Portrait of A Lady Hemendranath Mazumdar Oil on canvas Born in an area now part of Bangladesh, Hemen Muzamdar (1894-1943) trained at the Jubilee Art School in Kolkata. He resisted the 'Indianizing' and Orientalist agenda of the Bengal School instead adopting a traditional European academic realism. Hemendranath Majumdar enjoyed great artistic success. After Ravi Varma, he became the most sought-after artist for oil portraits. His large oils attracted the Maharajas of Jaipur, Bikaner, Kotah, Kashmir, Cooch Behar, Mayurbhanj and other princely states. Among the nobility, the Maharaja of Patiala, Sir Bhupindranth Singh (1891-1938) was the most devoted, engaging him as a state artist for five years on a handsome salary, which enabled him to build his studio in Calcutta. In 1919 he was one of the co-founders of the Indian Academy of Fine Arts and found critical acclaim in his portraits of women. Muzumdar's depiction of the female form is a narrative of the changing and conflicted attitudes to the nude in a changing and conflicted India.