Fanindra Nath Bose, a world-renowned sculptor, was the first Indian artist to be elected to the Royal Scottish Academy. Taking inspiration from the rich artistic worlds of France and Italy, his sketchbooks are filled with studies from Musée de la Sculpture Comparée in the Trocadero, and the Louvre. He discovered these museums during a travelling scholarship to Paris in 1911.
In this sketchbook, Bose continues his studies of figures he observed from casts of French and Italian cathedral facades. A notable piece is Bose’s study of a statue of the Roman Emperor Trajan housed in the Louvre (page 24). Departing from his studies of minute medieval carvings, Bose captures the majesty of the monumental statue. This physicality of these sketches show the influence of world-renowned sculptors Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux and Rodin, whom Bose greatly admired. From the medieval to the classical, for Bose, inspiration was everywhere.
