21/04/2025
Ashru-Kumva (1918): Ananda Mohan Shaha and the Reclamation of a Forgotten Masterpiece in Bengal’s Academic Realist Tradition
In the evolving landscape of Indian art historiography, there are rediscoveries that do more than just add to a catalogue—they alter our understanding of a forgotten lineage. The reattribution of the painting Ashru-Kumva (1918) to Ananda Mohan Shaha (also spelled Saha)—a once-anonymous artist now reinserted into the canon—represents such a moment. At once technically accomplished and emotionally resonant, the painting survives today as a rare and remarkable relic of Bengal’s academic realist movement, a strand of Indian modernity long overshadowed by the Bengal School’s revivalist nationalism.
Now housed in the collection of Aakriti Art Gallery, Kolkata, and prominently featured on the cover of its 2023 publication Bengal Beyond Boundaries, Ashru-Kumva invites critical reflection on the plurality of artistic voices in early 20th-century India. It reminds us that Indian modernism was never monolithic. Alongside the better-known proponents of revivalist or spiritualist idioms, there existed painters like Ananda Mohan Shaha—rooted in academic discipline, drawn to emotional realism, and deserving of serious scholarly attention.
The Artist: Ananda Mohan Shaha (fl. c. 1910–1920s)*
The signature discovered in the bottom-left corner of the painting—Ananda Mohan Shaha, 1918—is the key that unlocks this long-lost attribution. While Shaha does not appear in conventional art historical dictionaries or biographical indices, the survival of this signed work, coupled with its early publication in the prestigious 1920 Puja Number of The Indian Academy of Art, confirms his position within the inner circle of Bengal’s academically trained realist painters.
The precise details of Shaha’s artistic education remain unclear, but stylistic analysis suggests he was either formally trained at the Government School of Art, Calcutta, or part of an associated atelier that followed European academic techniques. His mastery of oil painting, compositional clarity, and anatomical precision place him in clear dialogue with contemporaries such as Hemendranath Mazumdar, Atul Bose, and B.C. Law—artists who embraced realism, portraiture, and figurative study at a time when the Bengal School, under Abanindranath Tagore, championed a contrasting vision rooted in Indo-Persian, Rajput, and Japanese aesthetics.
Where the Bengal School turned toward mythology and spiritual allegory, artists like Shaha chose a different vocabulary—drawing instead from lived experience, human emotion, and the universality of visual observation. In doing so, they not only created technically refined works but also laid the groundwork for a more cosmopolitan Indian modernism, even if their names remained confined to the margins of art history.
———————————————————————————-
*The notation (fl. c. 1910–1920s) stands for:
• fl. = floruit (Latin), meaning “he/she flourished”
• c. = circa, meaning “around” or “approximately”
So, Ananda Mohan Shaha (fl. c. 1910–1920s) means that he was active or prominent as an artist around the 1910s to the 1920s, though exact birth and death dates are not known. This is a standard scholarly way of denoting the known active period of a historical figure whose full biographical details are uncertain.
———————————————————————————
The Painting: Ashru-Kumva (1918)
Ashru-Kumva, which may be translated as “Urn of Tears” or “Vessel of Sorrow,” is a masterwork in oil on canvas. It features a seated woman, poised in contemplative silence, dressed in a sheer drape, adorned with jewellery, and holding a brass pot—the eponymous kumva—as if capturing or releasing invisible tears. Her expression is serene, her sorrow internalized, and her posture rendered with a realism that is both delicate and restrained.
Painted in 1918, the work carries none of the theatricality or allegorical excesses often associated with later salon-style academicism. Instead, it reflects a refined emotional realism, rooted in Bengal’s visual culture yet executed with a command of academic oil technique—evident in the transparency of the fabric, the modelling of musculature, and the play of light against dark foliage in the background.
The painting exemplifies karuṇā rasa—the aesthetic of pathos—but it does so through quiet introspection rather than dramatic overtures. The woman is not mythic, eroticized, or iconographic; she is human, tender, and dignified. This ability to evoke universal emotion through local figuration is what lends Ashru-Kumva its timeless power.
The technical aspects—realist modelling, careful shading, controlled palette—clearly distinguish the painting as part of Bengal’s academic realist tradition, which had its roots in European training introduced during the colonial period but evolved into a distinctly Indian idiom in the hands of artists like Shaha.
The Context: A Counter-Movement to the Bengal School
To appreciate the full importance of Ashru-Kumva, one must understand the art historical moment in which it was created. By the second decade of the 20th century, revivalism, led by the Tagores and institutionalized through the Indian Society of Oriental Art and journals like Rupam, had become the dominant aesthetic ideology in Bengal. It promoted a “spiritual” art of line and wash, rooted in Eastern traditions and consciously rejecting the naturalism taught by colonial schools.
But not all artists followed this path. Some, like Hemen Mazumdar, Atul Bose, and evidently Ananda Mohan Shaha, found in European academic realism a mode of expression that was just as capable of embodying Indian subjects and sentiments. They saw no contradiction in painting Indian women with depth, flesh, and feeling—rendered through oil on canvas.
It was in response to the Bengal School’s dominance that The Indian Academy of Art was founded in 1919. Its illustrated journal, where Ashru-Kumva was published in 1920, became a platform for artists marginalized by the prevailing revivalist narrative. This journal printed works by a wide range of realist painters—some trained in Bombay and Madras, others from Lahore and Calcutta—and reflected a pan-Indian, academically trained community united by skill, not ideology.
The inclusion of Ashru-Kumva among works by M.A.R. Chughtai, D.P. Roy Choudhury, and H. Mazumdar positions Shaha within this robust, if later forgotten, counter-movement. His participation marks him not only as a painter of rare ability, but also as a contributor to an aesthetic and institutional assertion of Indian realism.
Importance and Rarity
Today, Ashru-Kumva is the only known surviving signed work by Ananda Mohan Shaha, making it a painting of exceptional rarity and historical value. Its rediscovery and secure attribution not only illuminate the career of an otherwise unknown artist but also enhance our understanding of the diversity of early Indian modernism.
Few paintings from the academic realist tradition in Bengal have survived in such condition, with date, signature, and publication record intact. The fact that Ashru-Kumva was published in a leading art journal, remained in private custody for over a century, and has now resurfaced in a public-facing collection, makes it a landmark rediscovery in South Asian art historiography.
Furthermore, the painting’s stylistic integrity, emotional depth, and cultural specificity elevate it beyond mere rarity to significance. It serves as a visual bridge between pre-Independence Indian realism and post-Ravi Varma academic idioms, while maintaining a unique tenderness that distinguishes it from the more opulent or sensual works of the era.
Legacy and Contemporary Relevance
With the reattribution of Ashru-Kumva to Ananda Mohan Shaha, and its preservation by Aakriti Art Gallery, a significant lacuna in Indian art history begins to close. Shaha’s work reminds us that Indian modernism was forged not just in the workshops of Santiniketan or the salons of Bombay, but also in the quiet, sincere studios of painters who believed in the power of observation, emotion, and realism.
The painting also resonates today in a world increasingly attuned to stories of marginalised creators, lost legacies, and plural histories. Shaha’s quiet woman with her urn of tears, painted in 1918 in the midst of global war and colonial upheaval, still speaks—perhaps now more than ever—with clarity and grace.
Ananda Mohan Shaha (fl. c. 1910–1920s)
Ashru-Kumva, 1918
Oil on canvas
Signed and dated lower left
Published in The Indian Academy of Art, Puja Number, October 1920
Collection: Aakriti Art Gallery, Kolkata
