Atul Bose

Biography

A drawing of the educationist Asutosh Mukherjee, titled “Bengal Tiger”, won Atul Bose a scholarship from the University of Calcutta. With that money he went to London in 1924.

Bose was born on 22 February 1898 in Mymensingh, in eastern Bengal, then part of British India. He spent his childhood in the town and began his schooling at the local branch of the National Council of Education. He then studied in Calcutta. The record of his early training is incomplete and in places inconsistent: in one version he studied in 1916–1918 at the Government College of Art & Craft, in another the Jubilee Art Academy is named. In London, at the Royal Academy Schools, he spent two years, 1924–1926. There he was influenced by the post-impressionist Walter Sickert. Bose declined an invitation to help Mukul Dey decorate the pavilion at the British Empire Exhibition. No reason for this is recorded, and I will not guess at one. In 1919 he took part in founding the Indian Academy of Art with Hemen Majumdar; in another version, what was organised was a national academy of art. In 1921, together with Bhabani Charan Laha, he founded the Indian School of Oriental Art. In his own work Bose drew on the European realist tradition: he painted in oil, watercolour and pastel, and his range of subjects was wide. Landscapes, portraits, village scenes. Among his genre paintings are “The Boatman” (1936) and “Comrades” (1937).

In 1943, when Bengal was in the grip of famine, he made a series of drawings on the subject. His portrait of Rabindranath Tagore (1952) entered the collection of the Hermitage, then still in Leningrad. Other works include “Sphinx” (oil on plywood) and “Self Portrait” (1945).

On commission from the Indian government, Bose painted portraits after originals in the collections of Windsor Castle and Buckingham Palace.

From 1945 to 1948 he was principal of the Government Art School in Calcutta, and then became head of the Government College of Art & Craft. In 1970 Rabindra Bharati University in Calcutta awarded him an honorary D.Litt degree. Bose’s works are held by the National Gallery of Modern Art, the Indian Museum, the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, the Parliament House in New Delhi and the Raj Bhavan in Kolkata.

Atul Bose died in Calcutta on 10 July 1977.