Manaku, artist
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Dr. B N Goswamy’s findings
Malini Nair, February 11, 2018: The Times of India
From: Malini Nair, February 11, 2018: The Times of India
Art historian B N Goswamy’s work of detection focuses on the little-known Pahari artist Manaku
“Manaku Tarkhan basi Guler ke... Betey Seu ke potey Hasnu key..Sammat 1793.” (I, Manaku, painter, resident of Guler, son of Seu and grandson of Hasnu — Samvat 1793)
It was all of one-and-a-half lines in a bahi (account) with a panda (priest) at Haridwar’s ghats. For you and me, that is three bits of information, but for legendary art sleuth B N Goswamy that is an entire biography coming alive.
Goswamy, 84, who has spent a lifetime painstakingly piecing together scarce clues about the lives of Pahari miniaturists, has cracked yet another whodunnit — the little-known 18th-century artist, Manaku.
For anyone who thinks art history makes for stuffy lectures, watching Goswamy hold a flighty litfest audience in the palm of his hand should be a revelation. “Why is Krishna holding the flute in his left hand? Watch that gopi’s left arm. Why does it have a right hand fixed on it? Was Manaku left-handed?” he asks, and mysteriously adds: “Who knows?”
Goswamy’s lecture on his latest work of detection, Manaku of Guler, at the Jaipur Litfest is punctuated with many such “who knows?” The older brother of celebrated Pahari painter Nainsukh — Goswamy wrote a definitive book on him too called Nainsukh of Guler — almost nothing was known about Manaku. In fact, his very existence was in doubt till this seminal work was released late last year in Zurich.
Goswamy has five decades of documenting art history behind him, but scholarship sits lightly on this former IAS officer. He connects easily with people, the cravat and affability adding to old-world charm. An irrepressible raconteur, he has a story or a couplet on just about any subject. “Zubaan dar kash aye mard-e bisyaar daan/ Ki fardaa qalam neest bar be zubaan (the pen of the future will have a voice of its own, so hold your tongue),” he says of dogmatists, a dig at those who denied Manaku’s genius.
What lies behind his obsession of tracing the lives of men who didn’t seek the glory of posterity? “I was intrigued by these artists about whom nothing was known. Traditionally they didn’t put their names on their works. It is a world of silence from which you hear maybe a few whispers. I wanted to break through this cloak of anonymity. Dimag ka khalal keh lijiye (call it a mental defect),” he says with a self-deprecatory laugh.
This khalal drove him to undertake a painstaking search in the 1960s for some material on Pahari painters. Then, a childhood memory from Haridwar surfaced: it is said that every Hindu and his/her ancestory finds mention in the bahis of the pandas who preside over the last rituals.
For three days he sat by the Yamuna in Kurukshetra, poring over the scrolls. On the third evening, he stumbled on an 18th-century entry by Nainsukh, the best-known Pahari master: only nine lines about himself and his clan, including Manaku, but it was pure gold for an art historian. There was even a fine twoinch miniature showing the Ganga descending to earth drawn by the master himself in the bahi.
“I can’t tell you how I felt. It was thrilling. For three years I did nothing else, but go from one place to another collecting the enormous information that had to be laid bare,” he says. The discovery led to his first major essay on Pahari paintings and how this art form was developed by families of painters.
Goswamy has asserted Manaku’s authorship on 350 paintings. Only one work carries a colophon, a pictorial identifier, stating that this work was commissioned of him by one (princess/patron) Malini.
He recalls running into an art dealer selling Manaku’s works in the hills for Rs 35 apiece in 1965. (Interestingly, he himself doesn’t collect art.) In the open market today, these are likely to fetch anywhere between Rs 3 lakh to Rs 5 lakh now that they are recognised, he says.
So, what do Manaku’s works tell us about the man and the artist? “He painted in his father’s style, conservative, and I admired that,” says Goswamy.
His canvas took in many things — from Geeta Govinda and Ramayana to the Bhagwat Purana — and was painted with dramatic effect. “He was a man with tremendous self-belief and conviction. He may have been arrogant for all you know, his imagination soars really high. He dares to converse, even play with the gods,” he says.
Goswamy points to a fascinating panel showing Indra, trying to disrupt a yagna, in seven disguises as a holy man. “You find such characters today, in positions of power,” he says tongue in cheek. “Were they modelled on someone he knew? Who knows?”
The master’s most hypnotising work is devoid of human forms, the hiranyagarbha, the mythical cosmic womb from which all forms emerged. A golden egg sits in the midst of whorls and eddies of water. “Did he paint water in whorls to show the timelessness of the moment the world was created? This man sitting in a tiny Himalayan state, what was he thinking?” Goswamy asks. As he himself would say, who knows?
