MA.APR.ARROWSMITH.pg.proof.corrs:Layout 1 31/03/2010 10:46 Page 228 ‘An Indian Renascence’ and the rise of global modernism: William Rothenstein in India, 1910 –11 by RUPERT RICHARD ARROWSMITH IN THE AUTUMN of 1910, the influential English artist William examined at the site, and the curator, impressed by what he saw, Rothenstein made what he called a ‘pilgrimage’ to draw and encouraged her to arrange ‘a more fully organized expedition paint both the ancient temples and the rapidly modernising which could undertake a complete record’. In 1909, therefore, urban centres of India .1 His journey took him across the Sub - she was on her way back with a team of students from the Cal - continent by train, boat and bullock-cart, from the indust rial cutta Government School of Art including the young Nandalal powerhouse of Bombay to the remote cave temples at Ajanta; Bose, who was later to be recognised as one of India’s greatest and from Benares, the oldest continually inhabited city in the modernist painters. A fully equipped camp, and logis tical support world, to the vast metropolitan prospect of Calcutta. During for the project, were provided by the Nizam of Hyderabad – the the course of this journey, he observed ‘an Indian Renascence’ Moslem notable upon whose domain the site was then located. 5 in full swing among the country’s younger generation of artists. Two earlier attempts to copy the frescos had ended in catas - European painterly conventions, their validity reinforced by trophe. Owing to the various invasions and political upheavals the educational apparatus of colonialism, had remained fash - that characterised northern Indian history between the ionable throughout Asia for most of the nineteenth century. A eleventh and thirteenth centuries, Ajanta had been forgotten, new spirit of political nationalism in India coupled with only coming to light again when a lost hunting party chanced the growing military and economic influence of Japan and a upon it in 1819. 6 Twenty-five years later, Robert Gill, a trained widespread disillusionment with Western civilisation meant, artist and a major in the Madras Army, was given responsibil ity however, that the 1900s witnessed a profound and general for the preservation and reproduction of the murals by the resurgence of Asian cultural awareness. Rothenstein had colonial government. Although well intentioned, Gill’s con - already seen this awareness spread to Europe, where his friends servation attempts ultimately caused more problems than they Jacob Epstein and Eric Gill had employed the aesthetics and solved. ‘When I made my copies of the paintings’, he reported techniques of Indian stone carving in the production of Lon - later, ‘the whole of them were carefully cleaned, washed and don’s first modernist sculptures. 2 Rothenstein was active in varnished’. 7 Mrs Herringham had cause to lament the Major’s promoting such works of art from the Subcontinent in the methods when she began her own work at the caves in 1909. city, and had co-founded Britain’s India Society in early 1910 ‘This varnish is now dirty or yellow’, she wrote in this mainly for that purpose. On the Subcontinent itself, however, Magazine when she got back, ‘and has seriously spoiled the the artistic ‘Renascence’ was based not on sculpture but on pictures’. 8 Gill’s twenty-seven facsimiles of the frescos, traditional approaches to painting, and it was the two-thou - painstakingly rendered in oil over a per iod of eighteen years, sand-year-old Buddhist frescos at Ajanta that finally drew were a lot more successful. Unfortunately, however, when all Rothenstein there later in the year. except five were exhibited at the Crystal Palace at Sydenham, Another member of the India Society, Christiana Herring - they were incinerated in the fire of 1866. ham, had been involved in copying the elaborate murals at the Something uncannily similar happened to the next set of Ajanta site for the past four years, and was quick to convince copies, which was created by John Griffiths and his students from Rothenstein to view the originals himself. She was a recognised the Sir Jamsetjee Jeejebhoy School of Art in Bombay during the expert on Italian fresco materials and techniques who had trans - late 1870s and early 1880s. The party found conditions at Ajanta lated into English Cennini’s quattrocento manual on the subject more challenging than had the experienced soldier Gill, and in 1899. 3 Her husband, Wilmot Herringham (knighted 1914), had progress was slow. ‘Not only were all the students much organised a holiday in India over the winter of 1906; and discouraged by the small remuneration they received and the Laurence Binyon, an authority on Asian art at the British Mus - hardships and privations they had to undergo’, noted Griffiths’s eum, convinced her to visit Ajanta in order to assess the current superior at the school, G.W. Terry, in 1873, ‘but all were pros - condition of its own paintings .4 On her return, Mrs Herringham trated by fever, from which they are still suffering: in fact some showed Binyon a ‘ sketch of some colossal figures’ she had of them are still seriously ill’. In a typical attempt at acquisition, The author wishes to thank Emily White for her invaluable help with Rothenstein’s 1 Rothenstein to Alice Rothenstein, 30th October 1910; TGA. uncatalogued letters at Tate archive, London (hereafter cited as TGA), almost all of 2 See R. Arrowsmith: ‘Jacob Epstein – The Indian Connection’, THE BURLINGTON which are cited for the first time in this article. Thanks also to Philip Athill at Abbott MAGAZINE 150 (2008), pp.742–48. and Holder, London, for his generous assistance on Rothenstein’s Indian drawings 3 C. Cennini: Il Libro dell’Arte o Trattato della Pittura , Florence (probably early and for allowing permission for their reproduction; to Sue Breakell at Tate, Divia 15th century), transl. C.J. Herringham: The Book of the Art of Cennino Cennini – A Patel at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, and Partha Mitter for his kind Contemporary Practical Treatise on Quattrocento Painting , London 1899. encouragement. For further details of William Rothenstein’s visit to India, 1910 –11, 4 W. Herringham: ‘The Expedition’, in A.H. Fox Strangways, ed.: Ajanta Frescoes , see W. Rothenstein: Men and Memoirs. Recollections of William Rothenstein, 1900 –1922 , Oxford 1915. London 1932, ch.28, pp.228 –55; and R. Speaight: William Rothenstein , London 1962, 5 C.J. Herringham: ‘The Frescoes of Ajanta’, THE BURLINGTON MAGAZINE 87 ch.11, pp.230 –44. (1910), p.137. 228 april 2010 • cliI • the burlington magazine MA.APR.ARROWSMITH.pg.proof.corrs:Layout 1 31/03/2010 10:46 Page 229 WILLIAM ROTHENSTEIN IN INDIA 23. Copy of a painting in Cave XVII at Ajanta depicting a scene from the Sibi Jataka, by Christiana Herringham and Dorothy Larcher. 1910–11. Tempera. (Lost). 22. Photograph of the interior of Cave I at Ajanta, by Victor Goloubew. 1910. From ‘Documents pour servir à l’étude d’Ajanta: les peintures de la première haute monde of Europe and Asia alike and, by the time of grotte’, Ars Asiatica 10 (November 1927). Rothenstein’s and Christiana Herringham’s visit, was playing host to an international elite. Similarly eclectic were the Terry proposed scraping the frescos from the cave walls and preferences of the hotel’s architect, Sitaram Khanderao Vaidya, sending them to join the Elgin Marbles at the British Museum, who combined Indian, Moorish, Chinese and Florentine ‘where all the antiquarian and artistic world could see them’. 9 elements. ‘After all the sights of the street’, Rothenstein told Fortunately, however, the colonial government was not pre - Alice after examining the Taj’s façade, ‘we came back to this pared to fund such an expensive – not to mention half-baked curious hotel, half Eastern and half Western again’. 13 Later in – project, and Griffiths was sent back to Ajanta to continue copy - his trip he had cause to note comparably transcultural tenden - ing. Unfortunately again, shortly after the finished paintings had cies in the work of contemporary Indian painters. been put on show at the South Kensington Museum in 1885, a Rothenstein’s first visit to a rock-cut temple convinced him fire broke out which reduced the majority of them to ashes. 10 that the techniques and aesthetics of Indian art offered Western The winter of 1910 was to be Christiana Herringham’s artists a way out of the moribund academic traditions of longest and best-organised season of work on a third set of Europe. The venue for this realisation was the Gharapuri caves copies, and when she departed for Bombay from the port of on the island of Elephanta, a Hindu temple complex created Marseille, Rothenstein accompanied her. After following the during the Silhara dynasty between the ninth and thirteenth standard passenger route via the Suez Canal, Port Sudan and centuries AD. The site is famous not for paintings but for its Aden, the pair arrived at the luxurious Taj Mahal Hotel on the sculpture, which Rothenstein had only previously been able to Bombay seafront at the end of October. There Rothenstein examine in photographs. ‘No photographs can give any idea of met the Russian aristocrat and orientalist Victor Goloubew , the sacredness, the monumental beauty of these cave temples’, who was also heading for Ajanta to take photographs of the he wrote to Alice: caves. The publication of these was delayed by the outbreak of the First World War, but they eventually filled a dedicated edi - Once inside one just wants to cry. It seems so useless talking tion of the French periodical Ars Asiatica .11 ‘Goloubew would of the sense of reverence and awe that rushes into every vein amuse you greatly’, Rothenstein wrote to his wife, Alice, ‘he is of one’s body and seems to flood one’s heart.