‘Nandalal paintings’: Row over Tagore family lineage
Times of India | 1 June 2024
Kolkata: Soma Chatterjee’s claim that the controversial Nandalal Bose’s works are authentic and part of her family collection has been questioned by Abanindranath Tagore’s granddaughter and members of art fraternity. They say that the lineage mentioned by Chatterjee is false and does not match with the details about the Tagore’s family tree mentioned in Chitra Deb’s seminal work titled ‘Thakurbarir Bahirmahal’.
On Wednesday, Chatterjee told TOI that her father, Manindranath Tagore, was the sole male offspring of Abanindranath Tagore’s brother Samarendranath.But this claim was contested on Friday by 78-year-old Dhira Majumder, granddaughter of Abanindranath. “My father’s name is Manindranath Tagore. He is the youngest son of Abanindranath. How can someone lie like this? My father had four daughters — Dhara, Dhira, Nira and Sthira. Dhara-didi died two years ago. We have never heard the name of Soma Chatterjee,” she told TOI.
Sushobhan Adhikary, erstwhile curator of Kala Bhavan museum, Visva-Bharati, said: “We accept Chitra Deb’s book as one of the most reliable works on the Tagore family. Chatterjee’s account is erroneous. Abanindranath and Suhasini Devi had three male progeny – Alokendra, Tarunendra, and Manindra. Manindra had six offspring — Dhara, Dhira, Mitindra, Nira, Manabendranath, and Sthira. Chatterjee’s appellation is conspicuously absent from that enumeration.”
Adhikary said Samarendranath had nine children. “To contend that he had a solitary male progeny named Manindranath is fallacious. Propagating such erroneous information while discussing family history only serves to amplify the dubiousness of her assertions,” he said.
Reacting to this, Prabhas Kejriwal, the curator of Chitrakoot Art Gallery that was hosting the “Nandalal’s Mahabharat” exhibition, said, “Books are not reliable. Authors do not do enough research. Our information is authentic.”
Kejriwal also forwarded three family photos “With Avan Gagan and father of Soma Chatterjee”. “Soma’s father was an adopted son,” he texted TOI.
However, Majumder told TOI that Samerendranath had no adopted son. “I spoke to Samerendranath’s granddaughter, Jayani Gupta. She said she has never heard of Soma Chatterjee’s name,” Majumder said.
Chatterjee was unavailable for comments when TOI tried to reach her. On Friday, Adhikary reacted to the same family photos that Prabhas Kejriwal’s father, Prakash, had shared on social media. “These pictures are hilariously morphed,” Majumder said. Adhikary said, “The photos seemed morphed.” Artist Samindra Majumdar said, “The first photograph, the original of which I have seen online, has been morphed. The face of the man in the photo has been changed. The second snap has been distorted. The third photo is a merger of two photos.”