The Bombay Art Society (BAS) is one of the oldest and most enduring art societies in India, founded by the British rulers in 1888 as a venue for exhibitions and to encourage the taste for Victorian academic art among educated Indians. Enjoying both official patronage and that of resident Europeans, the society encouraged local painters, showcasing students of the government-supported J.J. School of Art, such as the portrait painter Pestonji Bomanji and the figurative painter and art teacher M. V. Dhurandhar, maintaining close links with the art school throughout the colonial era. Well-known artists from other parts of India included Raja Ravi Varma, the most important academic painter in India, the landscape painter J.P. Gangooly from Calcutta, Abdur Rahman Chughtai from Lahore, and the iconic Amrita Sher-Gil. The society’s annual exhibitions were great social events, eagerly attended by the public, the artists widely reviewed in the leading newspaper The Times of India, and the prize-winners lionised. A small number of local women artists from the Parsi community, and expatriate European women, also found space in early exhibitions.
This set of twelve annual exhibition catalogues (1935−1947), offers us an idea of the range of works and the prominent artists, as well as the tastes of the educated public and the general artistic ambience of the city. They also provide a helpful list of artists and their addresses for interested buyers. The inaugural catalogue (1935), the Bombay Art Annual, contains a selection of frequently-exhibited artists, in addition to articles by well-known authors. To select some of the more interesting events: in 1938, the Italian king Victor Emmanuel sent 160 etchings to the annual exhibition. The pioneering modernist, Amrita Sher-Gil’s prize-winning painting, Group of Young Girls, adorned the frontispiece of the 1937 catalogue. From that year, photography was included, indicating the increasing acceptance of photography as art, especially with the presence of Jehangir N. Unwalla, a photographer of international repute. Among foreign painters, Magda Nachmann, a pupil of Léon Bakst in pre-Revolutionary Russia, moved to Bombay (today's Mumbai), with her husband, the Indian revolutionary M.P. T. Acharya; she was a regular exhibitor. The society effected a coup in 1940 by showing in a special gallery, the celebrated Russian symbolist painter, sometime resident in India, Nicholas Roerich.
The society endorsed the prevailing taste by exhibiting academic artists and the Bengal School orientalists, but in 1936 the art scene began to change with the appointment of Charles Gerrard as head of the art school; he encouraged his students to respond to new movements in the West. The works of three of his students, N.S. Bendre, K.K. Hebbar and Shakir Ali (later a leading Pakistani modernist), exhibited works at the society that deployed post-impressionist brushstrokes. But a proper modernist revolution began with the arrival of Walter Langhammer, a student of the Vienna Academy. In 1937, as the Nazis overran Austria, Langhammer was desperate to leave his homeland. He was hired by the Advertisement Department of the The Times of India in Bombay on the intervention of his friend Shirin Vimadalal. Later he rose to be Art Director. She was his student in Vienna. Langhammer, along with Rudolf von Leyden and Emanuel Schlesinger, fellow central European Jewish refugees, joined Kekoo Gandhy, owner of the Chemould Gallery, in mentoring Francis Newton (the surname Souza was added later, F.N. Souza) and Syed Hyder (S.H.) Raza, both art school students. They were to be the key figures in the radical modernist group, Progressive Artists of Bombay (PAG).
The catalogues of the society give us a glimpse of the spread of modernism in Bombay, beginning with Langhammer’s debut at the annual exhibition of 1939. The portrait of his friend Shirin Vimadalal, reminiscent of Kokoschka’s colours and brushstrokes, graced the frontispiece of the Golden Jubilee edition (1939). Again, in 1943, his portrait of Rudi von Leyden decorated the masthead. The 1945 show included one work by Souza and seven by Raza. Another founding member of the Bombay Progressives, K.H. Ara, began as a traditionalist, winning the Bombay Art Society prize in 1944. He was soon converted to modernism by von Leyden. Yet another founding member of the Bombay Progressives, H.A. Gade had also been showing at the society from the early forties.
1947, the year of Indian independence, was celebrated with two exhibitions (the 56th and 57th). At the 57th exhibition, Souza won a prize for watercolours and Raza for oils, while Maqbul Fida (M.F.) Husain made his debut at the Bombay Art Society in the same show. One of the last to join the Progressives, he became the iconic painter of independent India, representing a secular, optimistic future under the first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru.
My short essay is based on the rare set of BAS catalogues of the momentous decade, 1937−47, in my possession. To the best of my knowledge, these fully illustrated catalogues of the annual exhibitions provide a vivid and reliable account of the work and scope of the society. During my research I have not come across a similar set anywhere else. I am not aware if BAS or the J.J. School of Art has a similar set. My enquiries in that direction have failed. The catalogue numbers are confusing. It is unclear whether there was a catalogue for 1936 (45th exhibition). 1937 is numbered as the 46th show, followed by 1938 (the 47th show). 1939 is the Golden Jubilee edition and unnumbered. Then, confusingly, the 1940 exhibition is numbered as the 49th. 1941 (50th annual exhibition) is missing, probably because the Golden Jubilee edition came out in 1939.