Tagore the Painter, M.F. Husain, and R.K. Laxman: Modern Icons of Indian Art

Rabindranath Tagore was already famous as a poet when he began to paint. He started in his sixties. The National Gallery of Modern Art (NGMA) dates his emergence as a painter to 1928, when he was 67.

That makes him an unusual figure. Most artists train young and build a career step by step. Tagore built a second creative life late, after his writing had made him known across the world.

What does “late start” tell us?

It tells us that creativity did not stop at one field for him. He kept his writing. He added a visual practice beside it.

• Age: about 67, in 1928, according to NGMA.
• Output: more than 2,000 images between 1928 and 1940.
• Reach: the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) says he produced thousands of works.

NGMA describes how his art began. He scratched and erased words on the pages of his manuscripts. Slowly, those marks turned into independent images.

So his first pictures were not planned canvases. They grew out of the habit of correcting a page.

What is the key idea to remember?

His pictures grew out of writing, not out of art-school training. A correction on a page became a shape. The shape became an image.

That is why NGMA treats the manuscripts as the starting point of his painting.

NGMA records that his work was first exhibited in Paris in 1930. After that it travelled across Europe and America.

The V&A adds a larger claim. It says he was the first Indian artist to exhibit across Europe, Russia and the United States.

Why does the Paris date matter?

The date shows that his paintings met foreign audiences early. They did not wait for an Indian gallery to accept them first.

• First showing: Paris, 1930 (NGMA).
• Then: Europe, Russia and the United States (V&A).
• Exam clue: link Tagore’s painting career to Paris and the year 1930.

Maqbool Fida Husain is among India’s best-known modern painters. NGMA’s collection record says he was self-taught. He briefly attended Indore Art College. He then moved to Bombay and began his career by painting cinema hoardings for a living.

A hoarding is a huge picture meant for crowds on the street. So his first paid work was public art, not gallery art.

What was the Progressive Artists’ Group?

Tate says the group was founded in Bombay in 1947. It challenged India’s conservative art establishment. Tate names K.H. Ara, M.F. Husain, S.H. Raza and F.N. Souza as the founder members. Others joined later.

• Place: Bombay.
• Year: 1947, the year of independence.
• Idea: an Indian modernism that honoured traditional Indian painting and also took note of Europe and America.

NGMA holds Husain’s 1967 painting Horse. The record gives the medium as oil on canvas. It gives the size as 132 by 92 cm. The painting is in NGMA, New Delhi.

The same record shows how wide his work was. It says he made wooden toys, furniture, murals, drawings, prints, installations and films.

What honours does the record list?

His first film, Through the Eyes of a Painter, won a Golden Bear award. He received the Padma Bhushan in 1973. He received the Padma Vibhushan in 1991.

• Work: Horse, 1967, oil on canvas.
• Collection: National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi.
• Range: painting, toys, furniture, murals, prints, installations and films.

Do not guess that every Husain painting shows a horse. The record supports only this one titled work.

R.K. Laxman was a political cartoonist. His daily strip You Said It began in The Times of India in 1951. His best-known creation is the Common Man. This is a quiet figure who watches events around him.

Why is a cartoonist in an art lesson?

Laxman shows that Indian visual culture was not only about gallery paintings. A daily newspaper strip also shaped how people saw politics and society.

• Medium: newspaper cartoon.
• Strip: You Said It.
• Newspaper and year: The Times of India, 1951.

In Laxman’s cartoons the Common Man does not speak. He watches and takes in events. Wikipedia describes him as a silent witness.

This silence suggests a reading. A silent figure can stand for many ordinary citizens at once. He does not voice one person’s opinion.

Is this a fact or an interpretation?

The silence itself is a fact about the cartoons. The idea that he speaks for ordinary people is a reading of that fact. Exams usually test the fact: the Common Man is a silent observer.

• Fact: he is a silent observer of politics and society.
• Reading: he stands in for the ordinary citizen.

The three men worked in different media. They are linked by period, not by method.

• Tagore: a poet who added painting late, starting from manuscript marks.
• Husain: a self-taught painter who began with cinema hoardings and was a founder member of a modernist group.
• Laxman: a cartoonist who reached readers through a daily newspaper.

What is the exam trap?

Do not treat them as one kind of artist. Tagore is a poet-painter. Husain is a modern painter. Laxman is a cartoonist.

Newspaper and gallery art reached people in different ways. A newspaper strip met readers every day. A gallery painting met visitors who chose to come.

Husain’s 1954 canvas Untitled (Gram Yatra) sold at Christie’s New York on 19 March 2025. The Indian Express reported about ₹118 crore and $13.8 million. It was the first Indian artwork to pass ₹100 crore.

The Art Newspaper gives $13.7 million with fees. The two reports differ by about $0.1 million.

On 1 April 2026, Raja Ravi Varma’s Yashoda and Krishna sold for ₹167.2 crore, including fees. That is about $17.9 million. It set a new auction record for an Indian painting.

What is the lesson?

A record is true only until a higher sale replaces it. Always attach a date to a price record.