Tagore originals soon at Rabindra Bhavana

SANTINIKETAN: For years, visitors from all over the world have rued the absence of a single original Tagore painting at Rabindra Bhavana, the prestigious

museum

of Visva-Bharati University. But if things progress according to plans, you will soon get to see Tagore originals at the museum in rotation. A meeting of the heritage committee of the university on Saturday reached a consensus on this and the members felt that the university, which is the biggest repository of Tagore works, shouldn’t keep these away from public view.


The strong room of the museum has at least 2000 original Tagore paintings and double that number of doodles. However, these are never brought out for public display, though digital versions are available in the

public domain

. The ground floor of the museum is dedicated mostly to commendations about Tagore from across the world,

Gitanjali

book covers in translations and some excerpts from his works. “For a visitor, this is certainly not enough. Why should anyone come so far to see just this? They should be given a chance to witness how Tagore took to painting at the age of 70. We are trying to show this transformation in the exhibition that we plan to put up soon,” said Nilanjan Bandyopadhyay, special officer of Rabindra Bhavana.

Tagore had started with his doodles in the early 1920s, under the inspiration of Victoria Ocampo, who showed him how his cancellations were not merely scribbles but could work themselves into images. Enthused by these comments, Tagore started to doodle vigorously and while at it, he took to the paint brush too. After that, he started those landmark “dark” paintings of the veiled woman, whose existence in Tagore’s life has been a matter of great debate. Tagorean scholars say that these paintings might have been inspired by his muse, Kadambari Devi, but there is no definitive conclusion to it.

The heritage committee had among other external experts, additional director general of police Soumen Mitra, conservation architect Manish Chakraborty and culturist Sujata Sen. “It’s important to preserve paintings but one must arrange for public display taking due care of the their health,” said VC Bidyut Chakrabarty.