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The Mother as an artist (material details)
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The Mother did not give her personal career as an artist a primary importance. Hence it is not commonly known that she was an accomplished artist.
..The Mother (Mirra Alfassa, 1878-1973) loved to draw and paint from her childhood. Though art was only one
of her many interests, it occupied a prominent place in her early life. She began to take drawing lessons at the age of eight. Two years later she started to learn oil painting and other painting techniques. By the time she was twelve she was doing
portraits. In 1892, when she was fourteen, one of her charcoal drawings was exhibited at the International "Blanc et Noir" Exhibition in Paris.
Having completed her regular schooling at the age of fifteen, she joined an art studio in Paris to study painting. In all likelihood it belonged to the Academie Julian, an organistaion with several studios founded by Rudolphe Julian in the latter part of the nineteenth century....
....The Mother continued to work in this studio until 1879, when she married the artist Henri Morisset. During the next few years, she participated in the stimulating artistic life of turn-of-the-century Paris and associated with some of the leading artists of the period. She did a fair amount of painting, both in Paris, where she and Morisset had their flat with a studio in the garden, and on trips to the countryside. Six of her works were exhibited in the prestigious Salon de la Societe Nationale des Beaux-Arts in 1903,1904 and 1905...
...Only about forty of the Mother's paintings are available to us today. More than half of these belong to her early years in
France (before 1914, when she made her first trip to India), including her visits to Algeria (1906 and 1907). Other early works, which she considered to be among her best, were either sold or presented to friends and are now lost to us. The Mother also did a number of paintings and drawings while she was in Japan, between 1916 and 1920. There she acquired the Japanese technique of watercolour painting, working directly with brush and black India ink. When she returned to India in 1920, she brought with her seven paintings and some drawings
which she had done in Japan.
In Pondicherry, the Mother rarely had time to undertake oil paintings. Her spiritual work and practical responsibilities became all-absorbing and she preferred to bring out latent artistic faculties in others rather than display her own abilities. But she did
quite a few drawings of the highest quality and artistic value. There are many portraits. Those who saw her doing the portraits describe how within minutes, with a few rapid strokes, a living face would be completed.
....It must be remembered that even from childhood the Mother was conscious of a larger mission to which art and all other
interests were subordinate. Art was for her a valuable part of life, but not the most important thing. It was the language which came naturally to her, and she used it as a means of expression and communication in the course of her work with people. For her, images could often reveal more than words. She regarded her art study in her early years as a discipline for developing the consciousness, not as a preparation for a brilliant career or a life dedicated to art for art's sake. Once she
had mastered painting to a sufficient degree for her purposes, she moved on to other things...
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