Santanu Saraswati
Kolkata, November 23-- Immortal paintings worth crores of rupees made by Rabindranath Tagore, Gaganendranath Tagore and Nandalal Bose, are gathering dusts inside a locked dilapidated room, at Academy of Fine Arts.
These original paintings, which value more than few hundred crores in the international market, were gifted by art-lover late Lady Ranu Mookerjee, wife of famous industrialist of yesteryears and former owner Martin Burn House, Sir Biren Mookerjee.
Few months before her death, Lady Ranu Mookerjee, who was known for her collection of few hundreds of immortal paintings, starting from Rabindranath Tagore, Gaganendranath Tagore, Nandalal Bose and many others like Ramkinkar Baij, donated these paintings from her collections to Academy of Fine Arts, the institution she set up in the year 1933 as a cultural rendezvous of city’s cultural intelligentsia.
Lady Ranu donated these paintings for proper preservations. “She wanted these paintings, which were gifted to her by Rabindranath Tagore, Gaganendranath Tagore, Nandalal Bose and Ramkinkar Baij for her love for paintings and her close association with the Nobel laureate poet and Shantiniketan. The responsibilities of preserving these paintings were entrusted with the trustee board,” said state public works department minister, Kshiti Goswami, who is having a long association with the academy.
Since the academy lacks space and need modernisation, Goswami, arranged a fund of Rs 25 lakh for the renovation and reconstruction of the ageing Academy of Fine Arts few years back. The fund was allotted from former Member of Parliament, Bharati Ray. Ray earmarked this fund, as Academy of Fine Arts will be celebrating its 75 years in 2009. She wished to develop the existing gallery to an international standard so that painters in and across the globe can show case their work to the painting and art lovers as well as art lovers can have a glimpse on the original work of immortal painters of Bengal like Gaganendranath Tagore, Rabindranath and Nandalal Bose.
Ray allotted the money, according to the minister, setting a clause that reconstruction work to be done none other than by the state public works department. No private agency could be assigned for uplift of the academy. “We could not start the work on time because of the two warring groups—executive committee, and the trustee board—were at loggerheads on this issue,” Goswami said.
The department then called a meeting of both the committees, and it was finally decided to carry out the work as both the committees agreed to the point that if reconstruction of the building is not done, not only paintings of present day painters, but of famous yesteryear’s artistes like Rabindranath Tagore, Gaganendranath Tagore, Nandalal Bose, will be lost because of want of proper maintenance.
The allotment, however, was not enough to carry out the whole work, and the PWD had to stop reconstruction after renovating the ceiling and boundaries and few other urgent works except the room where these immortal paintings are lying locked and uncared because of these warring factions, Goswami added.
The minister, who is in now in a fix, is presently thinking of taking this issue with the chief minister, Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, so that the PWD could break the lock and carry out this work just to save these immortal works of Rabindranath, Gaganendranath and Nandalal Bose. “If we can’t save these paintings, it wouldn’t be a loss for Bengal, but our country will be loosing these immortal works of great painters,” he added.
EOM
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