The pinnacles of nature can come alive in post-card size paintings. In 2.5 x 3.5-inches paintings, miniaturist Bireswar Sen captured the majesty of nature in all its beauty and grandeur. Looking at his painting, you are amazed to see the woods, the caves, the mountains, the oceans, clouds, lakes, rocks and skies spring to life in watercolours. Sen’s small canvas encapsulates the sheer vastness of the landscapes he paints, in all its entirety, enormity and glory. In The Sun Worshipper, you notice a distant, looming figure raising his hands against the sky, which is illuminated by sun while the beautiful bends of the mountains in the foreground create poetry of its own.

In Fulfilment, a solitary female figure is contrasted against a towering cliff, imposing mountains, serene clouds. A semi-retrospective exhibition titled “Between Heaven And Earth”, organised by the Anant Art Gallery at the Triveni Kala Sangam from February 19 to 28 brings about 86 of Sen’s small slices of nature, divided into a convenient structure of six sections — Mountains, Caves, Clouds and Skies, Water, The Human Spirit and Woods.The show will be inaugurated by Ruskin Bond, to be followed by a poetry recitation on the Himalayas by Prof. B.N. Goswamy, the art historian who curates the show, and Punjabi poet Surjit Patar. The opening will also see a Bharatanatyam recital by Malavika Sarukkai. On February 20, there will be a panel discussion on “Landscape in Indian Art” with Prof. Goswamy, Raghu Rai, Gulam Mohammed Sheikh, Malavika Sarukkai, Nikhileshwar Sen, Paramjit Singh and Shukla Sawant. The idea, says Prof. Goswamy, is to get a sense of Sen’s life and times and not see his works in isolation. These events will help connect the artilleries of the artist’s thoughts with each other and enable the audience/viewers to get a holistic perspective. “I’m interested in these things as a whole. It will be wonderful if we could reconstruct the context art was made in,” he says, adding that he was struck by the artist’s sheer skill to paint on small scales. “He was a literary man. He had to abandon literature and do full-time painting. But his love for literature — from the Upanishad to the romantic poetry — lingered in his works,” says Prof. Goswamy.According to the curator, there is a certain freshness of vision and thought in Sen’s works. And it is not easy to find parallels in the Indian tradition as pure landscape has never been a part of this tradition. A disciple of Abanindranath Tagore, Sen owed his association with the landscapes to Nicholas Roerich, with whom he had an association for quite some time. His paintings also stand out for the brilliant use of the wash technique (an influence of the two Tagores — Abanindranath and Gaganendranath; the former even trained him in the technique), which lends a different texture and colour to his oeuvre.The show is a result of Prof. Goswamy’s own association with Mamta Singhania, director, Anant Art Gallery for whom he has done a show earlier, and Prithvi Sen, Bireswar Sen’s grandson. Born in Calcutta in 1897, Bireswar Sen grew up amidst the likes of Rabindranath, Abanindranath and Gaganendranath Tagore, Nandalal Bose and the Japanese ideologue and aesthete Okakura Kakuzo. In 1923, he started teaching English literature at a college in Patna. After three years, he left it in favour of teaching art at Lucknow’s School of Arts and Crafts and later became its headmaster. Prithvi Sen says his grandfather was fairly prolific and well known. In the later years of his life — from the mid-50s to 1974, the year he died — he would paint two-three paintings per day. His body of works comprised about 3,000 paintings, majority of which were sold in his lifetime because he priced them very reasonably. Most of these paintings were kept at his vintage house in Lucknow. After his death, he may have vanished from the public eye, but the connoisseurs of art have never lost sight of his paintings’ magnificence or worth. About four to five years ago, a gallery in Baroda showcased some of his works, albeit on a small scale. The works on display at Triveni are also up for sale. Some of them have, in fact, been sold even before the show begins. “Art collectors haven’t forgotten him. Osian’s and other auction houses have been selling Sen’s works,” says Prithvi Sen, adding that the show doesn’t quite “re-introduce” the artist, who may not be as well known as a Husain or a Souza, but has his share of fame in the art world. “His paintings are like little gems. The way he approaches nature is unique,” says the artist’s grandson, adding that his love for literature added a kind of depth to his works with his “literary titles” making his paintings some kind of “intellectual expression”. The miniaturist died in 1974. But his legacy lives on, fascinating, enchanting and educating the lovers of art.

Nawaid Anjum