Lalit Mohan Sen exhibition | Ways of seeing

Pernicious and ruinous though its effects may have been, colonial rule, thanks to rail connectivity, unwittingly enabled people from remote corners of the Indian subcontinent to venture forth, often braving untold hardships, to seek a new life in strange and occasionally hostile lands. The life of Lalit Mohan Sen (1898-1954), an almost forgotten but immensely talented artist and photographer, is a perfect example of such an individual who hailed from Santipur, a town in Bengal famous for its exquisite handwoven textiles.His grandnephew, Prabartak Sen, had a biggish collection of Sen’s works and effects, but had Emami Art, Kolkata, not organised the comprehensive exhibition Lalit Mohan Sen: An Enduring Legacy (on till September 30) that covers a wide range of his oeuvre from drawing and painting to photography, graphic prints, commercial art and sculpture, he might have sunk into oblivion. The black-and-white silver gelatin prints are in surprisingly good condition and the exhibition has been curated in consultation with Debdutta Gupta, assistant professor at St Xavier’s College, Kolkata. Archivist Arkaprava Bose wrote the accompanying text.During a malaria outbreak, Sen’s elder brother took him to Lucknow, where he spent most of his life. Here, he joined the Government School of Arts and Crafts in 1912. He moved to London on a government scholarship and came into his own as an artist and photographer. In 1925, he studied at the Royal College of Art in London, under the tutelage of Sir William Rothenstein.It was only in England that Sen tried photography and in 1925 was elected a member of the Royal Photographic Society of Great Britain. Exhibitions were held extensively of his work in India and abroad. Queen Mary bought his painting ‘Potter Girl’ from the Royal Academy Exhibition in London. His woodcuts of Rabindranath Tagore and Mahatma Gandhi are part of the Victoria & Albert Museum’s collection. His photographs were part of the Royal Photographic Society’s annual exhibitions and its journal. When Sen returned to Lucknow, he taught at his alma mater for 25 years and became its principal in 1945. As the paintings of mountains and of Garhwali village folk show, academic realism was Sen’s forte and he excelled in portraiture and landscape painting. His mastery of draughtsmanship is apparent from his delicate graphite and conti figure studies.Sen kept an open mind and drew inspiration on the one hand from classical Indian art and the country’s rich tradition of crafts, and on the other, from Abanindranath Tagore’s Bengal School of Art and the swadeshi values that it was based on. Sen’s painting of the woman disrobing herself for the emperor’s eyes only is a case in point. For him, no dichotomy existed between the Western and Indian legacies and he helped himself liberally to both. Little wonder then that Robert Laurence Binyon, the English litterateur and art scholar, commissioned Sen to copy the Bagh Cave paintings. Sen may not have actively participated in the Indian freedom movement, but he was deeply sympathetic towards it. His portraits of Mahatma Gandhi are strong testimonies. Sen demonstrated his mastery of the Indian style of painting when in 1930 he was among the four Indian artists hired to decorate the newly built India House in London. He painted the two large-scale murals based on Buddha’s life and of Akbar.Widely travelled, Sen’s sketchbook and camera were his constant companions and photography was his métier. His art may seem dated today but his photographs, lit by a soft, pellucid glow, have not lost their appeal.

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