80 - ESSAYS IN NATIONAL IDEALISM.

spite of their many arms, are very human, and often not-
very noble human types. At best the goddesses are ' pretty' r
•stronger condemnation of what should be ideal religious art
it would be hard to find.

It has indeed been Ravi Yarma's reward for choosing-
Indian subjects, that he has been to some degree a true-
.nationalising influence ; but had he been also a true artist
with the gift of great imagination, this influence must have-
been tenfold deeper and greater. He is the landmark of a
great opportunity, not perhaps wholly missed, but ill availed
of, melo-dramatic conceptions, want of imagination, want of
restraint, anecdotal aims and a lack of Indian feeling in
the treatment of sacred and epic subjects are his faults,
His art is not truly national—he merely plays with local
colour. His gods and heroes are men cast in a very
common mould, who find themselves in situations for
which they lack a proper dignity. The resulting degrada-
tion of what should be heroic and ideal types is quite-
unpardonable. Ravi Yarma's pictures, in a word, are not
national art; they are such as any European student could
paint, after only a superficial study of Indian life and
literature.

A reaction from these ideals is represented by what
has been called the New School of Indian Painting",
.founded by Abanindra Nath Tagore, Yice-Principal of the
Calcutta School of Art. In Mr. Havell, late Principal of
this school, India for the first time found a European
artist able to divest himself of early prejudices and willing-
as well to learn as to teach. In the f Studio' of Julyy
1908, Mr. Havell relates how when he went to the Calcutta
School twelve years ago, it was like other schools, an
institution established by a benevolent Government for the-
purpose of revealing to Indians the superiority of European