Jamini Roy was an Indian artist born in Beliatore village in the Bankura district of West Bengal on April 11, 1887. His father was a government officer and an amateur artist who encouraged his son’s artistic sensibility. Growing up, Roy was surrounded by artisans making pots, dolls, idols, and textiles, and he imbibed the language of rural Indian arts. At the age of 16, he enrolled himself in the Government College of Art in Calcutta, where he received a Diploma in Fine Arts under Abanindranath Tagore and began to find his footing in Western classical ways of painting.

Roy was interested in bold, broad lines and stylized folksy canvasses and was influenced by European post impressionism, particulary artists like Vincent Van Gogh, famous for his his thick brush strokes and impressionistic landscapes, and Paul Gaugin, known for his return to folk and so-called primitive art forms. He was also influenced by Abanindranath Tagore and the nationalist Bengal school of art, which focused on depicting Indian subjects. His early artworks were landscapes and oil paintings depicting Santhal tribespeople and everyday life in rural Bengal. Despite the technical prowess of the first half of his career, Roy continued to be restless, feeling as if he had not found his artistic language.

In the 1920s, Roy turned to the world of Indian folk art and craft for inspiration, visiting his village home more often to pick up on the nativist and folk influences of the rural artists of his childhood. He was intrigued by the bold figures against plain backdrops of Kalighat art, as well as the patachitra style scroll paintings and terracotta temple sculptures of nearby Vishnupur. Roy evolved a new style that was highly linear, colorful, and ornamental, with figures at the center stage of his canvas, contained in thick, dynamic strokes, and often bordered with patterns and motifs in the traditional Indian style. He also changed his medium, giving up oil-based pigments for his own ground and mixed earth colors and crushed rock pigments.

Roy’s unique style became widely recognized and celebrated, and he is now considered one of the most important artists of modern India.