

Dwyer, Rachel, Filming the Gods: Religion and Indian Cinema (London: Routledge, 2006)

Rajadyaksha, Ashish and Willemen, Paul (eds), Encyclopaedia of Indian Cinema, revised ed. (London: BFI, 2002)

Schönfeld, Carl-Erdmann, 'Franz Osten's "The Light of Asia" (1926): a German-Indian film of Prince Buddha', Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television 15.4 (1995), pp. 555-559

Tags for Making Britain: 

Asian Horizon

About: 

In the editorial of its inaugural edition, this short-lived periodical states its aim ‘to provide a forum for the discussion of the problems facing this new Asia and those who seek to work in harmony with the countries of the East’. Triggered by the newly independent status of Asian nations, it sought to give a voice to their peoples in order to enable western readers to gain better access to this region of the world. Asian Horizon published short fiction and poetry, essays on different areas and aspects of the continent, and book reviews. Examples include a short story titled ‘The Liar’ by Mulk Raj Anand, a poem by the London-based Aga Bashir, and essays on contemporary Pakistani fiction and an exhibition of Asian artists held in London in 1950. Produced and published in London, it included work by several contributors based in the Indian subcontinent and other parts of Asia, as well as in Britain.

Example: 

Lo, Kenneth, Asian Horizon 2.4 (Spring 1950), p. 41

Content: 

The extract is taken from a review of an exhibition of Asian artists sponsored and arranged by Asian Horizon and funded by D. P. Chaudhuri who founded the Asian Institute a few months previously.

Date began: 
01 Jan 1948
Extract: 

In the past there have been in London exhibitions of the works of individual artists from Asia. The exhibition at the Asian Institute Gallery during the third week in April was the first time that a joint exhibition had been arranged. It was quite a conglomeration of artistic works, some of no small value, as various and as wide apart as the traditions and background of Asia. During the ten days of the exhibition, it was viewed by over 1,000 people.

Neville Wallis of the ‘Observer’ described the exhibition thus: ‘…East and West meet most happily in the mysterious, decorative paintings of A. D. Thomas, an Indian Christian.’

The New Statesman reporter described his impression thus:

‘The exhibits themselves vary in quality even more than in most shows. I liked particularly a fresco by a Pakistan painter. There was distinguished work from each country. The Chinese seems to be least influenced by the tradition of the West. Even when they paint an English seaside resort it is just as Chinese as Pekin. The outstanding Indian painter is A. D. Thomas and, amongst the others, Mr. Abeyasinghe deserves to be as well known here as he is in Ceylon.’

Precise date began unknown: 
Y
Key Individuals' Details: 

Dorothy Woodman (editor), D. P. Chaudhuri (assistant editor).

Editorial associates: Vernon Bartlett, Jack Cranmer-Byng, Maung Ohn, Hurustiati Subandrio, Poey Ungphakorn, Nguyen Van-Nhan, Chun-Chan Yeh.

Relevance: 

That an exhibition of Asian artists was held in the metropolis – and that it was well attended – suggests a degree of receptiveness to the work of South Asian (as well as other Asian) artists on the part of the British. It is probable that this receptiveness was increasing in the wake of Indian independence. The comments by both reviewers signal an element of hybridity, or a cross-fertilization of ideas, in the work of South Asian artists in this period.

Connections: 

Contributors: Stanley Abeyasinghe, Mulk Raj Anand, Aga Bashir, A. S. Bokhari, A. S. Bozman, Ismat Chugtai, Chitra Fernando, Abdul Majid, Aslam Malik, Lord Pethick-Lawrence, Kenneth Lo, M. Masud, Lester Peries, Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, B. Rajan, G. P. Rajaratnam, S. Raja Ratnam, Suhdir Sen, Feliks Topolski, Ranjita Sarath Chandra, Khushwant Singh, M. J. Tambimuttu, Beryl de Zoete.

Date ended: 
01 Jan 1951
Archive source: 

British Library, St Pancras

Precise date ended unknown: 
Y
Books Reviewed Include: 

Coomaraswamy, Ananda Kentish, The Bugbear of Literacy (London: Dennis Dobson, 1949)

Gandhi, M. K. The Story of my Experiments with Truth: An Autobiography, trans. Mahadev Desai (London: Phoenix Press, 1949)

Polak, H. S. L., Brailsford, H. N. and Pethick-Lawrence, F. W., Mahatma Gandhi (London: Odhams Press, 1948)

Location

34 Victoria Street
London, SW1H 0EU
United Kingdom

Horizon: Review of Literature and Art

About: 

Founded and edited by Cyril Connolly, with financial backing from Peter Watson (who was also its art editor), Horizon was a London-based magazine which published short fiction, essays on literature and art, and book reviews by an impressive range of contributors including W. H. Auden, George Orwell, E. M. Forster and Stephen Spender, who was also the magazine’s uncredited associate editor in its early years. Several of its contributors had connections with South Asian writers in Britain in the 1940s, and the magazine displays an awareness of the work of Indian writers in the form of numerous advertisements for their published fiction as well as for periodicals featuring their work. In spite of this, however, Horizon itself gave surprisingly little space to articles by these writers or about their work. An article on ‘Kalighat Folk Painters’ by Ajit Mookerjee, and an essay on the artist Jamini Roy by E. Mary Milford, are two of the rare exceptions to this tendency to confine itself to Euro-American literature and art.

Secondary works: 

Shelden, Michael, Friends of Promise: Cyril Connolly and the World of Horizon (London: Hamilton, 1989)

Date began: 
01 Jan 1940
Precise date began unknown: 
Y
Key Individuals' Details: 

Cyril Connolly (editor), Stephen Spender (unofficial associate editor), Peter Watson (art editor).

Connections: 

W. H. Auden, George Barker, John Betjeman, Laurence Binyon, Maurice Blanchot, Elizabeth Bowen, Alex Comfort, Paul Eluard, William Empson, E. M. Forster, Lucian Freud, Barbara Hepworth, Aldous Huxley, C. E. M. Joad, Augustus John, John Lehmann, Cecil Day Lewis, Jack Lindsay, Julian Maclaren-Ross, Louis MacNeice, Henry Miller, Ajit Mookerjee, George Orwell, Ben Nicholson, Peter Quennell, Kathleen Raine, Osbert Sitwell, Dylan Thomas, Ruthven Todd.

Date ended: 
01 Jan 1950
Archive source: 

British Library, St Pancras

Precise date ended unknown: 
Y
Books Reviewed Include: 

Fielden, Lionel, Beggar My Neighbour (London: Secker & Warburg, 1943). Reviewed by George Orwell.

Menon, Narayana, The Development of William Butler Yeats (London: Oliver & Boyd, 1942). Reviewed by George Orwell.

The Listener

About: 

The Listener was a weekly magazine, established in 1929 under the chairmanship of Lord Reith. It was designed to complement the BBC’s educational output and covered a wide range of topics. It drew extensively from the BBC’s broadcasting output, often reprinting talks programmes or supplementing them with further illustrations and information. The magazine was a controversial move by the BBC. Other magazine proprietors criticised the corporation for encroaching on territory beyond its remit. As a compromise, the magazine was only allowed to commission ten per cent original content and could only feature a limited amount of advertisements.

The magazine built its reputation on its intellectual and artistic output with its focus on broadcasting matters, the arts, intellectual life and politics. By 1948 it attracted a readership of 153,000. It featured contributions from a wide range of artists scientists and intellectuals, such as E. M. Forster, George Orwell, Laurence Binyon, Herbert Read, William Rothenstein and Mulk Raj Anand. In the 1940s it published many items originally broadcast to India by the BBC's Indian Section of the Eastern Service. It featured reviews of Indian authors and also provided comprehensive survey pieces on Indian art, history, and religion.

The magazine covered extensively the constitutional crises from the Round Table Conference to Indian independence with a view of providing a balanced overview of the issues. Politicians and activists from all sides were given a voice, either as part of round table discussions or articles. During the Second World War, the magazine became a useful propaganda tool, reporting extensively on the Indian contribution to the war effort.

After heavy losses the BBC decided to close down the publication in January 1991.

Example: 

Watson, Francis, ‘The Case of Jamini Roy’, The Listener (9 May 1946), p. 620

Content: 

Francis Watson’s article coincided with an exhibition of Roy’s work at the Arcade Gallery in 1946. He traces here the late success of the artist and discusses his artistic merit in the face of his newly-found commercial success. This orginally commissioned article (rather than a reprinted broadcast) is an example of the variety of reporting in a main-stream magazine like The Listener.

Date began: 
16 Jan 1929
Extract: 

He certainly abandoned the academic European traditions as unsatisfactory and irrelevant; but the other road - the road that starts with a dogmatic ‘Indianisation’ of theme and concentration on line rather than form, and ends in so many cases in meretricious insipidity – this road Jamini Roy declined to take; or rather, having followed it a little way and seen where it led, he turned back and found his own way.
He had to return only to his point of departure. When you first see a Jamini Roy painting (and you can do so in London now, for an Exhibition of his work was opened by E. M. Forster at the Arcade Gallery on 25 April), though you recognise what is loosely called the ‘primitive’ appeal, you are unlikely to think immediately of a particular example of Bengal folk-art, since it is a fairly safe assumption that you have not come across any. But, if having seen a Jamini Roy exhibition or visited his house, you should find your way to the folk-art rooms in the Ashutosh Museum at Calcutta, you will see drawings and paintings that almost bear his signature, and you will find that they have been collected from remote villages by the industrious curator...That is where he got it from; from his own people, and they got it from their fathers and from their grandfathers unto many generations.

I am not sure which I like best about Jamini Roy, the way he has created a market or his cheerful readiness to blow the bottom out of it.
 

Key Individuals' Details: 

Publisher: British Broadcasting Corporation

Editors: Richard S. Lambert (1929-39), Alan Thomas (until 1959),  J. R. Ackerley (Literary editor 1935-1959)

Connections: 

Contributors: Mulk Raj Anand, W. G. Archer, C. F. Andrews, Laurence Binyon, Edmund Blunden, H. N. Brailsford, Robert Bridges, Agatha Christie, Indira Devi of Kapurthala, Bonamy Dobree, George Dunbar, T. S. Eliot, E. M. Forster, Roger Fry, Eric Gill, Robert Graves, Desmond Hawkins, Laurence Housman, Aldous Huxley, Julian Huxley, Christopher Isherwood, C. L. R. James, J. M. Keynes, The Aga Khan, George Lansbury, Harold Laski, John Lehmann, Wyndham Lewis, Henry Moore, Edwin Muir, Ruby Navalkar, Firoz Khan Noon, George Orwell, Herbert Read, William Rothenstein, Bertrand Russell, V. Sackville-West, George Bernard Shaw, Edith Sitwell, Sacheverell Sitwell, Stephen Spender, Cornelia Sorabji, Dylan Thomas, Edward Thompson, H. G. Wells, Rebecca West, Leonard Woolf.

Date ended: 
30 Jan 1991
Archive source: 

Biritish Library Newspapers, Colindale, London

Books Reviewed Include: 

Ali, Ahmed, Twilight in Delhi. Reviewed by Edwin Muir.

Anand, Mulk Raj, The Hindu View of Art. Reviewed by Herbert Read.

Anand, Mulk Raj, The Sword and the Sickle. Reviewed by Edwin Muir.

Anand, Mulk Raj, and  Fingh, I. (eds), Indian Short Stories. Reviewed by Sean O'Faolain.

Andrews, C. F., Mahatma Gandhi: His Own Story. Reviewed by S.K. Ratcliffe.

Menen, Aubrey, The Prevalence of Witches. Reviewed by Francis King.

Narayan, R. K., An Astrologer's Day. Reviewed by P.H. Newby.

Narayan, R. K., The Bachelor of Arts. Reviewed by Edwin Muir.

Narayan, R. K., The English Teacher. Reviewed by Edwin Muir.

Rolland, Romain, Prophets of the New India. Reviewed by S. K. Ratcliffe.

Location

Savoy Hill
London, WC2R 0BP
United Kingdom

A. R. Orage

About: 

Orage held a central position in early twentieth-century cultural circles in Britain, particularly as editor of the influential New Age weekly journal. Initially trained as a teacher and working for the Leeds School Board, Orage became increasingly interested in socialist politics; a particularly lively sphere of activity in the industrial town of Leeds. In 1900, he met Holbrook Jackson and they founded the Leeds Art Club together. Its programme of talks, debates and events, encompassing a broad range of topics including Plato, Nietzsche, Theosophy and Fabian Socialism, reflects Orage’s and Jackson’s personal interests at this time. In 1906, he moved to London to pursue a career in journalism.

Supported by George Bernard Shaw, Orage and Holbrook Jackson bought and edited the New Age with Orage becoming the sole editor in 1909. India and the ‘East’ more generally loomed large in Orage’s imagination, although he never actually visited there. Under his editorship, the New Age also published articles and letters about South Asian culture and politics. Ananda Coomaraswamy contributed four articles to the journal and a number of letters to the editor. Orage responded to Coomaraswamy’s 1915 piece ‘The Hindu View of Art’ by saying: ‘In such treatises it is usual to find more sound than sense, more learning than wisdom, more chaff, than wheat; but in Dr. Coomaraswamy’s hands the subject becomes substantial and intelligible.’ Orage visited Coomaraswamy in Boston where the later was a curator at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. The New Age also contained contributions on Indian art by E. B. Havell and carried notices of the India Society. Its art critic, Huntly Carter, referred to Indian art and the India Society in his articles before the First World War.

After the war, Orage became increasingly interested in the economic theory of social credit. His interest in mysticism and the occult also deepened through his associations with the Serbian mystic Dimiti Mitrinovi and the occultist P. D. Ouspensky. He became a disciple of the Russian mystic George Gurdjieff. In October 1922 Orage left his editorial position at the New Age, and spent a year at Gurdjieff's institute, Le Prieuré, at Fontainebleau. He then spent a considerable amount of time in America lecturing and writing about philosophy and religion where he married Jessie Dwight (after a divorce from his first wife, Jean) who was co-owner of the Sunwise Turn Bookshop in New York which published Ananda Coomaraswamy’s work. Orage returned to England in 1930, setting up the New English Weekly in 1932, and again becoming the editor of a journal championing avant-garde writing, thought, art and political theory. He died suddenly in 1934 and was buried in Hampstead under a gravestone carved by Eric Gill, a sculptor with whom he had had a long association.

Published works: 

Frederick Nietzsche and the Dionysian Spirit of the Age (1906)

Consciousness, Animal, Human and Superhuman (1907)

Nietzsche in Outline and Aphorism (1907)

National Guilds (1914)

An Alphabet of Economics (1917)

Readers and Writers (1922)

Selected Essays and Critical Writings (1934)

Example: 

Editorial, New Age, 30 November 1907.

Date of birth: 
22 Jan 1873
Connections: 
Contributions to periodicals: 

New Age

New English Weekly

Extract: 

Anything that can bring home to Englishmen the meaning of India and Indian Government is welcome…It is strange that no country has more love for nationalism at home and more hatred for it elsewhere than England.

Secondary works: 

Gibbons, Tom H., Rooms in the Darwin Hotel: Studies in English Literary Criticism and Ideas, 1880–1920 (Nedlands: University of Western Australia Press, 1973)

Hastings, Beatrice, The Old ‘New Age’: Orage, and Others (London: Blue Moon Press, 1936)

Mairet, Philip, A. R. Orage: A Memoir (London: J. M. Dent & Sons, 1936)

Martin, Wallace, The ‘New Age’ Under Orage (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1967)

Milburn, Diane, The Deutschlandbild of A. R. Orage and the New Age Circle (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1996)

Selver, Paul, Orage and the ‘New Age’ Circle: Reminiscences and Reflections (London: Allen & Unwin, 1959)

Steele, T., Alfred Orage and the Leeds Arts Club, 1893–1923 (Aldershot: Scolars Press, 1990)

Welch, L., Orage with Gurdjieff in America (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1982)
 

Relevance: 

There was a strong anti-imperialist vein running through New Age editorials as this snippet makes clear.

Archive source: 

Letters and correspondence, British Library, St Pancras

Letters to Patrick Geddes, National Library of Scotland

Letters to Holbrook Jackson, Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas, Austin
 

City of birth: 
Dacre, North Yorkshire
Country of birth: 
England
Other names: 

Alfred Richard Orage

Date of death: 
06 Nov 1934
Location of death: 
England
Tags for Making Britain: 

The Bookman

About: 

The Bookman was a monthly magazine published by Hodder & Staughton. First published in 1891, The Bookman was initially conceived as an advertising tool for Hodder and Stoughton’s catalogue. The journal also published essays and reviews. The journal was quick to respond to new technological innovations, including columns on film, photography and a new supplement called 'The Illustrated Bookman', which featured articles on travel writing and accompanying photographs that from today's perspective could be read as 'orientalist'. These photographs exoticized the locale, highlighting the places' strangeness, otherness and their attraction as a space for adventure and exploration.

Under the editorship of Hugh Ross-Williamson in the 1930s, the journal increasingly reviewed books on India and Indian political issues. Aubrey Menen became the drama critic for The Bookman from October 1933 to May 1934. His columns engaged with the state of London's commercial theatre and argued for an alternative theatre that was poltically engaging and addressed a wider constituency. He also intervened into debates around the creation of a national theatre. He called for a more realist style of acting and lamented the influence of film that in his opinion had lead to a dumbing down of theatre. The journal published a number of survey articles on Indian writing, and regularly reviewed books on Indian politics. The journal was incorporated into the London Mercury in 1935, which was absorbed into Life & Letters today in 1939.

Date began: 
01 Oct 1891
Key Individuals' Details: 

William Robertson Nicoll (editor), Arthur St. John Adcock (editor), Hugh Ross Williamson (editor).

Date ended: 
01 Dec 1934
Books Reviewed Include: 

Andrews, C. F., Mahatma Gandhi at Work (London: Allen & Unwin, 1931)

Bernays, Robert, Naked Fakir (London: Gollancz, 1931). Reviewed by J. R. Glorney Bolton.

Butler, Harcourt, India Insistent  (London: Heinemann, 1931)

Craig, A. E. R., The Palace of Intrigue (London: Harmsorth, 1932). Reviewed by  J. Vijaya-Tunga.

Crozier, F. P., A Word To Gandhi: The Lesson of Ireland (London Williams & Norgate, 1931)

Kennion, R. L., Diversions of an Indian Political (Edinburgh: Blackwell, 1932). Reviewed by  J. Vijaya-Tunga.

Polak, Millie Graham, M. Gandhi: the Man (London: Allen & Unwin, 1931)

Tagore, Rabindranath, The Golden Boat, trans. by Bhattacharya, Bhabani (London: Allen & Unwin, 1932). Reviewed by  J. Vijaya-Tunga.

Poetry London

About: 

M. J. Tambimuttu and Anthony Dickins launched this literary magazine in 1939, with the former as literary editor and the latter as general editor, but it was Tambimuttu who was the driving force behind it. Well regarded in the literary world, it featured the work of many of the most influential British poets of the period, including Lawrence Durrell, W. H. Auden, Louis MacNeice and Stephen Spender, as well as reviews of poetry, fictions, plays, literary magazines and scholarly work, and some short prose, critical essays and illustrations. It also published work by new poets, declaring in its first editorial that 'every man has poetry within him'. Indeed, T. S. Eliot said of the magazine: 'It is only in Poetry London that I can consistently expect to find new poets who matter'. Initially funded by subscriptions and donations, and frequently suffering from paper shortages during the Second World War, the magazine was beset by financial difficulties and appeared irregularly. From 1942 to 1947, it gained the backing of publishers Nicholson & Watson, who also asked Tambimuttu to develop his own imprint of books, Editions Poetry London. As well as writers, Editions Poetry London promoted several artists, publishing work by Barbara Hepworth and Henry Moore, among others. After Nicholson & Watson withdrew their support in 1947, the magazine gained the financial backing of Richard March until its demise in 1951.

Correspondence between Tambimuttu and his contributors (MSS Add 88907-8, British Library, St Pancras) highlights the central position occupied by Poetry London and its editor Tambimuttu within the literary and artistic networks of 1940s London. Letters to the editor suggest that several well known cultural figures felt much personal affection for Tambimuttu and that the magazine was held in high regard by the literary establishment, as well as triggering debate and controversy. There is some rather limited evidence of connections between Tambimuttu and other Indian writers, resident in both India and Britain (for example, Ahmed Ali and Cedric Dover) – although the work of Indian poets and writers rarely appears in the magazine. The correspondence also gives insight into the impact of war on literary culture.

Other names: 

Poetry

Poetry (London)

Secondary works: 

Beckett, Chris, ‘Tambimuttu and the Poetry London Papers at the British Library: Reputation and Evidence’, Electronic British Library Journal (2009): http://www.bl.uk/eblj/2009articles/article9.html

Maclaren-Ross, J., Memoirs of the Forties (London: Alan Ross Ltd, 1965)

Ranasinha, Ruvani, South Asian Writers in Twentieht-Century Britain: Culture in Translation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007)

Williams, Jane, Tambimuttu: Bridge Between Two Worlds (London: Peter Owen, 1989)

Date began: 
01 Feb 1939
Precise date began unknown: 
Y
Key Individuals' Details: 

Editors: M. J. Tambimuttu (until 1949), Anthony Dickins (early issues), Richard March (from 1949).

Connections: 

George Barker, Audrey Beecham, Ronald Bottrall, Robert Cecil, Alex Comfort, Dorian Cooke, Keith Douglas, Lawrence Durrell, T. S. Eliot, Paul Eluard, Gavin Ewart, G. S. Fraser, Lucian Freud, Diana Gardner, David Gascoyne, Barbara Hepworth, Pierre Jean Jouve, Alun Lewis, Louis MacNeice, Walter de la Mare, Henry Miller, Joan Miro, Henry Moore, Nicholas Moore, Pablo Neruda, George Orwell, Mervyn Peake, Paul Potts, Kathleen Raine, Balachandra RajanHerbert Read, Keidrych Rhys, Anne Ridler, Rainer Maria Rilke, Francis Scarfe, Edith Sitwell, Stephen Spender, Graham Sutherland, Dylan Thomas, Henry Treece, Gerald Wilde, Stephen Coates.

Date ended: 
01 Jan 1951
Archive source: 

Add. MS 88907, M. J. Tambimuttu papers, British Library, St Pancras

Add. MS 88908, Richard March papers, British Library, St Pancras

Northwestern University, Chicago

Poetry London–New York records, Columbia University Rare Book and Manuscript Library, New York

Precise date ended unknown: 
Y
Books Reviewed Include: 

Aiken, Conrad, The Soldier: A Poem (London: Editions Poetry, 1946)

Auden, W. H., 'For the Time Being'

Connolly, Cyril, Horizon: A Review of Literature and Art

Durrell, Lawrence, A Private Country (London: Faber & Faber, 1943)

Eliot, T. S., The Family Reunion (London: Faber & Faber, 1939)

Eliot, T. S., East Coker  (London: Faber & Faber, 1940)

Empson, William, The Gathering Storm (London: Faber & Faber, 1940)

Garcia Lorca, Federico, Poems, trans. by Stephen Spender and J. L. Gili; selection and introduction by R. M. Nadal (London: Dolphin, 1939)

MacNeice, Louis, Autumn Journal: A Poem (London: Faber & Faber, 1939)

Menon, V. K. Narayana, The Development of William Butler Yeats (London: Oliver & Boyd, 1942)

Read, Herbert, Poems

Sassoon, Siegfried, Rhymed Ruminations (London: Chiswick Press, 1939)

Spender, Stephen, The Still Centre (London: Faber & Faber, 1939)

The Geeta: The Gospel of the Lord Shri Krishna, trans. by Shri Purohit Swami (London: Faber & Faber, [1935] 1942)

Tambimuttu, M. J., Out of This War: A Poem (London: Fortune Press, 1941)

Watkins, Vernon, The Lamp and the Veil: Poems (London: Faber & Faber, 1945)

Locations

Marchmont Street
London, WC1N 1RE
United Kingdom
Craven House, London, WC2A 2HT
United Kingdom
Manchester Square
London, W1U 3EJ
United Kingdom
Tags for Making Britain: 

Indian Art and Letters

About: 

Indian Art and Letters was the organ of the India Society. It was published twice a year from 1925 and produced articles relating to the activities of the India Society and their counterparts in France (L'Association Française des Amis de L'Orient) and the Netherlands. The journal would include transcripts of the lectures delivered to the India Society. These would include lectures by Indian visitors to London.

As the publication of the India Society, Indian Art and Letters would print the Annual Report of the India Society every year. The journal also published notices about relevant exhibitions and in 1930 and 1931 was particularly concerned with the question of building a Central Museum for Asiatic Art in the heart of London. Indian Art and Letters gives insight into the activities of those interested in Asiatic Art in London in the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s.

Other names: 

Art and Letters: India and Pakistan (1948-9) 

Art and Letters (1949 - 1964)

Date began: 
01 Jan 1925
Key Individuals' Details: 

Frederick Richter (editor)

Connections: 

Contributors included: 

Mulk Raj Anand, Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, Ajit Ghose, Mohammad Iqbal, K. M. Panikkar, Stanley Rice, Earl of Ronaldshay, Ranjee G. Shahani, W. E. Gladstone Solomon, Edward Thompson, John de la Valette

Archive source: 

India Society minutes, Mss Eur F147/65A and 65B, and India Society press cuttings, Mss Eur F147/104-7, Asian and African Studies Reading Room, British Library, St Pancras

Tags for Making Britain: 

Maud MacCarthy

About: 

MacCarthy was a talented violinist who had trained at the Royal College of Music and toured with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. From an early age, MacCarthy claimed to experience mystical visions and she maintained an interest in esoteric spirituality throughout her life. In 1905, she accompanied the soon-to-be president of the Theosophical Society, Annie Besant, on a visit to India where MacCarthy was deeply influenced not only by the religious practices of South Asia, but also its music.

This is an interest she further developed with her second husband, the composer John Foulds, whom she married in 1915. They collaborated on his World Requiem and MacCarthy wrote and spoke about Indian music in the UK. She also had an interest in the visual arts and was a founder member of the Theosophical Arts Circle (1907-14) and wrote for their journal, Orpheus. Foulds and MacCarthy met a young man, referred to only as 'The Boy' in her writings, who was employed in a gas works in the East End of London. According to MacCarthy, 'The Boy' possessed great spiritual powers and could channel an initiated spiritual group known as 'The Brothers'. In 1935, MacCarthy, Foulds and 'The Boy' moved to India where they established an ashram to promulgate these spiritual teachings. After Foulds death, MacCarthy took the name Swami Omananda Puri.

Published works: 

Some Indian Conceptions of Music (London: Theosophical Publishing Society, 1913)

The Temple of Labour: Four Lectures of the Plan Beautiful in relation to Modern Industrialism (London: The Theosophical Publishing House, 1926)

The Boy and the Brothers by Swami Omananda Puri (London: Victor Gollancz, 1959)

Example: 

McCarthy, Maud, ‘Music in East and West’, Transactions of the Theosophical Art-Circle 3 (1907), p. 10.

Date of birth: 
04 Jul 1882
Connections: 

Annie Besant, John Foulds.

Contributions to periodicals: 

Transactions of the Theosophical Art-Circle (‘Music in East and West’, 3 (1907), pp. 10-11; ‘International Arts’, 4 (1908), pp. 18-22)

Theosophist (‘True Art: Letter to a Young Painter (Benares, May 1908)’, 30 (1908), pp. 203-6)

Proceedings of the Musical Association (‘Some Conceptions of Indian Music’, 38 (1911-12), pp. 41-65)

Vâhan (‘The Brotherhood of the Arts’, 23.8 (March 1914), p. 159)

Extract: 

People speak vaguely of the genius of East or West, as though there existed a fixed impassable gulf between the two. Is it not rather true that genius of an identical nature all the world over - or of identical types, as political, scientific, or artistic - although [in] widely different circumstances, and national or religious prejudices, may for the time being veil these identities? Is it not likely that, could we pierce these veils, we might in freeing genius of its shackles discover the purely human - the international - type beneath?

Secondary works: 

Mansell, James, 'Music and the Borders of Rationality: Discourses of Place in the Work of John Foulds' in Grace Brockington (ed.) Internationalism and the Arts in Britain and Europe at the Fin de Siècle (Bern: Peter Lang, 2009)

Turner, Sarah Victoria '“Spiritual Rhythm” and “Material Things”: Art, Cultural Networks and Modernity in Britain, c.1900-1914', unpublished PhD thesis (University of London, 2009)

City of birth: 
Clonmel, County Tipperary
Country of birth: 
Ireland
Other names: 

Maud Mann

Swami Omananda Puri

Date of death: 
02 Jun 1967
Tags for Making Britain: 

Alice Richardson

About: 

Alice Richardson met Ananda Coomaraswamy around 1910, most probably at a recital of folk songs given by pupils of the collector of folk songs and cultural revivalist, Cecil Sharp. Richardson accompanied Coomaraswamy on a trip to India in 1911 and became his second wife. They lived on a houseboat in Srinagar, Kashmir, whilst she studied Indian music with Abdul Rahim of Kapurthala, and Coomaraswamy researched Rajput painting of northern India.

Once back in London, Alice Coomaraswamy became noted for her recitals of Indian music which were often introduced by an explanatory lecture given by her husband. She performed widely in the UK (including at the Theosophical Society Summer Schools) under the name Ratan Devi and in Indian dress. When the Coomaraswamys first went to the US, it was for her concert tour. Alice had two children (a boy, Narada, and a girl, Rohini) by Coomaraswamy before their divorce and his subsequent marriage to the American dancer and artist, Stella Bloch.

Published works: 

Thirty Songs From the Panjab and Kashmir, Recorded by Ratan Devi with Introduction and Translations by Ananda K. Coomarswamy and a Foreword by Rabindranath Tagore (Old Bourne Press, 1913)

Example: 

Tagore, Rabindranath, 'Foreword', in Thirty Songs From the Panjab and Kashmir: Recorded by Ratan Devi with Introduction and Translations by Ananda K. Coomarswamy (Old Bourne Press, 1913), pp. vi-ii

Content: 

Rabindranath Tagore describes his experience of hearing Ratan Devi sing.

Connections: 
Contributions to periodicals: 

Modern Review (October 1911)

Reviews: 

Asiatic Review

New York Times

Extract: 

Sometimes the meaning of a poem is better understood in a translation, not necessarily because it is more beautiful than the original, but as in the new setting the poem has to undergo a trial, it shines more brilliantly if it comes out triumphant. So it seemed to me that Ratan Devi’s singing our songs gained something in feeling and truth. Listening to her I felt more clearly than ever that our music is the music of cosmic emotion...Ratan Devi sang an alap in Kandra, and I forgot for a moment that I was in a London drawing-room. My mind got itself transported in the magnificence of an eastern night, with its darkness, transparent, yet unfathomable, like the eyes of an Indian maiden, and I seemed to be standing alone in the depth of its stillness and stars.

Secondary works: 

Clayton, Martin, and Zon, Bennett, Music and Orientalism in the British Empire, 1780s-1940s: Portrayal of the East (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007)

Crowley, Aleister, The Confessions of Aleister Crowley, ed. by John Symonds and Kenneth Grant (London: Jonathan Cape, 1969)

Lipsey, Roger, Coomaraswamy, 3 vols, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977)

Archive source: 

Stella Bloch Papers, Princeton University Library, Princeton

Other names: 

Ratan Devi

Alice Coomaraswamy

Pages

Subscribe to RSS - art