With the advent of the British, Indian art lost its originality for a while. A genre of painting known as the ‘Company style’ – an offspring of Indo-European paintings appeared. However this was very short-lived, and with the upsurge of patriotism, Indian art came back into prominence.

Art during the rule of the British was influenced by the new emerging social consciousness. Famous personalities in Indian art during the 20^th century were:

Amrita Shergil (1913-41)

It was India and its people that shaped the artistic talent and genius of this incredibly talented painter. Most of her paintings vividly reflect her love for the country and her response to the life of its people. She was greatly inspired by their simple needs and honest ways, in their fears and joys, and in their stoic acceptance of adversity.

In fact, it is the sincerity of her subject and the brightness of her colours, which brings to Amrita’s paintings a quality of timelessness. The abject poverty of this country fanned her imagination, and moulded her art. Amrita’s paintings were not mere reproductions of what she saw around her but visions born out of the synergy of colour, design and emotion. Perpetually, it was her response to her environment that guided her to create meaningful visions.

Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941)

The Nobel laureate transformed his lack of formal training in art into an advantage, producing more than 2500 works of art within a decade. Over 1500 of them are preserved in Viswa-Bharati, Shantiniketan. Evidently, in his quest for newer forms of expression in terms of line, form and colour, Tagore attempted to do something different from what he did in his literary works. If he sought peace and enlightenment in his songs, he was wont to explore darkness and mystery in his drawings.

Dark creatures and haunting landscapes belonging to a primordial and marvellous world, which comprised Tagore's works at once puzzled and thrilled the Indian art lovers and connoisseurs. With the passage of time, critics and art lovers discovered in these outpourings of his fanciful mind, a more modern and disquieting Tagore than they see elsewhere.

Raja Ravi Varma (1848-1906)

He was an Indian painter who achieved recognition for his depiction of scenes from the epics of the Mahabharata and Ramayana. Raja Ravi Varma became famous after he won an award for an exhibition of his paintings at Vienna in 1873. He travelled throughout India in search of subjects. He often modelled female deities of the Hindu pantheon, on the exquisitely beautiful and attractive women he saw around him. Ravi Varma is particularly noted for his paintings depicting episodes from the story of Dushyanta and Shakuntala, Nala and Damayanti, from the Mahabharata.

Ravi Varma's depiction of mythological characters has become a part of the Indian art heritage. He was – and still is – criticized for being too showy and sentimental in his style. Nevertheless, his work remains quite popular and highly sought after. He is most remembered for his paintings of beautiful sari clad women, who were portrayed as very shapely and graceful. His paintings are considered to be among the best examples of the fusion of Indian traditions with the techniques of European academic art.

The Bengal School was a highly influential style of art that flourished in India during the British Raj in the early 20^th century. It was associated with Indian nationalism, but was also promoted and supported by many British arts administrators.

The Bengal school arose as an avant garde and nationalist movement reacting against the academic art styles previously promoted in India, both by Indian artists such as Ravi Varma and in British art schools.

Inspired by the influence of Indian spiritualism on the West, a British art teacher Ernest Binfield Havel attempted to reform the teaching methods at the Calcutta School of Art by encouraging students to imitate Mughal miniatures. This caused immense controversy, leading to a strike by students and complaints from the local press, including from nationalists who considered it to be a retrogressive move.

Havel was supported in his mission by the artist Abanindranath Tagore (1871- 1951), a nephew of the poet Rabindranath Tagore. Abanindranath painted a number of works influenced by Mughal art, a style that he and Havel believed to be expressive of India's distinct spiritual qualities, as opposed to the "materialism" of the West. Tagore believed that Western art was "materialistic" in character, and that India needed to return to its own traditions in order to recover spiritual values..

Abanindranath had several significant interactions with major Asian artists whose work favourably compared with his own. In his later work, he began to incorporate elements of Chinese and Japanese calligraphic traditions into his art, seeking to construct a model for a modern pan-Asian artistic tradition which would merge the common aspects of Eastern spiritual and artistic culture.

Abanindranth’s best-known painting, Bharat Mata (mother India), depicted a young woman, portrayed with four arms in the manner of Hindu deities, holding objects symbolic of India's national aspirations. With the spread of modernism in the 1920s, the Bengal school of Art passed into oblivion.

Mention must be made of two other legendary artists who were inextricably linked with the Bengal school of Art. The works of Jamini Roy (1887-1972) are among the most recognizable of Indian paintings. Roy was a very important Indian artist of the 20^th century. His works have since been declared as national treasures of India and are gaining international acclaim as well. One can see the considerable influence of Bengali tradition in his works, even when the portrayal is of European saints.

Roy was trained in his formative period in the Bengal school style of painting and his painting represented as much a revival of folk art as a rebellion against the delicate drawing and hazy colors of the Bengal school. He gradually developed the highly individual medium of expression in his later paintings.

Nandalal Bose (1882-1966) was a luminary in the horizon of Indian art. A prolific artist, he worked dexterously in diverse media - water colour, wash, tempera, wood-cut, lithograph, dry-point, pencil-sketch, pastel work, batik on cloth, Italian fresco, Jaipuri fresco and Ajanta style fresco. His best works are in wash, pen and ink drawings and fresco.

Bose’s works hover around Hindu religious and mythological themes. In rendering such works as Umaar Tapasya, Sati, Natir Puja, he gave them an ideal classical touch by employing the Shilpa-Shastra or canons of Indian art through rhythmic lines, fine stippling, sensitive colours, and multi-perspective.

In 1928 Bose rendered a famous fresco-buono painting on the wall of Sri Niketan (in Shantiniketan, district Bolpur, West Bengal), which literally immortalised him. Nandalal's greatness lies on the absorption of oriental art, especially Indian classical and medieval Mughal, coupled with traditional Japanese art in rendering his fresco, wash, and pen-and-ink drawings.

Gaganendranath Tagore, (1867-1938) painter and art connoisseur was the older sibling of Abanindranath. Gaganendra lost his father at the age of only 14 and thus his formal education came to an abrupt end. However, he nurtured immense love for Indian and western literature. He built up a huge library in his own house. Gaganendra, unable to have formal schooling, was, like his more famous uncle Rabindranath Tagore, a self-taught man. Gaganendranath did not follow any definite course of art education to be a painter. Initially he received training under a famous contemporary artist Harinarayan Bandyopadhyay to use occidental water colour in painting.

Still later he was influenced by the Japanese painter Yokohama (Okakuru) and Tykan (Taikowan). He brought forth some paintings for Rabindranath's autobiography Jibansmriti (1912) wherein strong Japanese influence is visible. By the dint of his hard work, he breathed a fresh lease of life into The Indian Society of Oriental Art established in 1907 in Kolkata.

Gaganendranath may be considered the harbinger of modern art in its various dimensions. His paintings which depict insight and expressiveness were exhibited in Paris, London, Hamburg, Berlin and some cities of America from 1914 to 1927.They won appreciation from even by hardliner critics.

Bhabesh Sanyal (1902-2003)

He was the senior most contemporary artist of India who had been involved in the evolution of the Indian art scene from the early twentieth century to the present twenty first century. His contribution in the field of visual art and its promotion, nurturing and encouragement was phenomenal. His passionate involvement, spirit of search and perseverant thrust towards widening the outlook and attitude to the arts, his in depth understanding of the life and times of the century and his own self understanding was also immense.

Maqbul Fida Hussein (1915 )

Though he was born at Pandharpur, Maharashtra, India on September 17 1915, Hussein’s early education was in Indore. At age the of 20, Hussain moved to Mumbai and got admitted to the J. J. School of Arts. During his early days in Mumbai he earned money painting cinema hoardings. In 1947 his first exhibition was conducted at the Bombay Art Society where his painting Sunhera Sansaar was shown. From 1948 to 1950 there was a series of exhibitions of Hussein’s paintings all over India In 1956, his paintings were exhibited in the art galleries of Prague and Zurich In 1966 Hussein was awarded the Padmashree by the Government of India. In 1967 he made his first film, Through the Eyes of A Painter, which was shown at the Berlin Festival and won a Golden Bear. Husain's most interesting paintings of recent times is the series named after the Bollywod actress Madhuri Dixit, on whom he also made an abstract, slightly controversial film, "Gajagamini".

Paritosh Sen (1918 )

One of the pioneers of the Indian Modern Art Movement, Paritosh Sen, along with some of the younger artists in Calcutta, first formed the Calcutta Group in 1943. Widely travelled, he was one of few young Indian artists to have had the opportunity to meet and interact with celebrated international masters like Pablo Picasso and Brancusi. These memorable experiences left an abiding influence on Sen’s paintings. A figurative painter, he uses bold lines against a two-dimensional picture plane to express his views on contemporary life.

Manu Parekh (1939 )

A versatile personality with activities ranging from stage acting to stage designing to handicrafts & handlooms to his credit, this contemporary artist has sought to transmute his feelings about the pain and anguish in today’s world in a series of expressionistic images through his canvases.

Anjolie Ela Menon (1940)

One of India's most celebrated painters, Anjali has created a body of work of great beauty and depth over the last four decades. Her paintings reveal a deep sensibility, profoundly individual in perception, yet diverse in its sympathies: often Indian in subject, yet dwelling in an undefined territory.

Jatin Das (1941) may be hailed as a master of expression. His single largest preoccupation is with the human figure. In fact it is his major obsession, which consumes him totally and directs his irrepressible creative energies, infusing his works with a pervasive dynamism.

Paresh Maity (1965)

Paresh started out as a painter in the academic style, but over the years veered away towards abstraction. First came the watercolour drawings of the Bengal village (his native place) that caught the momentary interplay of light and shade and brought simple everyday objects (like a bicycle wheel) to the forefront. This was followed by the landscapes - from a tiny rain swept paddy field to a wall sized evocation of a boat bobbing in the high seas. Gradually Paresh started breaking lines and redefining structures.

Paresh’s talent as a painter lies in his ability to internalise the Indian experience and express it in a style which is delightfully refreshing. For Paresh, life is a celebration. One could very well describe him as a ‘romantic’ painter who paints not only from his head but also from his heart.