Fanindra Nath Bose ARSA 1888-1926

Fanindra Nath Bose holds the distinction of being the first Asian artist to be elected to the Royal Scottish Academy. He was also the first Indian sculptor to gain recognition in Great Britain.

Born on 2 March 1888 at Bohar, Dacca, East Bengal,[1]Bose undertook his early studies at Calcutta’s Jubilee Art Academy, established in 1897 by students in protest at the western-focussed teaching of the Government Art School which they attended. [2]

At the age of 16 Bose left India for Italy to continue his studies. That proved unsuccessful and he came to Edinburgh via London.

In 1905, Bose was successful gaining admission to the Edinburgh School of Art (formerly the Trustees’ Academy) whose classes were held in the Royal Institution Building on The Mound (which would become the Royal Scottish Academy building).  In 1906, Bose then entered the RSA Life School, where in 1907 he was joint winner of the annual Stuart Prize awarded by the RSA to the best figure drawing by a student of either the Life School or the Edinburgh School of Art.[3] Amongst Bose’s fellow students at the Life School was the sculptor George Henry Paulin.

In 1908 Bose became one of the first cohort of students at the newly opened Edinburgh College of Art (ECA). There he continued under the tutelage of Percy Portsmouth (1874-1953), who was appointed Head of Sculpture and had already recognised Bose’s talent whilst teaching at the School of Art. In his obituary of Bose, Portsmouth wrote; Bose excelled in small sculpture; he had a phenomenal control of minutia. It was most interesting to watch his beautiful hands manipulate his tools, he was an exquisite craftsman, a true artist, showing delicacy and taste in everything he did.

Bose graduated from ECA in 1911 with a Diploma in Sculpture andwas awarded a £100 travelling scholarship from the College He is known to have been in Paris by September 1911, visiting also Versailles, and in Rome, Florence and Naples in 1912.[4]

On the continent he made pencil drawings of sculptures which he encountered - described as some of the finest things he ever produced. In France he made sensitive studies of 17^th century statuary at the Palace of Versailles as well as more contemporary pieces. He appears to have been particularly attracted by the work of Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux and of Rodin whose The Kiss and Age of Bronze he sketched. The influence of Marius-Jean-Antonin Mercié has also been noted. Sketches of mediaeval carvings on the facades of French cathedrals including Tours, Amiens and Reims were probably made from casts seen at the Musée de la Sculpture Comparée in the Trocadero, or in the Louvre..[5]He also appears to have attended life classes at Antoine Bourdelle’s Académie de la Grande Chaumière in 1911.[6]

He was also reputedly introduced to Auguste Rodin, then the grand master of French sculpture, who was greatly impressed with Bose’s work. Their contact is said to have lasted from 1912 to around 1915.[7] By this time Bose was back in Edinburgh and working under Portsmouth at ECA. On 15 April 1915 at 24 York Place, Edinburgh, Bose married Mary (Molly) Buchan Fergusson.[8]

In 1915 Bose was appointed Sculptor to his Highness Sir Sayajirao Gaekwad III (1863-1939) the Gaekwar of Baroda in Gujarat, India and undertook a visit back to the country of his birth. [9]Bose was commissioned to execute a series of eight bronze figures of national historical personages of Baroda for the Lukshmi Vilas Palace gardens in Vadorada and two bronze statuettes for the Baroda Art Gallery. These last two works may be the pieces shown by Bose at the RSA Annual Exhibition in 1918 and which would appear to have been cast in Edinburgh.[10] Bose was also the advisor to the Gaekwar for the technical schools in Baroda, where it was intended to develop bronze casting, and where he taught briefly. The Maharaja had earlier purchased a copy of Bose’s The Hunter which he had seen in the collection of Sir William Goscombe John RA the Welsh sculptor. John had purchased a cast of it from Bose via the Royal Academy exhibition in 1916, having also acquired his 1914 exhibit there Boy in Pain.[11]Regarded as perfectly cast and imbued with the sense of continuing movement and surface texture which mark Rodin’s sculpture as so revolutionary, Bose’s work is now regarded as that of the first modern Indian sculptor.[12]

By 1916 Bose had established his own studio at 4 Belford Road in Dean Village, which was by then a hive of ateliers and workshops.[13]

Bose’s surviving public art in Scotland are memorials in bronze to the fallen of the First World War. Photographs in the RSA Archive suggest he was responsible for the plaque commemorating 80 employees of the Wm Younger & Co. Ltd’s Brewery at Holyrood.[14]He sculpted the figure representing the sacrifice of youth, which stands atop Ormiston War Memorial in East Lothian and is suggestive of Rodin’s Age of Bronze. The most impressive however is his his life-size bronze figure of St John the Baptist which forms part of his War Memorial Shrine in St John’s Parish Church, Perth. Sir Robert Lorimer was the architect of its major refurbishment as Perth’s Memorial to the fallen of the First World War in the 1920s. Lorimer, who often worked closely with artists to decorate his spaces, may have been the catalyst in securing Bose the commission. Unusual in its scale (Bose was renowned for his small sculptural pieces) it clearly shows the influence of Rodin in the textured surfaces of the figure of St John.[15]

At the General Assembly of the RSA on 18 March 1925 Bose made history on being elected an Associate Academician (ARSA). He was first proposed in 1924 by Pittendrigh Macgillivray RSA. In the final round of voting, Bose secured 31 votes, his challenger for the vacancy in the Associate Sculptor ranks was Benno Schotz with 8.[16]At a Scottish Arts Club gathering to honour Bose and his fellow new Associates, Bose referenced the strain between India and Britain and felt that his honour would help to ease this and would be accepted as much by his countrymen as by him.[17]

Bose was very much a sculptor on the rise exhibiting at the RA, RSA, RGI and the SSA.[18] but his promise was cut short after he suffered a fatal cardiac arrest whilst on a fishing holiday at Laverlaw Farm near Peebles, on 1 August 1926.[19]

Bose was buried in an unmarked grave at Liberton Cemetery, his funeral attended by a strong number of his fellow Associates and Academicians including the architect Sir Robert Lorimer and fellow sculptors Portsmouth, Alexander Carrick and Charles d’Orville Pilkington Jackson.[20]

In 2013 Bose’s grave was identified and a modest plaque was cut in marble by Edinburgh sculptor Kenny Munro, in the hope that it may be a temporary marker pending a more imposing memorial.[21]

  - Robin Rodger, Documentation Officer