Debi Prasad Roy Choudhury

Devi Prasad Roy Choudhury (15 June 1899 – 15 October 1975) was an Indian sculptor, painter and educator. He is well known for his monumental bronze sculptures, especially the Triumph of Labour and the Martyrs' Memorial, and is rated by many as one among the major artists of Indian modern art. He worked in a broad spectrum of mediums including watercolors, expressionist landscapes and commissioned portraits. Large scale sculptures were his particular strength and he made social realism the cornerstone of his art. In addition to painting and sculpting, he also wrestled, played the flute, engaged in hunting and wrote short stories in his spare time.

He served as the principal of Madras School of Art from 1929 to 1957 and became one of the first Indians to head a government educational institution at the time. The Government of India awarded him the third highest civilian honour of the Padma Bhushan, in 1958, for his contributions in the field of arts. He was elected as the Fellow of Lalit Kala Akademi in 1962.

Early life and education

Roy Choudhury was born on 15 June 1899 at Tejhat, in Rangpur in the undivided Bengal of the British India (presently in Bangladesh), and did his academic studies from home. He took his first painting lessons under the guidance of Abanindranath Tagore, the renowned Bengali painter. He also received lessons about life-drawing and portraiture in western style from an Italian painter named Boeiss. This was followed by sculpture training under the guidance of Hiranmoy Roy Choudhury, who taught him to build in rather than carve in his figures.

Career

Roy Choudhury’s interest of getting into art caused a rift between him and his zamindar grandfather, the head of the family, who disinherited him. Subsequently, he had to take up work as a scene painter for a theatre in North Kolkata and taught art at a boys' school in the city. He also taught for some time at Santiniketan where Ramkinkar Baij was one of his students.

Madras School of Art

Roy Choudhury joined the Madras School of Art in 1929 as a superintendent. He thus became one of the first Indians to head an educational institution that was run by the British. He accepted the post on the understanding that he should be permitted to take up private assignments. During his thirty years at the school, he inspired several artists form South India. He helped spark creativity among the students who had produced only conventional work until that time. This entirely changed the existing image of the school as an industrial arts centre. Subsequently, he was honoured by the British Government as an MBE in 1937 for his service.

Artistic output

Despite being in charge of the school for almost three decades, Roy Choudhury was quite productive as an artist. He maintained two studios, one at his residence and the other at the school. He worked from early morning till late in the evening, mostly on large-scale sculptures. However, he did not hold any exhibition of his works during his lifetime, as he believed:I consider my modest studio as a sort of old, sacred temple devoted to the cause of art. I worship the objects I create. I can never think of them being carried now and then for public view. Those who are real lovers of art are welcome to my studio. Don’t the devotees pay a visit to the dilapidated temple in a village?When Lalit Kala Akademi was founded in 1954, he was appointed as the founder chairman. He also served as president of the UNESCO Art Seminar conducted in 1955 at Tokyo and the Nikhil Bharat Bangiya Sahitya Sammilani of 1956 organized in Chennai. Along with his art, he was well known for his Bengali short stories published in the Bengali magazines of the time.

Works

Paintings

When Roy Choudhury studied under the guidance of Tagore, he mainly created paintings in his master’s style and technique. Flowing lines in the wash technique with flat tones can be seen in his early works. The subjects in his works were mostly based on mythological themes. After his exposure to the western art techniques, he created artworks in the western academic style. In the later part of his life, Choudhury was drawn towards the common man. He interacted with people of the poorer class and began drawing from life rather than from models. Moreover, he had also created a number of genre and landscape paintings. His other works include animal studies from his experiences during his hunting expeditions.

Roy Choudhury experimented with different mediums such as tempera, oil, watercolor and pastels. In the 1930s, western art critics regarded him as one of the finest portrait painters in the world for his works in the oil medium. Some of the notable paintings the he created in Chennai are Green and Gold (exhibited at the Royal Academy of Arts, London), After the Storm (Japanese wash technique), Nirvana, Bridge, The Palace Doll, Durga Puja Procession, Abhisarika, and Pujarini.

Sculptures

Even though Roy Choudhury was a skilled painter, he is widely known for his public sculptures in the impressionistic style. His specialization was in casting the sculpture rather than carving it. He is reported to be influenced by the works of the French sculptor, Auguste Rodin. During his early days in Kolkata, he made the busts of Sir J. C. Bose, Percy Brown and Mrs. Brown. While in Chennai, his high professional standards constantly brought him number of private and public commissions, notably the portrait busts of British nobility of the time. Among those who sat for their portraits or monumental statues were – C. V. Kumaraswami Sastri (Chief Justice, Madras High Court), Lord Erskine (Governor of Madras), G. T. Boag (Governor of Orissa), George Stanley (Governor of Madras), C. P. Ramaswami Iyer, C. R. Reddy and C. Abdul Hakim to name a few. Portraits created from photographs included Annie Besant, Asutosh Mukherjee, Surendranath Banerjee, Mahatma Gandhi and Motilal Nehru which were considered Roy Choudhury's monumental works.

In his later sculptures, Roy Choudhury sought inspiration from his surroundings and social milieu, just like his paintings. One of his first multiple-figure reliefs was the Travancore Temple Entry Proclamation that he completed in the 1930s.……

原文较长，这里只摘了前面一部分，摘自英文维基百科「D. P. Roy Choudhury」（暂时没有中文条目，下面是英文原文），按 CC BY-SA 4.0 使用，去掉了参考文献、外部链接等尾部小节和表格，其余文字未作改动。