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MODERN PAINTERS

and even the tree seem to be attentive listeners. The next probably belongs to one of a Vaishnava series of musical modes—Rādha is wandering over the moonlit fields of Brindāban asking the peafowl where her beloved Krishna can be found.

The old traditions of Hindu painting still linger among the temple craftsmen of India, in the ritual of the Hindu womenfolk, and but rarely at the courts of the Hindu princes, though a few descendants of the old court painters still practise their art. A systematic investigation of these living traditions would certainly yield material of the highest artistic and archæological interest, and help the technical development of the important new school of Indian painting which has arisen in the last twenty years at Calcutta under the leadership of Mr. Abanindro Nath Tagore, C.I.E. The genesis of the school was described by me in two numbers of the Studio magazine.[1] The annual exhibitions of its works in Calcutta, and those which were held in Paris and in London in recent years, have demonstrated its further development much more completely than it would be possible to attempt in this handbook, which will, however, serve to explain the historical foundation upon which Mr. Tagore and his pupils are trying to build, and some of the artistic ideals which inspire their work.

  1. October 1902 and July 1908.