BN Goswamy
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A brief biography
Vandana Kalra, Nov 18, 2023: The Indian Express
A phenomenal storyteller, who is considered the last word on miniature painting in India, particularly the Pahari School, Goswamy passed away in Chandigarh Friday. He was 90. “With him, we have lost one of the most important scholars and writers on the history of miniature paintings in India. Extremely erudite, his contribution is perennial,” said veteran artist Krishen Khanna, who has known him for decades. The modernist adds, “We did not meet too often but whenever we did, it was with great affection. We discussed miniatures and also modern Indian painting and contemporary art.”
Author of over 25 books on art and culture — including the recently released Indian Cat: Stories, Paintings, Poetry and Proverbs — one of his prominent contributions to art history has been his ability to highlight the role of family and lineage in the development of miniature painting in India. He first introduced the idea in his essay “Pahari Painting: The Family as Basis of Style” published in the journal Marg in 1968. The mobility between different centres of patronage meant that the existing system of categorising miniatures according to the courts that commissioned them — Kangra, Guler, Basohli, Chamba and so on — was not appropriate. “Court styles could vary hugely, depending on who was at work; but families had recognisable techniques and stylistic idiosyncrasies,” he had told The Indian Express.
If his 2011 book Nainsukh of Guler: A Great Indian Painter from a Small Hill-State (Niyogi Books) rescued master miniaturist Nainsukh from oblivion, in The Spirit of Indian Painting (2014, Penguin Random House India), he celebrated dynasties of forgotten artists through his encounters and readings of 101 great works of art painted between 1100 and 1900, ranging from Jain manuscripts to Rajasthani, Mughal, Pahari and Deccani miniatures, to Company School of paintings. “He was an extraordinary scholar of Indian miniatures and I don’t think there is any comparable name in the world of art history at the moment. Well-versed not just with the artwork but also the context, he would recite poetry in Persian, Urdu and Hindi, and was a wonderful orator who kept his audience spellbound,” said artist Gulammohammed Sheikh, who has shared a close association with Goswamy since the ’70s, and has also written blurbs for his books.
Son of a judge in Sargodha (Pakistan), Goswamy moved to Amritsar after the Partition. The postgraduate from Panjab University quit the Indian Administrative Services (IAS) to pursue a career in art and art history, enrolling for a PhD at Panjab University to study the social context from which the Kangra painting practice emerged. Travelling across the Kangra hills to acquaint himself with the folklore, he taught himself the Takri Pahari script and leafed through the handwritten genealogical records maintained by the pandas and priests of Kurukshetra, Haridwar and Varanasi, and land settlement records compiled by the colonial state, to painstakingly reconstructed the family lineages and styles of miniature artists. He also carefully studied the difference between paintings produced in the family workshops of the Rajput and Pahari courts and the Mughal ateliers.
Co-curator of the landmark 2011 exhibition “The Way of the Masters: The Great Artists of India, 1100-1900”, held at Museum Rietberg in Zurich and New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Padma Shri and the Padma Bhushan awardee was Professor Emeritus of Art History at Panjab University, Chandigarh. He has also been a visiting professor at the universities of Heidelberg, Pennsylvania, California, Texas and Zurich. “In contemporary times, he has played a foremost role in creating awareness about the Indian style of painting. The western schools of art influenced generations of Indian artists and we had forgotten our own traditions and artistic vocabulary that Dr Goswany singlehandedly, years after Ananda Coomaraswamy, drew attention to… A voracious reader, his writings involved thorough research and expressed complex thought processes in a simple manner, making it accessible,” says Diwan Manna, artist and president of Punjab Lalit Kala Akademi.
Giving voice to miniature artists who had been long forgotten, Goswamy has also taught generations how to read their work. Prodding his readers, in The Spirit of Indian Painting, he notes that if we strain hard, we can still “feel the breath of those times, even if lightly, upon our skin”.
