art

Eric Gill

About: 

Eric Gill was one of the most significant sculptors to work in Britain during the first half of the twentieth century. As well as being a talented stone carver, he was also a gifted draughtsman, letterer, typographer and printer. Rejecting the established techniques of making sculpture with the aid of the pointing machine, Gill is credited with re-establishing the practice of ‘direct carving’ in Britain and influencing the work of subsequent generations of sculptors, including Henry Moore.

Gill began to make sculpture in 1909, having trained in the offices of the architect W. D. Caroë and enrolled in evening classes in masonry at the Westminster Technical Institute and calligraphy at the Central School of Arts and Crafts. His first figural sculpture, Estin Thalassa (now lost), combined cut lettering, for which he had already become well known, and a naked, crouching woman. He showed photographs of this work to William Rothenstein and Roger Fry who became crucial supporters of his work. Whilst Rothenstein was travelling in India, Gill wrote to him telling him about his own exposure in Britain to images of Indian architecture and sculpture through a publication called Wonders of the World.

In 1908, Gill met Ananda Coomaraswamy at a lecture given by the latter at the Art Workers’ Guild in London. Through these acquaintances, Gill became interested in the art and culture of India and he joined the India Society in 1910 (as did fellow sculptor Jacob Epstein). Gill took a specific interest in the religious carving which adorned South Asian temples, heavily influenced by Coomaraswamy’s publications. In his Autobiography, Gill wrote of Coomaraswamy: ‘I dare not confess myself his disciple; that would only embarrass him. I can only say that I believe that no other living writer has written the truth in matters of art and life and religion and piety with such wisdom and understanding.’ Gill also wrote an introductory essay on ‘Art and Reality’ for Mulk Raj Anand’s The Hindu View of Art and contributed a full-page engraving to Anand’s The Lost Child, published in 1934.

Published works: 

‘Preface’, in Vivakarma: Examples of Indian Architecture, Sculpture, Painting, Handicraft, Chosen by Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, First Series: One Hundred Examples of Indian Sculpture: With an Introduction by Eric Gill (London: Messrs. Luzac, 1914), pp. 3-7

Slavery and Freedom (Ditchling: St Dominic’s Press, 1917)

Sculpture (Ditchling: St Dominic’s Press, 1918)

Birth Control (Ditchling: St Dominic’s Press, 1919)

Dress (Ditchling: St Dominic’s Press, 1921)

Art and Love (Waltham St Lawrence: Golden Cockerel Press, 1928)

The Future of Sculpture (London: Lanston Monotype Corporation Ltd)

Art-Nonsense and Other Essays (London: Cassell & Co. and Francis Walterson, 1929)

Sculpture and the Living Model (London: Faber & Faber)

Art and a Changing Civilisation (London: John Lane – The Bodley, 1934)

The Necessity of Belief (London: Faber & Faber/Hague & Gill, 1936)

Work & Property (London: Dent & Sons/Hague & Gill, 1937)

Twenty-five Nudes (London: Dent & Sons/Hague & Gill, 1938)

Autobiography (London: Jonathan Cape, 1940)

Example: 

Eric Gill to William Rothenstein, letter written whilst Rothenstein was travelling in India, 6 January 1911, Ms ENG 1148/596/36, William Rothenstein Papers, Houghton Library, Harvard University

Date of birth: 
22 Feb 1882
Connections: 
Contributions to periodicals: 

The Listener (‘A Sign and a Symbol’, 15 March 1933, p. 397)

(under pseudonym E. Rowton) Westminster Cathedral Chronicle (‘The Stations of the Cross in the Cathedral’, March 1918, p. 52)

Extract: 

So we have been gaining some small notion of the sort of thing you are seeing… I agree with you in your suggestion that the best route to Heaven is via Elephanta, Ellora & Ajanta. They must be wonderful places indeed…Someday we will follow in your footsteps and go and see the real things.

Secondary works: 

Attwater, Donald, A Cell of Good Living: The Life, Works and Opinions of Eric Gill (London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1969)

Attwater, Donald, Eric Gill: Workman (London: James Clarke & Co., 1941)

Collins, Judith, Eric Gill: Sculpture (London: Lund Humphries, in association with Barbican Art Gallery, 1992)

Collins, Judith, Eric Gill, the Sculpture: A Catalogue Raisonné (London: The Herbert Press, 1998)

Gill, E. R., Bibliography of Eric Gill (London: Cassell & Co. 1953)

Gill, E. R., The Inscriptional Work of Eric Gill: An Inventory (London: Cassell & Co. 1964)

Physick, J. F., The Engraved Works of Eric Gill (London: Victoria & Albert Museum, 1963)

Jones, David, Epoch and Artist (London: Faber & Faber, 1959)

MacCarthy, Fiona, Eric Gill (London: Faber & Faber, 1989)

Peace, David, Eric Gill: The Inscriptions (London: The Herbert Press, 1994)

Rothenstein, J. K. M., Eric Gill (London: Jonathan Cape, 1927)

Shewering, Walter (ed.), The Letters of Eric Gill (London: Jonathan Cape, 1947)

Skelton, Christopher, The Engravings of Eric Gill (Wellingborough: Skelton’s Press, 1983)

Speaight, Robert, The Life of Eric Gill (London: Methuen, 1966)

Thorpe, Joseph, Eric Gill (London: Jonathan Cape, 1929)

Yorke, Malcolm, Eric Gill: Man of Flesh and Spirit (London: Constable, 1981)

Archive source: 

Diaries and papers, NUC MS 77-1948, William Andrew Clark Memorial Library, University of California, Los Angeles

Correspondence, Add 73195 ff, Manuscript Collections, British Library, St Pancras

Letter and photographs, Henry Moore Institute, Leeds

Correspondence, Bodleian Library, Oxford

Papers, including artwork files, Chatto & Windus Archive, Reading University Library, Reading

Postcards and drawings, MSL/1977/5316; MSL1983/24/1-2; MSL/1957/3382; MSL/1977/5952; MSL/1964/3241, National Art Library, Victoria & Albert Museum

Correspondence and papers, University of San Francisco Library, San Franscisco

City of birth: 
Brighton
Country of birth: 
England
Other names: 

Arthur Eric Rowton Gill

Date of death: 
17 Nov 1940
Location: 

Brighton; Chichester; Ditchling, Sussex; Capel-y-ffin, Wales; Piggots, Buckinghamshire.

India Society

About: 

Founded in March 1910 at the home of E. B. Havell, the India Society was created to bring attention to Indian Art, in its many forms, to audiences in Britain and the world. In February 1910, Havell gave a lecture to the Royal Society of Arts on Indian Art, to which the chair, George Birdwood, responded that India had no fine art tradition. In response a number of British figures, including William Rothenstein, wrote a letter to The Times affirming the presence of an Indian fine art tradition, and as a result the India Society was formed. The Society had close links with other societies in Paris and with India. Many of their members were based in India and included a number of South Asians studying and working in Britain, such as Jawaharlal Nehru (a student called to the Bar in London). The Society was keen to bring out regular publications, one of which was Rabindranath Tagore's Gitanjali (Song Offerings) in 1912, which led to the award of Nobel Prize for Literature to Tagore in 1913. The Society also brought out its own journal, Indian Art and Letters, from 1925.

The Society received royal patronage and became the Royal India Society 1944-1948. From 1948 to 1950, it was known as the Royal India and Pakistan Society. From 1950 to 1966, it was known as the Royal India, Pakistan and Ceylon Society. In 1966, it incorporated the East India Association and was renamed The Royal Society for India, Pakistan and Ceylon.

Published works: 

Indian Art and Letters: Journal from 1925

Coomaraswamy, Ananda K, Indian Drawings (1910)

Havell, E. B. (ed.), Eleven Plates. Representing Works of Indian Sculptures Chiefly in English Collections (1911)

Coomaraswamy, Ananda K., Kapilar and a Tamil Saint (1911)

Coomaraswamy, Ananda K., Indian Drawings (1912)

Tagore, Rabindranath, Gitanjali (1912)

Tagore, Rabindranath, Chitra (1913)

Fox-Strangways, A. H., The Music of Hindostan (1913)

One Hundred Poems of Kabir, trans. by Rabindranath Tagore and Evelyn Underhill (1914)

Herringham, Christiana, Ajanta Frescoes (1914)

Ajanta Frescoes, 42 plates in colour and monochrome, with explanantory and critical texts by Lady Herringham, Laurence Binyon, William Rothenstein and others (1915)

The Mirror of Gesture (1916)

Havell, E. B. Handbook of Indian Art (1920)

The Bagh Caves in the Gwalior State (1927)

Ganguli, Taraknath, The Brothers, translated by Edward Thompson (1928)

Kak, Ram Chandra, Ancient Monuments of Kashmir (1933)

Gangulee, N., The Red Tortoise and Other Tales of Rural India (1941)

Rawlinson, H. G. (ed.), A Garland of Indian Poetry (1946)

Iqbal, Muhammad, The Tulip of Sinai, trans. by A. J. Arberry (1947)

Secondary works: 

Indian Magazine and Review 473 (May 1910) and later issues for notices and reviews

‘Proceedings of the Society: Indian Section’, Journal of the Royal Society of Arts 58.2985 (Feb. 1910), pp. 273-298

Lago, Mary, Christiana Herringham and the Edwardian Art Scene (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1996)

Lago, Mary. 'A Lost Treasure: William Rothenstein, Tagore and the India Society', The Times Literary Supplement, 16 April 1999

Mitter, Partha, Art and Nationalism in Colonial India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994)

Mitter, Partha, The Triumph of Modernism: India's Artists and the Avant-Garde 1922-1947 (London: Reaktion Books, 2007)

The Times, 29 April 1911, 13 July 1912, 22 December 1919

Turner, Sarah Victoria, ‘The India Society and the Networks of Colonial Modernity, c.1910-1914’, in ‘“Spiritual Rhythm” and “Material Things”: Art, Cultural Networks and Modernity in Britain, c.1900-1914’, unpublished PhD thesis, (University of London, 2009)

Date began: 
17 Mar 1910
Key Individuals' Details: 
Connections: 

Laurence Binyon (committee member), Krishna G. Gupta (committee member), Roger Fry, Eric Gill, Jawaharlal Nehru (member from 1911 and vice-president from 1950s), T. W. Rhys-Davids (President), Earl of Ronaldshay (later Marquess of Zetland), Rabindranath Tagore (guest and committee member), Sourindro Mohun Tagore (Vice-President), Ratan Tata (committee member), Francis Younghusband (President).

Archive source: 

Mss Eur F147/65A-114, including minute books, cuttings, and correspondence, Asian and African Studies Reading Room, British Library, St Pancras

Involved in events details: 
Tags for Making Britain: 

Ernest Binfield Havell

About: 

Havell was Principal of the Madras School of Industrial Arts from 1884 to 1892 and Principal of the Calcutta School of Art and Keeper of the Government Art Gallery from 1896 until 1906. In Calcutta, Havell worked with Abanindranath Tagore, nephew of Rabindranath Tagore, in developing a Bengal School of Art by reforming the art education at the Calcutta School of Art to gain inspiration from Mughal art rather than western methods.

In February 1910, Havell gave a lecture in London to the Royal Society of Arts on Indian Art, to which the Chair, George Birdwood, responded that India had no fine art tradition. Partly as a response to this, Havell was instrumental in founding the India Society - he convened a meeting at his house in March 1910 where the idea of the Society was concretized. The India Society was formed to bring attention to Indian Art in Britain and the West. The Society organized lectures, exhibitions and produced publications on Indian Art, including Havell's 1920 publication of a Handbook of Indian Art.

Havell was also appointed to the Indian Section Committee of the Festival of Empire held at Crystal Palace in 1911. From 1916 to 1923 Havell was a member of the British legation in Copenhagen. He died on 30 December 1934 at the Acland Nursing Home, Oxford.

Published works: 

The Industrial Development of India: Lecture (Calcutta: The Englishman, 1901) 

A Handbook to the Agra and the Taj, Sikandra, Fatehpur-Sikri and the Neighbourhood (London: Longmans & Co., 1904) 

Hand-Loom Weaving in India (Calcutta: Luxmir Bhandar, 1905)

Benares, The Sacred City:Sketches of Hindu Life and Religion (London: Blackie & Son, 1905)

Monograph on Stone-Carving in Bengal (Calcutta: Bengal Secretariat Book Depot, 1906)

Indian Sculpture and Painting Illustrated by Typical Masterpieces, with an Explanation of their Motives and Ideals (London: John Murray, 1908)

Essays on Indian Art, Industry & Education (Madras: G. A. Natesan & Co., 1910)

The Ideals of Indian Art (London: John Murray, 1911)

Eleven Plates Representing Works of Indian Sculpture (London: The India Society, 1911)

The Basis for Artistic and Industrial Revival in India (Adyar, Madras: Theosophist Office, 1912)

Indian Architecture, its Psychology, Structure, and History from the First Muhammadan Invasion to the Present Day (London: John Murray, 1913)

The Ancient and Medieval Architecture of India: A Study of Indo-Aryan Civilisation (London: J. Murray, 1915)

The History of Aryan Rule in India from the Earliest Times to the Death of Akbar (London: G. G. Harrap & Co., 1918)

A Handbook of Indian Art (London: John Murray, 1920)

The Himalayas in Indian Art (London: John Murray, 1924)

A Short History of India from the Earliest Times to the Present Day (London: Macmillan, 1924)

The Art Heritage of India, Comprising 'Indian Sculpture and Painting' and 'Ideals of Indian Art' (Bombay: D. B. Taraporevala Sons & Co., 1964)

Indian Architecture Through the Ages (New Delhi: Asian Publication Services, 1978)

Date of birth: 
16 Sep 1861
Connections: 
Contributions to periodicals: 

Asiatic Review

Modern Review

The Studio

Secondary works: 

Calendars of the Grants of Probate…Made in…HM Court of Probate [England and Wales] (1935)

Coomaraswamy, Ananda K., Golubev, Vicktor, Havell, Ernest Binfield and Rodin, Francois Auguste, Sculptures Civaites. Par Auguste Rodin, Ananda Coomaraswamy, E.-B. Havell Et Victor Goloubew [Ars Asiatica. No. 3.] (Bruxelles & Paris, 1921)

Jamal, O., 'E. B. Havell: The Art and Politics of Indianness', Third Text 39 (1997), pp. 3-19  

Mitter, Partha, Art and Nationalism in Colonial India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994)

Mitter, Partha, 'Havell, Ernest Binfield (1861-1934)', rev., Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2004) [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/37520]

Mitter, Partha, Much Maligned Monsters: History of European Reactions to Indian Art (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977)

Mitter, Partha, The Triumph of Modernism: India's Artists and the Avant-Garde 1922-1947 (London: Reaktion, 2007)

Tarapor, Mahrukh Keki, ‘Art Education in Imperial India: the Indian Schools of Art’, in Kenneth Ballhatchet and David Taylor (eds) Changing South Asia (London: SOAS, 1984)

The Times (1 January 1935)

Who Was Who (1929-40)

Archive source: 

Correspondence and papers, Ms Eur. D. 736, Asian and African Studies Reading Room, British Library, St Pancras

Correspondence from Havell to William Rothenstein, Houghton Library, Harvard University

Involved in events: 
City of birth: 
Reading
Country of birth: 
England
Date of death: 
30 Dec 1934
Location of death: 
Oxford
Tags for Making Britain: 

George Birdwood

About: 

George Birdwood was born in India into what might be described as typical ‘Anglo-Indian’ family circumstances. The son of a soldier, General Christopher Birdwood, and Lydia Birdwood, the daughter of a Reverend of the London Missionary Society, Birdwood, like so many children of the British Army in India, was sent back to Britain to complete his education (schools in Plymouth and Scotland, and a degree from the University of Edinburgh), becoming a surgeon in 1857 and returning to India as an assistant surgeon with the Bombay medical service. Something of a Victorian polymath, Birdwood’s interests lay not only within the medical field. He was heavily involved in the cultural affairs of Bombay and became the Registrar of the newly-founded University of Bombay. It was, however, as a cultural administrator that Birdwood had most visible and lasting impact, occupying the posts of curator of the government art museum, Secretary of the Royal Asiatic Society and Sheriff of Bombay.

His return to England in 1868 (due to ill health) did not lead to a quiet retirement, but a continued vigorous involvement in Indian cultural affairs, especially in the form of international exhibitions and the museological display of Indian art and artefacts. He was appointed keeper of the Indian Museum at South Kensington (now incorporated into the Victoria and Albert Museum collections). His reputation as an authority on Indian art and manufacture was firmly established with the publication of The Industrial Arts of India which championed the production of Indian arts and crafts in heavily paternalistic tones and praised small-scale village organization and traditions for the production of crafts. This tome influenced a large number of British designers and craftsmen, including William Morris and Owen Jones.

In 1879 he was appointed to a specially created post in the India Office, publishing work on its historical records and retiring in 1905. He was knighted in 1881 and made KCIE in 1887. Birdwood kept up a close correspondence with M. M. Bhownaggree, in the lead up to Bhownaggree's election as a Conservative MP in Bethnal Green in 1895. His reputation as a champion of Indian art was somewhat challenged at a now infamous event which took place whilst chairing the Indian Section meeting of the annual meeting of the Royal Society of Arts on 13 January 1910. After a paper given by the former colonial arts administrator and writer on Indian art, E. B. Havell, Birdwood made the claim that India possessed no 'fine art' which he had come across in all his years in India, and that a ‘boiled suet pudding would serve equally as well as a symbol of passionless purity and serenity of soul.’ This prompted a wave of counter claims and protest, most notably a letter sent to The Times in February 1910 penned by William Rothenstein and counter-signed by twelve other prominent cultural figures, and led to the foundation of the India Society

Published works: 

Handbook to the British Indian Section, Paris Universal Exhibition of 1878 (London, 1878)

Report on the Government Central Museum and the Agricultural and Horticultural Society of Western India, for 1863, in Selections from the Records of the Bombay Government (Bombay, 1864)

The Industrial Arts of India (London, 1880)

Clarke, Caspar Purdon and Birdwood, George C. M., Catalogue of the Collection of Indian Arms and Objects of Art presented by the Princes and Nobles of India to H.R.H. the Prince of Wales, on occasion of his visit to India in 1875-1876, now in the Indian Room at Marlborough House (London, 1898)
 

Date of birth: 
08 Dec 1832
Connections: 

Mancherjee Merwanjee Bhownaggree, Manchershaw Pithawala (Birdwood wrote an article in appreciation of Pithawala in 1911).

India Office, Royal Asiatic Society.

Contributions to periodicals: 

'To the Temple’, Journal of Indian Art and Industries (January 1898)

Secondary works: 

Chirol, Valentine, ‘Birdwood, Sir George Christopher Molesworth (1832–1917)’, rev. Katherine Prior, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2004) [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/31896]

Guha-Thakurta, Tapati, The Making of a New “Indian” Art: Artists, Aesthetics and Nationalism in Bengal, c.1850-1920 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992)

Mitter, Partha, Art and Nationalism in Colonial India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994)

Mitter, Partha, Much Maligned Monsters: History of European Reactions to Indian Art (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977)

Archive source: 

Mss Eur F 216, correspondence and papers, Asian and African Studies Reading Room, British Library, St Pancras

Correspondence with Lord Kimberley, Bodleian Library, Oxford

Correspondence with Lord Hardinge, Cambridge University Library
 

Involved in events: 

Empire of India Exhibition, 1895

Comment at Royal Society of Arts talk regarding lack of Indian fine art led to outrage from Havell, Rothenstein and others and to formation of India Society, 1910

City of birth: 
Belgaum
Country of birth: 
India
Other names: 

Sir George Christopher Molesworth Birdwood

Date of death: 
28 Jun 1917
Location of death: 
London, England
Tags for Making Britain: 

William Rothenstein

About: 

William Rothenstein was a renowned artist and art administrator, who was interested in various forms and origins of art.

On 4 February 1910, Sir George Birdwood chaired a lecture given by E. B. Havell to the Royal Society of Arts and commented that India had no fine arts. Outraged, Rothenstein, with 12 other signatories (including T. W. Rolleston and George Russell (AE)), wrote a letter to The Times, published on 28 February 1910, to dispute the idea that India had no fine art. Subsequently, Havell and Rothenstein were instrumental in the foundation of the India Society, which was based in London to promote Indian art.

Rothenstein travelled to India in 1910 with Christiana Herringham and met Rabindranath Tagore in Calcutta. When Tagore visited London in 1912, Rothenstein introduced him to literary circles. Tagore was often found at Rothenstein's house in Hampstead, North London. Rothenstein urged the India Society to publish Tagore's Gitanjali in 1912, which won Tagore the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913.

Rothenstein went to the Western Front in 1917 as Official War Artist. With these duties, he was unable to comply with the request from Kedar Nath Das Gupta and Laurence Binyon to decorate the scenery for their production of Sakuntala in 1919. Rothenstein remained an active member of the India Society in his lifetime, Indian art was an influence on his own paintings, and he was a key figure at memorial meetings for Tagore in 1941. He was knighted in 1931 and died in 1945.

Published works: 

Men and Memories (London: Faber and Faber, 1932)

Date of birth: 
29 Jan 1872
Contributions to periodicals: 
Secondary works: 

Arrowsmith, Rupert Richard, 'An Indian Renascence and the Rise of Global Modernism – William Rothenstein, Abanindranath Tagore, and the Ajanta Frescoes', Burlington Magazine (April 2010)

Lago, Mary, 'A Lost Treasure: William Rothenstein, Tagore and the India Society', The Times Literary Supplement (16 April 1999) 

Lago, Mary, Christiana Herringham and the Edwardian Art Scene (London: Lund Humphries, 1996)

Mitter, Partha, Art and Nationalism in Colonial India, 1850-1922: Occidental Orientations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994)

Mitter, Partha, The Triumph of Modernism (London: Reaktion, 2007) 

Rothenstein, William, and Lago, Mary McClelland, Imperfect Encounter: Letters of William Rothenstein and Rabindranath Tagore, 1911-1914, ed., introduction and notes by Mary McClelland Lago (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1972)

Archive source: 

Houghton Library, Harvard University, Boston

Correspondence relating to Indian Art, Mss Eur B213, Asian and African Studies Reading Room, British Library, St Pancras

India Society papers, Mss Eur F147, Asian and African Studies Reading Room, British Library, St Pancras

Tate Britain, Millbank, London

City of birth: 
Bradford
Country of birth: 
England
Date of death: 
14 Feb 1945
Location of death: 
Gloucestershire, England
Location: 

Hampstead

Tags for Making Britain: 

Fanindranath Bose

About: 

Fanindranath Bose’s name remains absent from the histories of the ‘New Sculpture’ Movement in Britain, yet his sculptures, training and connections suggest that he was a part of this late nineteenth/early twentieth century network of sculptors who were primarily concerned with reproducing the human body in bronze. Born in India, Bose was trained at the Jubilee Art Academy and the Calcutta School of Art before moving to Europe to pursue his ambition to become a sculptor.

After failing to gain admittance to an Italian art academy or the Royal College of Art in London, Bose enrolled at the Board of Manufacturers School of Edinburgh. Scotland was to become Bose’s home. He married a Scottish woman and settled in Edinburgh where he worked for the sculptor Percy Portsmouth at the College of Art after graduating from the Board of Manufacturers School. A Stuart Prize and a travelling scholarship jointly awarded by Edinburgh University and the Bengal Government allowed Bose to spend a year on the Continent where he was heavily influenced by Rodin’s use of bronze (as indeed were a lot of the ‘New Sculptors’, including Alfred Gilbert, Hamo Thornycroft and William Goscombe John). Goscombe John bought Bose’s The Hunter after its exhibition at the Royal Academy in London in 1916. Bose had made his debut at the Royal Scottish Academy in 1913, followed by an exhibition at the Royal Academy in London with Boy in Pain the next year. He entered The Snake Charmer and The Athlete and the Hound to the RA in 1919 and 1924, respectively.

As well as having his own sculpture studio in Edinburgh, Bose was recruited by Sayaji Rao III Gaekwad, Maharaja of Baroda, to teach briefly at Baroda College whilst he was making eight sculptures for the Gaekwad’s Laxmi Vilas Palace and two for Baroda Gallery. The Gaekwad also commissioned a copy of The Hunter after seeing it in Goscombe John’s collection. Bose turned down an invitation to work on the Victoria Memorial in Calcutta. His reasons are not recorded. Bose was elected to the Royal Scottish Academy after completing a group of sculptures in St John’s Church, Perth. He died in Peebles, Scotland, aged 37 on 1 August 1926.

Example: 

N. Singh, ‘A Bengali Sculptor Trained in Europe. The Art of Fanindranath Bose’, The Graphic, 1 May 1920, p. 686

Date of birth: 
01 Jan 1888
Connections: 

William Goscombe John, Sayaji Rao III

Royal Academy, Royal Scottish Academy

Precise DOB unknown: 
Y
Reviews: 

N. Singh, ‘A Bengali Sculptor Trained in Europe. The Art of Fanindranath Bose’, The Graphic, 1 May 1920

The Modern Review (Calcutta), 1921

The Times, 7 August 1926 (notice of his death)

Extract: 

The rising star [and] the first Bengali to gain international fame as a sculptor.

Secondary works: 

Mitter, Partha, Art and Nationalism in Colonial India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994)

City of birth: 
Calcutta
Country of birth: 
India
Current name city of birth: 
Kolkata
Current name country of birth: 
India

Locations

Peebles, EH45 8FB
United Kingdom
55° 39' 4.5432" N, 3° 11' 32.5968" W
Board of Manufacturers School Edinburgh, EH8 8HG
United Kingdom
55° 57' 7.956" N, 3° 10' 19.4196" W
Date of death: 
01 Aug 1926
Location of death: 
Peebles, Scotland
Tags for Making Britain: 

Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy

About: 

Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy was the son of Sir Mutu Coomaraswamy, from Ceylon, and his wife Elizabeth Clay Beeby, from Kent. Coomaraswamy joined Wycliffe College in Gloucestershire in 1889 and then studied Botany at University College London, graduating in 1900. He married Ethel Mary Partridge in 1902 and worked for the Minerological Survey in Ceylon, 1903-6.

In 1910, Coomaraswamy was involved in the formation of the India Society in London - a society dedicated to promoting Indian art. He wrote a number of pamphlets on Indian art and in 1917 took up a position as Research Fellow in Indian, Persian and Muhammadan Art at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.

In 1912, he divorced his first wife. His second wife was Alice Richardson, a performer of Indian music. His third wife was the American artist Stella Bloch, but this marriage was short-lived.

Published works: 

The Deeper Meaning of the Struggle (Broad Campden: Essex House Press, 1907)

The Aims of Indian Art (Broad Campden: Essex House Press, 1908)

The Influence of Greek on Indian Art (Broad Campden: Essex House Press, 1908)

Medieval Sinhalese Art (Broad Campden: Essex House Press, 1908)

The Indian Craftsman (London: Probsthain & Co., 1909)

The Oriental View of Women (Broad Campden: Essex House Press, 1909)

Indian Drawings (London: India Society, 1912)

(with M. E. Noble) Myths of the Hindus and Buddhists (London: George Harrap, 1913)

Buddha and the Gospel of Buddhism (London: Harrap, 1916)

Dance of Siva (New York: Simpkin, Marshall, 1924)

Figures of Speech or Figures of Thought (London: Luzac, 1946)

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

Date of birth: 
22 Aug 1877
Connections: 

Laurence Binyon, Stella Bloch (third wife), Walter Crane, Eric Gill, E. B. Havell, Christiana Herringham (India Society), Ethel Mary Mairet (first wife), Margaret Noble, A. R. Orage, Alice Richardson (second wife), T. W. Rolleston (India Society), William Rothenstein, M. J. Tambimuttu (nephew).

Contributions to periodicals: 

Burlington Magazine

Indian Art and Letters

 

Reviews: 

Isis 2.2, September 1919

Indian Magazine and Review 481, January 1911

Secondary works: 

Seaman, G. R., 'Coomaraswamy, Ananda Kentish (1877-1947)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2004) [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/55201]

Coatts, Margot, ‘Mairet , Ethel Mary (1872–1952)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2007) [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/39639]

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

Livingston, Ray, The Traditional Theory of Literature (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1962)

Mitter, Partha, Much Maligned Monsters: History of European Reactions to Indian Art (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977)

Archive source: 

Letters and notebooks, Cambridge University Library, Cambridge

Correspondence and papers, Princeton University Library, New Jersey

India Society Archives, Mss Eur F147, Asian and African Studies Reading Room, British Library, St Pancras

Stella Bloch Archive, Ms Thr 460, Houghton Library, Harvard College Library, Boston

Stella Bloch Papers, CO822, Princeton University Library, Princeton, New Jersey

Papers and photos, William Morris Hunt Memorial Library, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

 

Involved in events: 
City of birth: 
Colombo
Country of birth: 
Ceylon
Current name city of birth: 
Colombo
Current name country of birth: 
Sri Lanka
Other names: 

AKC

Date of death: 
09 Sep 1947
Location of death: 
Needham, Massachusetts, USA
Date of 1st arrival in Britain: 
01 Jan 1879
Precise 1st arrival date unknown: 
Y
Tags for Making Britain: 

Samuel Fyzee Rahamin

About: 

Samuel Fyzee Rahamin was born in Poona, now Pune, India. After training at the School of Art in India, he moved to London to enrol at the Royal Academy Schools where he was taught by John Singer Sargent and Solomon J. Solomon. He returned to India in 1908 abandoning the loose brushwork technique inherited from Sargent and became increasingly committed to reviving the traditional style of Moghul painting. On his marriage to Atiya Begum (of the Fyzee family) in 1912, Samuel Rahamin, a Jew by faith, converted to Islam and took the name Fyzee Rahamin. His wife was a respected authority on Indian music and her book The Music of India (1925) was widely appreciated. Atiya Fyzee wrote travel accounts of her time in Europe, had a friendship with Mohammad Iqbal, and her brother was a successful tennis player who appeared at Wimbledon. Music seems to have had an important influence on Samuel Fyzee Rahamin’s work who illustrated his wife’s book.

His career is further evidence of the global networks of art and culture at the beginning of the twentieth century. He lived in Bombay (now Mumbai), but held his first exhibition at the Galerie Georges Petit in Paris in 1914. He also exhibited in the UK and America, including the 1924 British Empire Exhibition at Wembley. A 1926 issue of Burlington Magazine carried a notice of his exhibition of watercolours at Arthur Tooth & Sons Gallery, entitled ‘Water-Colours, India, Vedic, Mythological and Contemporary’. In May 1939, he held a ‘Special Exhibition’ displaying ‘Modern Indian Art, on traditional lines’ at the American Association, New York. He was recruited to become an art advisor to the state of Baroda and also painted frescoes for the Imperial Secretariat, New Delhi, in 1926-7 and 1928-9.

In 1928, Samuel Fyzee Rahamin approached William Rothenstein to recommend him to paint the proposed murals in India House in Aldwych. Fyzee Rahamin was not appointed because of his seniority. Fyzee Rahamin assisted the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Metropolitan Museum, New York, in the reorganization of collections of Asian art. He was also a writer and published plays and poetry. He lived in Karachi from 1947 and his art collection, which he presented to the Aiwan-e-Riffat Museum in Karachi, is now housed in the Fyzee Rahamin Art Gallery. There are also examples of his work in Tate Britain and Manchester City Art Gallery.

Published works: 

Atiya Begum and Fyzee Fyzee-Rahamin, Music of India (London: Luzac, 1925)

Souvenir of the Exhibition of Indian Painting, 1928, preface by S. Fyzee Rahamin (Bombay: Society for the Encouragement of Indian Art, 1928)

Daughter of India (London: J. B. Pinker, 1937)

Invented Gods (London: Herbert Joseph, 1938)


 

Date of birth: 
19 Dec 1880
Connections: 

Atiya Fyzee Begum (wife), J. A. Lalkaka, William Rothenstein, John Singer Sargent, Solomon J. Solomon, W. E. Gladstone Solomon

Reviews: 

Furst, H., ‘Mr Fyzee Fyzee-Rahamin’s Paintings’, Apollo II (July-December 1925), pp. 91-4

Secondary works: 

Mitter, Partha, Art and Nationalism in Colonial India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994)

Mitter, Partha, The Triumph of Modernism (London: Reaktion, 2007)

Archive source: 

Duplicate passport, IOR/L/PJ/11/1/1401/1932, Asian and African Studies Reading Room, British Library, St Pancras

Letter from William Rothenstein to Samuel Fyzee Rahamin, Ms Eng 1148/1679, William Rothenstein Papers, Houghton Library, Harvard University

Involved in events: 
City of birth: 
Poona
Country of birth: 
India
Current name city of birth: 
Pune
Current name country of birth: 
India
Other names: 

Fyzee Fyzee-Rahamin

Location

Royal Academy of ArtsLondon, W1J 0BD
United Kingdom
51° 30' 23.5584" N, 0° 8' 33.2808" W
Date of death: 
01 Jan 1964
Precise date of death unknown: 
Y
Location of death: 
Karachi, Pakistan
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Augustus John

About: 

Augustus John was widely known as the archetypal bohemian artist at the beginning of the twentieth century. He left the quiet seaside town of Tenby in 1894 to attend the Slade School of Fine Art in London, followed the next year by his sister, the artist Gwen John. After an accident in 1895, he cultivated a ‘wild’ persona and established his place within the progressive cultural circles of fin-de-siècle London. As well as being a radical student, he was also a prolific one, and his art was widely admired by his contemporaries. He married Ida Margaret Nettleship, a fellow Slade student, on 24 January 1901, and they went to live in Liverpool where John was employed in an art school affiliated to University College, London.

It was during this period that John became acquainted with the Gypsy scholar, John Sampson. Nomadic life on the open road was to become something of a fascination to John, and he took his family retinue (which included his wife, his mistress Dorothy McNeill, known to the family as Dorelia, and all their children) on various trips in a Romany caravan. On moving back to London, John established himself as a central figure in the progressive faction of the London art world, opening the Chelsea Art School with William Orpen (1903-7). He was also an enthusiastic member of the New English Art Club. John was very close to William Rothenstein and his wife, Alice. John is the male figure in Rothenstein’s enigmatic The Doll’s House (1899-1900). Rothenstein praised John’s work highly, going as far as to call him a ‘genius’ in his autobiography, Men and Memories (vol. 1, p. 3). It was most probably through his friendship with Rothenstein that John became a member of the India Society. He is listed as a member from the outset of the Society in The India Society: Report for the year ending December 31, 1911 (London: Chiswick Press, 1912). John did not publish his opinions on Indian art but must have been acquainted with it through his connections with Rothenstein and the India Society. In 1908, he worked on a canvas entitled Nirvana (sketches are in the Tate Collection; presented by William Rothenstein in 1917) which might suggest a closer personal interest in eastern spiritual ideas. This was exhibited at the ‘Twenty Years of British Art, 1890-1910’ exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery in 1910.

From 1920, John travelled through Europe, Jamaica and the US in a bid to revive his reputation which had rapidly declined after the war. In the 1930s and 1940s, he knew the Ceylonese M. J. Tambimuttu and contributed a portrait of the poet and editor to his Out of this War (1941). In September of 1961, a seriously-ill John went to London to take part in a demonstration against nuclear weapons. He died a few weeks later at home in Hertfordshire.

Published works: 

Autobiography (London: Cape, 1975)

Date of birth: 
04 Jan 1878
Secondary works: 

Holroyd, Michael, Augustus John: The New Biography (London: Chatto & Windus, 1996)

Rothenstein, John, Modern English Painters: Sickert to Smith, vol. 1, rev. edn (London: Macdonald & Jane's, 1976)

Rothenstein, W., Men and Memories: Recollections of William Rothenstein, 2 vols (London: Faber & Faber, 1931-2)

Shone, R., Augustus John (Oxford and New York: Phaidon, 1979)

Archive source: 

Augustus John Papers, National Library of Wales, Cardiff

Correspondence and sketches, Harry Ransom Centre, University of Texas, Austin

Correspondence, British Library, London

Correspondence with William Rothenstein, Houghton Library, Harvard University

Correspondence with the Gypsy Lore Society, University of Liverpool

City of birth: 
Tenby, Pembrokeshire
Country of birth: 
Wales
Other names: 

Augustus Edwin John

Date of death: 
31 Oct 1961
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Henry Moore

About: 

Born in the mining town of Castleford in West Yorkshire, Henry Moore gained an international reputation during his lifetime for his prolific work as a sculptor. He began his formal training in Leeds and was the first sculpture student at the Leeds School of Art. He was introduced to a wide range of art whilst still in Yorkshire, first through his school teacher, Alice Gostick, and then via his acquaintance with Sir Michael Sadler, the Vice Chancellor of Leeds University, who was a collector of modern art.

His studies were interrupted by the First World War when he was called up to fight at the age of eighteen, serving in the Civil Service Rifles, 11th London Regiment. After the war, he moved to London to study and teach at the Royal College of Art after being awarded a scholarship. Moore’s artistic imagination was fired by frequent trips to the collections of the British Museum, the Victoria and Albert Museum and Zwemmer’s bookshop. A travelling scholarship also enabled him to visit Italy and France in 1924 where he visited numerous museums. He was particularly captivated by an Indian sculpture he saw at the Musée Guimet in Paris and wrote in an excited letter that it was one of the finest pieces of sculpture he had ever seen. The sculpture from India, Africa and Oceania, which Moore encountered through his trips to museums and in the books which he collected, undoubtedly shaped his sculptural oeuvre which was based predominantly on the human body. Moore also credited Roger Fry’s book Vision and Design, which examined art from beyond Europe, as having a profound impact on him. In the 1920s and 1930s, Moore’s reputation was confirmed with solo exhibitions and public commissions.

In the 1930s, he was involved with an international group of artists based in London — many of them émigrés of the Second World War — who promoted the idea of abstract art as a universal language. Other artists who he was close to at this time include Barbara Hepworth, Ben Nicholson, Naum Gabo, Paul Nash and his lifelong supporter, the poet, writer and critic Herbert Read. Moore’s reputation as an international figure was cemented in the 1940s with the publication of his Shelter Drawings depicting London’s populace seeking protection underground from the Blitz. Moore was friends with the poet and editor Tambimuttu, whose Poetry London Editions published Moore’s Shelter Sketch-Book in 1945. He also contributed a lively and colourful front cover depicting two lyre birds for the magazine Poetry London (no. 8, 1942).

After the war, Moore’s work was exhibited all over the world and he was enthusiastically promoted by the British Council in particular. He also executed prestigious commissions, such as the 1958 Reclining Figure outside the UNESCO headquarters in Paris, and his work and name have become associated with post-war internationalism. Perry Green in Hertfordshire had been home to Moore’s family and his workshops and studios since 1940 and houses the Henry Moore Foundation today.

Published works: 

Shelter Sketch-Book (London: Editions Poetry London, 1945)

Date of birth: 
30 Jul 1898
Connections: 

Herbert Read, Sir Michael Sadler, M.J.Tambimuttu.

Contributions to periodicals: 

Poetry London 8 (1942)

Secondary works: 

A good reference guide is:

Davis, Alexander (ed.), Henry Moore: Bibliography (Henry Moore Foundation, published in 5 volumes between 1992 and 1995)

Archive source: 

The Henry Moore Foundation, Perry Green, Much Hadham, Hertfordshire

The Henry Moore Institute Archive, Leeds

BBC Written Archives Centre, Caversham Park, Reading (written transcripts of BBC interviews)

British Museum (Shelter Sketch-Book)

Letters and correspondence, Tate Gallery Archives

British Council Papers, National Archives, Kew

Letters and photographs, Dartington Hall Archives

University of Leeds Special Collections

City of birth: 
Castleford, near Leeds
Country of birth: 
England
Other names: 

Henry Spencer Moore

Date of death: 
31 Aug 1986
Location: 

Castleford

Leeds

London

Much Hadham (Hertfordshire)

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