A wash is a painting technique in which a paint brush that is very wet with solvent and holds a small paint

load is applied to a wet or dry support such as paper or primed or raw canvas. The result is a smooth and uniform area that ideally lacks the appearance of brush strokes and is semi-transparent. The drybrush technique can be considered the opposite of a wash. A wash is accomplished by using a large amount of solvent with little paint. Paint consists of a pigment and binder which allows the pigment to adhere to its support. Solvents dilute the binder, thus diluting the binding strength of the paint. Washes can be brittle and fragile paint films because of this. However, when gum arabic watercolor washes are applied to a highly absorbent surface, such as paper, the effects are long lasting. This is the reason why watercolor is the medium most often utilizing washes. The Bengal School of Art was a style of art that flourished in India during the British Raj in the early 20th century. It was associated with Indian nationalism, but was also promoted and supported by British arts administrators. The Bengal school arose as an avant garde and nationalist movement reacting against the academic art styles previously promoted in India, both by Indian artists such as Raja Ravi Varma and in British art schools. Following the influence of Indian spiritual ideas in the West, the British art teacher Ernest Binfield Havell attempted to reform the teaching methods at the Calcutta School of Art by encouraging students to imitate Mughal miniatures.[1][2] This caused controversy, leading to a strike by students and complaints from the local press, including from nationalists who considered it to be a retrogressive move. Havell was supported by the artist Abanindranath Tagore, a nephew of the poet Rabindranath Tagore. Tagore painted a number of works influenced by Mughal art, a style that he and Havell believed to be expressive of India's distinct spiritual qualities, as opposed to the "materialism" of the West. Tagore's best-known painting, Bharat Mata (Mother India), depicted a young woman, portrayed with four arms in the manner of Hindu deities, holding objects symbolic of India's national aspirations. Tagore later attempted to develop links with Japanese artists as part of an aspiration to construct a pan-Asianist model of art. The Bengal school's influence in India declined with the spread of modernist ideas in the 1920s. Mughal painting A 17th century Mughal painting. Main article: Mughal painting Mughal painting is a particular style of Indian painting, generally confined to illustrations on the book and done in miniatures, and which emerged, developed and took shape during the period of the Mughal Empire 16th -19th centuries). Mughal paintings were a unique blend of Indian, Persian and Islamic styles. Because the Mughal kings wanted visual records of their deeds as hunters and conquerors, their artists accompanied them on military expeditions or missions of state, or

recorded their prowess as animal slayers, or depicted them in the great dynastic ceremonies of marriages. Akbar's reign (15561605) ushered a new era in Indian miniature painting. After he had consolidated his political power, he built a new capital at Fatehpur Sikri where he collected artists from India and Persia. He was the first morarch who established in India an atelier under the supervision of two Persian master artists, Mir Sayyed Ali and Abdus Samad. Earlier, both of them had served under the patronage of Humayun in Kabul and accompanied him to India when he regained his throne in 1555. More than a hundred painters were employed, most of whom were Hindus from Gujarat, Gwalior and Kashmir, who gave a birth to a new school of painting, popularly known as the Mughal School of miniature Paintings. A folio from the Hamzanama One of the first productions of that school of miniature painting was the Hamzanama series, which according to the court historian, Badayuni, was started in 1567 and completed in 1582. The Hamzanama, stories of Amir Hamza, an uncle of the Prophet, were illustrated by Mir Sayyid Ali. The paintings of the Hamzanama are of large size, 20 x 27" and were painted on cloth. They are in the Persian safavi style. Brilliant red, blue and green colours predominate; the pink, eroded rocks and the vegetation, planes and blossoming plum and peach trees are reminiscent of Persia. However, Indian tones appear in later work, when Indian artists were employed. After him, Jahangir encouraged artists to paint portraits and durbar scenes. His most talented portrait painters were Ustad Mansur, Abul Hasan and Bishandas. Shah Jahan (16271658) continued the patronage of painting. Some of the famous artists of the period were Mohammad Faqirullah Khan, Mir Hashim, Muhammad Nadir, Bichitr, Chitarman, Anupchhatar, Manohar and Honhar. Aurangzeb had no taste for fine arts. Due to lack of patronage artists migrated to Hyderabad in the Deccan and to the Hindu states of Rajasthan in search of new patrons. Rajput painting An 18th century Rajput painting by the artist Nihl Chand. Main article: Rajput painting Rajput painting, a style of Indian painting, evolved and flourished, during the 18th century, in the royal courts of Rajputana, India. Each Rajput kingdom evolved a distinct style, but with certain common features. Rajput paintings depict a number of themes, events of epics like the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, Krishna's life, beautiful landscapes, and humans. Miniatures were the preferred medium of Rajput painting, but several manuscripts also contain Rajput paintings, and paintings were even done on the walls of palaces, inner chambers of the forts, havelies, particularly, the havelis of Shekhawati. The colours extracted from certain minerals, plant sources, conch shells, and were even derived by processing precious stones, gold and silver were used. The

preparation of desired colours was a lengthy process, sometimes taking weeks. Brushes used were very fine. Abanindranath Tagore (Bengali: ) (7 August 1871 5 December 1951) was the principal artist of the Bengal school and the first major exponent of swadeshi values in Indian art.[1] He was also a noted writer, particularly for children. Popularly known as 'Aban Thakur', his books Rajkahini, Budo Angla, Nalak, and Ksheerer Putul are landmarks in Bangla children's literature. Tagore sought to modernize Moghul and Rajput styles in order to counter the influence of Western models of art, as taught in Art Schools under the British Raj. Such was the success of Tagore's work that it was eventually accepted and promoted as a national Indian style within British art institutions. Personal life and background Abanindranath Tagore was born in Jorasanko, Calcutta, British India to Gunendranath Tagore. His grandfather was Girindranath Tagore,the second son of "Prince' Dwarkanath Tagore. He is a member of the distinguished Tagore family, and a nephew of the poet Rabindranath Tagore. His grandfather and his elder brother Gaganendranath Tagore were also artists. Tagore learned art when studying at Sanskrit College in the 1880s. In 1889 he married Suhasini Devi, daughter of Bhujagendra Bhusan Chatterjee, a descendant of Prasanna Coomar Tagore. At this time he left the Sanskrit College after nine years of study and studied English as a special student at St. Xavier's College, which he attended for about a year and a half. He had a sister Sunayani Devi.[2] In the early 1890s several illustrations were published in Sadhana magazine, and in Chitrangada, and other works by Rabindranath Tagore. He also illustrated his own books. About the year 1897 he took lessons from the Vice-Principal of the Government School of Art, studying in the traditional European academic manner, learning the full range of techniques, but with a particular interest in watercolour. At this time he began to come under the influence of Mughal art, making a number of works based on the life of Krishna in a Mughal-influenced style. After meeting E.B. Havell, Tagore worked with him to revitalise and redefine art teaching at the Calcutta School of art, a project also supported by his brother Gaganendranath, who set up the Indian Society of Oriental Art. Abanindranath Tagore believed that Western art was "materialistic" in character, and that India needed to return to its own traditions in order to recover spiritual values. Despite its Indocentric nationalism, this view was already commonplace within British art of the time, stemming from the ideas of the Pre-Raphaelites. Tagore's work also shows the influence of Whistler's Aestheticism. Partly for this reason many British arts administrators were sympathetic to such ideas, especially as Hindu philosophy was becoming increasingly influential in the West following the spread of the Theosophy movement. Tagore believed that Indian traditions could be adapted to express these new values, and to promote a progressive Indian national culture.

With the success of Tagore's ideas, he came into contact with other Asian artists whose work was comparable to his own. In his later work, he began to incorporate elements of Chinese and Japanese calligraphic traditions into his art, seeking to construct a model for a modern pan-Asian artistic tradition which would merge the common aspects of Eastern spiritual and artistic culture.[3] His close students included Nandalal Bose, Kalipada Ghoshal, Surendranath Ganguly, Asit Kumar Haldar, Sarada Ukil, Kshitindranath Majumdar, Samarendranath Gupta, Mukul Dey, Manishi Dey, K. Venkatappa, Jamini Roy, and Ranada Ukil. For Abanindranath, the house he grew up in (5 Dwarakanath Tagore Lane) and its companion house (6 Dwarakanath Tagore Lane) connected two cultural worlds -'white town' (where the British colonizers lived) and 'black town' (where the natives lived). According to architectural historian Swati Chattopadhay, Abanindranath "used the Bengali meaning of the word, Jorasanko -- 'double bridge' to develop this idea in the form of a mythical map of the city. The map is, indeed, not of Calcutta, but an imaginary city, Halisahar, and is the central guide in a children's story Putur Boi (Putu's Book). The nineteenth-century place names of Calcutta, however, appear on this map, thus suggesting we read this imaginary city with the colonial city as a frame of reference. The map uses the structure of a board gamegolokdhamand shows a city divided along a main artery; on one side a lion-gate leads to the LalDighi in the middle of which is the 'white island.'[4] Abanindranath maintained throughout his life a long friendship with the Londonbased artist, author, and eventual president of London's Royal College of Art William Rothenstein. Arriving in the autumn of 1910, Rothenstein spent almost a year surveying India's cultural and religious sites, including the ancient Buddhist caves of Ajanta; the Jain carvings of Gwalior; and the Hindu panoply of Benares. He ended up in Calcutta, where he drew and painted with Abanindranath and his students, attempting to absorb elements of Bengal School style into his own practice.[5] However limited Rothenstein's experiments with the styles of early Modernist Indian painting were, the friendship between him and Abanindranath ushered in a crucial cultural event. This was Rabindranath Tagore's soujourn at Rothenstein's London home, which led to the publication of the English language version of Gitanjali and the subsequent award to Rabindranath in 1913 of the Nobel Prize for Literature.

The publication of Rabindranath Tagore's Gitanjali in English brought the Tagore family international renown, which helped to make Abanindranath's artistic projects better known in the west. c.1905 Establishment of Nationalist Bengal
School of Painting, led by Abanindranath Tagore (1871-1951)