Watercolour on Paper

12.5 x 7 In.

Sunayani Devi was a pioneering figure in early modern Indian art and one of the first Indian women artists to receive both national and international recognition in her lifetime. Born into the Tagore family in Calcutta in 1875, she began painting in her thirties without formal training, observing her brothers Abanindranath and Gaganendranath Tagore at work in the Bichitra Studio. Working primarily in gouache and tempera,she adopted a modified Japanese wash technique and painted with remarkable discipline. 

Her first exhibitions date back to 1915, when she participated in the Indian Society of Oriental Art's annual shows. By 1922, her work was shown in the Society’s landmark Fourteenth Annual Exhibition in Calcutta, which also included paintings by Paul Klee and Wassily Kandinsky—situating her alongside key figures of the international modernist movement. In 1924 art historian Stella Kramrisch presented her in her first book Jahrbuch der Jungen Kunst, writing that Sunayani’s images “sprouted like grass,” praising the spontaneity and inner clarity of her vision.

In 1923, her works were exhibited in Berlin in one of the earliest showcases of modern Indian painting abroad. In 1927, they featured in a major U.S. touring exhibition organized by the India Society, opening at the Toledo Museum of Art. That same year, she participated in the Women’s International Art Club show in London, where Austrian painter Nora Purtscher-Wydenbruck described her women as “lotus-eyed” and monumental, likening their presence to frescoes. These moments positioned her not only as a domestic artist, but as an early global modernist voice.

Thematically, Sunayani drew from devotional and folk sources—Radha and Krishna, Shiva and Parvati, women in repose—rendered in soft washes and lyrical outlines. As Partha Mitter has observed, her work merged “the modernist discourse of primitive simplicity” with the “nationalist discourse of cultural authenticity.” From the secluded zenana to Bauhaus-linked exhibitions, Sunayani Devi’s legacy lies in reshaping how India—and the world—understood modernism, femininity, and creative independence.

The Chatterjee family was closely connected to the Tagore artistic circle, and early examples of Sunayani Devi’s work such as this lot are known to have remained primarily within such networks rather than entering public sale during her lifetime. Works traced to extended Santiniketan–Bichitra–Tagore relations represent some of the few verified channels through which her paintings have historically survived.

Provenance -  Originally acquired from Maitreya/Kishore Chatterjee

Exhibited - Brunei Gallery, SOAS. Painting Freedom: Indian Modernism and Its Three Rebels. Curated by Dr Caterina Corni and Crispin Branfoot