Our Forum

TYAGARAJA

To

The Editor, Triveni.

Sir,

Let me congratulate you on the excellent frontispiece in the Triveni for July-August 1932. It is a delightful portrait study, and has not suffered much in reproduction. Mr. Jinarajadasa's valuable note is very helpful to a proper appreciation of the picture. But he is, I am afraid, wrongly informed with regard to the identity of the subject and the school of painting.

We are not sure if any contemporary portrait of Tyagaraja exists anywhere in India. Several portraits have been identified as such, and each is so different from the other. There is a fine portrait of an elderly musician, with Vaishnava marks on his forehead and arms and with a musical instrument by his side, in the Mysore Jagan Mohan Palace Music Room, which also claims to be a contemporary portrait of the great South Indian musician.

It was first discovered by Dr. J. H. Cousins amidst a heap of miniature paintings belonging to His Highness the Maharaja of Mysore. It is painted in the same tempera style and bears all the characteristics that Mr. Jinarajadasa refers to. On the of the picture, was a Canarese inscription which led us to identify it as Tyagaraja. We got it mounted and framed, and it is now kept in the musical room of the Jagan Mohan Palace, Mysore.

I have seen one or two more "Tyagaraja's Portraits" in other places; and, as I said, it is indeed very difficult to be certain about their authenticity. All the three paintings I have seen have some resemblance to one another, and all of them are treated in more or less the same manner. They are portraits of an elderly man, of round face, bronze complexion, dark eyes, a massive head, graced by a dignified turban, with prominent Vaishnava caste mark on the forehead, and in a seated position with a musical instrument by his side. And Tyagaraja, it must be remembered, was a great devotee of Rama and his soul-stirring masterpieces were compositions in Rama's praise.

Mr. Jinarajadasa's painting is superior, in artistic merit and aesthetical quality, to any of the three I have seen, but I have my serious doubts as to its identity. In the first place, the musician looks a Lingayat of Karnataka, with Saivite caste marks and with silver lingam casket on his chest. He is fair, tall, slim and has the refined features of a well-born follower of Basavappa. The features especially resemble a typical Mysore Brahmin or an orthodox Lingayat Bhagavathar; at any rate, it is a type common to Karnataka. The ear-drops, his, anklet-bells, his small tambura., all suggest that the musician is a Bhagavatha, who moves from place to place, performing kalakshepams, and not the immortal classical composer, Tyagaraja.

Further, the painting is not of the Tanjore School, but is typical of the Mysore School. When Dr. Cousins and the writer of this letter were entrusted with the work of re-arranging the old Jagan Mohan Palace and starting a Chitrasala in connection with it, we discovered amidst a rubbish-heap of books and pictures, two precious volumes of portrait studies, in water colour, painted by the Mysore artists about the middle of the nineteenth century.

These little paintings of contemporary men and women, both Indian and European, that were in the service of the Royal House of Mysore, are as good miniature paintings as those executed in the Moghul Court. The Moghul miniatures were, of course, in tempera and better finished; but these Mysore miniatures have the same pictorial qualities, sensitiveness of line, delightful colouring and "feeling" of character. Some of them–and there are hundreds of head-studies in these two volumes–are markedly masterpieces and have the same aesthetical appeal as this "Triveni" Frontispiece. In fact, it seems a page torn from one of these two books, only better finished and painted in tempera.

With the permission of the Maharaja of Mysore, I hope, one day, to get some of them reproduced for the benefit of the public, and I shouldn't be surprised if I unearth an identical face as this supposed Tyagaraja from the hundreds of pictures that crowd these two volumes. I once again congratulate you on the beautiful reproduction of Mr. Jinarajadasa's painting and the excellent get-up of the current number of Triveni.

Bangalore,

12th September '32.

G. VENKATACHALAM