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Sunayani Devi(1875-1962) was the first well-known woman artist of the twentieth century. Born into the famous Tagore family at Jorasanko, she was a self-taught artist who did not undergo any formal training in fine arts. Her main medium was water colour on paper, and her subjects ranged from mythology to the domestic space which circumscribed a woman’s life. Sunayani was a cousin of Rabindranath Tagore and she was introduced to painting by her husband, who bought her colours and paper to keep her busy.

Early life
Sunayani was born in Calcutta, West Bengal. Her famous brothers Abanindranath, Gaganendranath and Samarendranath, inspired her to take up painting. Married to Rajani Mohan Chatterjee at the age of 11. She painted as a hobby right through the early years of her marriage and her children’s babyhood, though she did not begin to paint seriously till she was in her thirties. Started painting at the age of 30.

Inspiration and influences
Influences were never short in the Tagore household. Sunayani was impressed by the prints by Raja Ravi Varma and the wash techniques that Abanindranath employed. She tried keeping up with the exciting realms of radicalising art that the male members of the household were doing at the time, but steered clear in falling into the same formula, instead going for a more spontaneous and personal reference. Probably privy to the specific application of the wash techniques of her brother Abanindranath as a political tool of colonial resistance and creation of the pan-Asian identity, she took up the wash technique as it probably better suited her aesthetical pursuits.

She always cited her painting technique as an organic one, offering little as means of pre-planning with drawings first before painting. “Sunayani ﬁrst drew a red or black outline with brush on paper, which was then ﬁlled in with watercolours prepared by herself and applied with a thin paintbrush. She then dipped the sheet into a circular drum of water allowing the colours to be absorbed by the paper. The wash was used as a continuous process through which the form emerged without taking recourse to drawing. She ﬁrmed up the outline with the brush once the hazy shapes started emerging out of the washes, the washes themselves investing her works with a delicate hue.” (Mitter)

Style
She took inspiration from Indian epics and mythologies. The theme of her paintings revolved around the characters of Krishna Lila, Ramayana, Mahabharata etc., and her style was highly influenced by Bengal Pata paintings. Blending the world of folk art and Mughal miniatures, Sunayani Devi evolved a style of her own. Sunayani Devi’s naive and primitivist art represented a spontaneous and deeply personal practice, at a time when patriarchal mores dictated women to be confined within domesticity, and by dint of this, her art came to be seen from an anti-colonial frame. Sunayani Devi mostly painted scenes of domesticity, drawing from her own life and tribulations. These scenes of domesticity are always tinged with a sense of melancholy and loneliness, and reflected a yearning for freedom. Although in line with the intellectual certainties and nationalistic fervour that the male members of her household exhibited, she withdrew within a more personal domain, drawing upon simple scenes of home and a psychological interiority.

She also painted figures from mythological narratives, reminiscent of the Ajanta frescoes, rendering them in more simple hues and outlines. They might have precedence in Rajput miniatures, but obviously not in the same treatment.

Sunayani’s simple renderings are often categorised as naive art or primitivist art, which ultimately formulated as a form of anti-colonial resistance. Without any institutional training in academic realism she had a natural free reign in creating her artworks. Not bound by any formal language, she took up the imagery and iconography of local art forms that were, like hers, created without such framework pressures.

This language of naive art or primitivist art found an affinity with the local, and posited itself as a binary to the Western academic realism. Automatically, this created a dialectical narrative with colonialism. Her aesthetics came to be recognised as an ideal of the nation in the face of a foreign occupation. Her simplicity came to be admired as novel, in a dichotomy to the careful rigour and premeditation of Western academic realism.

Exhibitions
Sunayani's paintings were widely known and published in vernacular Bengali magazines. Although confined to painting in a single room that her husband had given her, extracting a little time out of her domesticity for this, Sunayani did exhibit in a few exhibitions, including the significant exhibition of the Bauhaus artists in Calcutta in 1922, and earned several critics to champion her art. She was mostly lauded as being “original” and “fresh”, and positioned her as art as a new rhetoric in the anti-colonial movement.


 * 1908, 10, 12 Exhb., Indian Society of Oriental Art, Calcutta.
 * 1911 United Provinces Exhb. organised by Indian Society of Oriental Art, Allahabad.
 * 1911 Festival of Empire, organised by Indian Society of Oriental Art for George Vs Coronation Crystal Palace, London.
 * 1924 Travelling exhb. organised by Indian Society of Oriental Art and American Federation of Art, USA.
 * 2004 Manifestations II, organised by Delhi Art Gallery, Jehangir Art Gallery, Mumbai and Delhi Art Gallery, New Delhi.

Collections

 * The National Art Gallery, Chennai.
 * Sri Chitra Art Gallery, Thiruvananthapuram.
 * Jaganmohan Palace, Mysore.
 * Lucknow University, Lucknow.
 * Rabindra Bharati University Museum, Kolkata.
 * Academy of Fine Arts, Kolkata.

Established an art school called Kala Bharati, Calcutta. Hailed as the first modern woman painter on India by Stella Kramrisch, she is yet to become a recognisable name in the art world in her own country. Shadowed by the legacy of the Tagore family, she was a pioneering woman artist in modern India.