Steps leading down to the flowing waters of the Ganges, women carrying water, men at their ablutions, the stone arches of a pedestrian bridge, shade umbrellas poking up like giant mushrooms, magnificent trees....this drypoint made by Ramendranath Chakravorty in 1933 is wonderfully rich in detail. We see a women with her child, a woman at rest, a sadhu in yogic meditation, a young boy being washed by his mother and people at prayer within the warmly benevolent waters of India's most sacred river.
Drypoint is sometimes thought of as a simple technique, but it can actually be a difficult medium to work with. The need to incise lines directly into a metal plate (creating a "burr") takes both endurance and skill, and many printmakers consider making a good drypoint more challenging than making an etching. Sometimes the processes of engraving and drypoint are combined in the creation of one image, but to my observation this print bares the hallmark of a pure drypoint...scratchy straight and curved lines that seldom veer back upon themselves (a difficult feat to accomplish when carving a metal plate with a drypoint "needle").
It has been fun to look over the prints of Ramendranath Chakravorty over the past few weeks. He is an artist whose accomplishment, merit and historical significance has yet to be fully recognized outside of India. Yet with the ever-increasing global consciousness that binds the artworld, I believe it is only a matter of time before western art-historical communities catch up with a body of work already well-known to Indian scholars.
It will be interesting to know if in 1933 Government School of Art, Calcutta had an etching press of its own...if not, then possibly this print was pulled in Dey's press, which you saw at "Chitralekha" in December last!
ReplyDeleteCould you find out more from your friends in Calcutta about this question?