Gopal Ghose’s paintings are characterised by calligraphic lines. Working in watercolour, tempera, mixed media and pastel, he moved between figuration and abstraction, and was one of the front runners of the modern art movement in India. He never followed the Western Academic style; his inspiration could be traced instead to classical Chinese painting, in the rendering of his inks and brushwork, and to Western Impressionism, in his application of colour.
Ghose blended Western technique — an understanding of light and shade, and the application of perspective — with a sensibility rooted in the Indian rural scene. His art began in direct observation of the world around him, which he then transformed to express his own inner vision. Painting daily scenes of Indian village life was a life-long commitment, recording what he took to be the best aspects of his homeland. To hold each place or mood, he returned repeatedly to a small set of subjects, among them fields and rural people at work, through which he worked out the energy of village life. Each study grew from a local, direct observation, and the resulting paintings carry a distinct rhythm and emotional intensity, in tune with the social mood of the period and with the painter’s own feelings. The paintings reveal an artist who felt deeply for the rural people who populate them.
Ghose’s attention to nature reflects an ageless, Thoreau-like search for a shared rhythm of life, taken with quietude and a certain wisdom about what life gives. In his hands, landscape painting carries rich implications for how a place is read. Its form, its cultural associations, its handling of colour and its animated atmosphere set out a distinctly Indian view of the relationship between aesthetics and a person’s place as an observer of nature. For this reason, Ghose’s signature is one of rustic resonance, carrying a quiet, deep reverence for his native land.
This accomplishment gives Gopal Ghose a distinct signature within Indian modern art. He worked to find his own way, his own visual language, reinventing the Indian idiom through landscapes rooted in deeper instinct.
Vinayak Pasricha.
