Painting a painter

The oil on canvas shows an artist painting an image of Lord Brahma on a clay pot. 

The One Who Creates a Creator is the work of Tej Bahadur Chitrakar, considered the pioneer of contemporary art in Nepal. 

The painting was bought from a gallery in Darbar Marg by former Danish diplomat and anthropologist Dr Michael Vinding in 1986. It remained in Denmark until Rajan Sakya of the Museum of Nepali Art (MoNA) bought the painting and brought it back to Nepal this year. 

Tej Bahadur, who died in 1971,  was himself the son of artist Shiva Das Chitrakar. Tej's son Madan Chitrakar, who is also an artist and art historian, unveiled the painting at MoNA this week. Vinding, now in his seventies, was also present. 

Vinding had contacted Madan after reading his books on the painting that he bought, and their mutual admiration for Nepali art kept them in touch.  

“One of my very favourite paintings of my father’s is right here after a long absence from Nepal,” said an emotional Madan at the unveiling. “I have a special attachment with this series of paintings, which is a celebration of Nepal’s art heritage and social life.”

Madan was back home from college in Bombay in 1967, and his father was planning to work on a series depicting the lives and struggles of Nepal’s mountain communities. 

Madan felt it was important to document the heritage and the profession that the Chitrakar community had inherited. When he suggested this to his father, Tej Bahadur agreed to do it right away, and depicted pottery, paubha, and wooden strut paintings in his series.

But Tej Bahadur needed a reference for his work. So Madan sat his father down as a model and made various sketches of his face, as well as hand, eye, and sitting positions. Tej Bahadur did his paintings based on those sketches of himself, and this became a collaborative project between father and son. 

The three paintings in this series, of which The One Who Creates a Creator is the second, took Tej Bahadur six months to complete. The first, titled Tribute to My Forefather, depicts a man working on a paubha, and is at the Fukuoka Asian Art Museum.

The third, Ancestor at Work, shows an artist painting a temple strut was the only one in the series still with Madan Chitrakar. The second and third paintings are now reunited and are on display at MoNA.

“I was in tears when I saw the painting,” Madan told Nepali Times, “I recalled sketching my father, and he creating these paintings all those years ago. It all flashed before my eyes.”

Rajan Sakya got in touch with the Vinding family, who agreed to sell it to MoNa.  

“Luckily it belonged to a collector who has deep roots in Nepal, and he had taken care of it,” says Sakya. “This is the homecoming of a painting that started the contemporary art movement in Nepal.”