Bireswar Sen:
The Only Miniature Landscape Painter Of Indian Art Scenario

Anindya Kanti Biswas

Anindya Kanti Biswas traces the artistic journey of the unparalleled miniature artist Bireswar Sen. His brilliant expertise, attention to detail and ability to portray the colossal vastness of nature in acutely limited spaces.

India has produced many bright luminary (like) landscape artists in the Indian art scenario/in the perspective of the Indian art scenario. Among them there was only one miniature landscape painter whose paintings not only popular in India but also abroad. The miniature landscapes of Bireswar Sen are like little precious gems. He was cut out to be different. He proved himself in many ways. In a small space so much is compressed without creating an impression of crowding. He has depicted various themes in little space with so much ease and clarity. In these miniatures, he has successfully caught the evanescent moods of nature: passing showers & sunset gleams which appear for a moment only to vanish magically, shimmering sunlight on rusting foliage, clouds that form and reform in all sorts of fantastic shapes and the approach of heavy rain clouds of the Indian monsoon.
If we have gone through the past phases of Indian landscape painting then it would be clearly revealed that, if the nineteenth century marked the heyday of the landscape genre in India, the twentieth century had already began to sing its dirge. Even as artists continued to be taught landscapes (and still-life,as well as portraiture) as part of the Eurocentric curriculum of art colleges across the country, they began to move into their own evolved styles of which landscapes formed only a small oeuvre.