Bharat Mata
First painted as Mother Bengal, in a year of protest.
- Artist
- Abanindranath Tagore
- Date
- 1905
- Medium
- Watercolour on paper
- Where it is
- Victoria Memorial Hall, Kolkata
- Kind
- Bengal School
A young woman in a saffron robe stands on four white lotuses, a pale halo behind her head. She has four arms and holds a book, sheaves of paddy, a white cloth and a rudraksha rosary: learning, food, clothing and the spiritual life. Her face is calm and slightly withdrawn.
Abanindranath Tagore painted it in 1905, during the Swadeshi movement, and first called it Banga Mata, Mother Bengal. He is said to have had his daughter in mind for the face. Sister Nivedita, who admired it, is credited with renaming it Bharat Mata.
The soft, hazy colour is the Japanese wash technique, which he took up after meeting the painter Yokoyama Taikan in Calcutta in 1902–03. He had trained in European oils and come to dislike their physical weight. The painting is in the Victoria Memorial Hall in Kolkata.
