Darjeeling

A sponsor promised me RS250 a month to go to Darjeeling and paint. I went to a third-rate hotel and asked for their cheapest accommodation. I was to be a long stay guest, catering for myself. I was shown a room in a single-storied row alongside the main two or three-storied building of the hotel. It was a long room, the light coming from the front end-the shorter dimension. This would give me two long walls with the right light for hanging pictures. The room contained a number of beds in a row, dormitory fashion. There was a small table and a chair, a bathroom out at the far end. This set up was to be the best studio I ever had.

I went to work at once on “The Handsome Young Man”. I had arrived with a roll of fine canvas- all they had at the Calcutta Art shop, where the young man serving had come to know me over the years and favoured me with the best.

“The Handsome Young Man” was based on the young employee at the Dow Hill School. Women passed him, turning their heads to look at him, women of different ages in their different ways of looking at an attractive youth. Women were still looking back at him as they climbed the hill behind him.

I was now painting from 9am to 5pm, having breakfast before I began and a cooked meal after I’d finished for the day. In the evenings I washed my brushes.

Darjeeling was a wonderful place for a painter. Everything was close at hand. I had only to go up the road to get bacon, eggs, good bread and cakes. I also found carpenters to make me stretcher frames for my canvases.

Harking back to memories of Dow Hill I did “Road Menders”. Men and women straining on ropes, pulling a heavy roller uphill whilst the foreman stood upon a bank singing directions to them, the workers singing it in reply.

I had sent to England for and received a copy of Max Doerner’s book on the characteristics of various paints, preparing grounds, methods of painting and also how to make one’s own paints. I had got the book in order to be sure I would be making no mistakes (as with the shine on the head of the sweeper) and also because I foresaw a shortage of foreign materials as we ploughed through the bumpy years of new-born independence. I tried grounding my own paints in oil with the powder colours easily available in India and “Intoxication” was painted with these. The picture showed no discoloration over the years. However, it was time-consuming and so was not tried further. The third picture of the drunken series was “Inebriation”. The two drunkards have finally lost the use of their legs and sunk down on to a hillock. One of them still capable of shouting. To them the houses around them seem to by unsteady.

I went to see the Nepali’s autumn festival. How the date was decided I do not know, but it was not always the same. In Darjeeling it was held on one of the few large level spaces, a bay jutting out into the blue of the deep valley and the slopes of the next fold of mountain hills. The main object of spectacle of the festival was the beheading of a bull by one stroke of a kukri. Only this secured the promise of good crop in the coming year. More than one strike presage bad fortune.

There was dancing everywhere that day. The beheading of the bull was preceded by the beheading of a number of sheep, the number depending on the day of the month. If it was the 27th than 27 sheep had it coming to them. Some Nepali men were dressed as clowns and wickedly taking the bloody carcasses of the sheep, chased the women with them, the women screaming in pretended fright. “Festival” I did a picture of this bit of horseplay. Only Nepali’s appreciated it. It made them laugh. But another picture inspired by this day was on Nepali men dancers- two dancing with raised tambourines, their feet touching the ground with nymph-like lightness, despite their heavy bodies and muscular legs. They were in white clothing the tails of their belted shirts floating up in their movement. A centre figure in darker clothing leaned back on wide-spread legs, furiously tapping a rhythm on his drum. “Nepali Dancers”

One day a violent wind blew up. I heard childish laughter and went to the window to see. Two little girls were chasing the dead leaves stirred into flight. Just as I caught sight of them a window opened anxious mother called them in.

This incident inspired “Playing with the Wind”.

I used to go down steep steps and paths to get to the market place on a lower level, for my eggs. I was always looking for big eggs. It became an obsession. So I thought I would do a picture of a market stall with nice big eggs. I went down with sketch book to get some authenticity. A mistake! I was soon surrounded by a curious throng, not only at my back and on either side of me, but right in front, blocking out from my vision any sight of the stall.

This was a lesson! No sketch-book notes for me. I had to rely as usual on my eyes and my observation and memory. “The Egg Stall” was painted; a plump Nepali women with her colourful chunky necklace, hands full of eggs, trying to serve a male customer sitting over the corner of her table, as fussy as myself in trying to pick out the biggest.

Another picture of this period was “Delousing”.

One often saw groups of women sitting one behind the other, their long black, shining tresses spread around them, each picking the unwanted squatters out from between the hair-roots of the woman in front. I did three young women sitting one above the other on an incline.

I met many people in Darjeeling, once I was accosted by a gentleman

“Are you Stella Brown?”

“I am” you are being submerged in Calcutta. They are trying to prevent your pictures selling.” He said he was from the British Council.

I also met an English lady. “Are you Stella Brown? I bought your picture “Boys with Stag-beetle”

Lady R. didn’t want me to buy it. She said it was too highly priced and wanted me to turn to the work of Indian artists. I wanted that picture.

So again I had warnings.

I had heard that a Chinese artist was in Darjeeling- the foremost artist in South China. He was here as a guest of the Indian Government.

One evening I saw two Chinese sitting on a bench in the Mall. One was old with a long, straggly grey beard and he was in Chinese dress. The other was young, respectably dressed in European style suit.

I went up to then

“Are you the Chinese artist?” I asked addressing the old man. The young man replied that he was.

“I am an artist” I said

“I would like to see the Chinese artist’s work”

They conferred together and then gave me the time to visit and the address.

I went at the appointed time and saw his paintings, one in progress. They were all of the unique Chinese mountains riding mist, below which were the trees, Each picture had a single figure, three-quarter front, three quarter back, or sideways. I looked through his sketch-book and saw these three figures in pencil and realised he used one or other of the three in every picture he did.

“I would like to see your painting” he said, his interpreter conveying it in English. I said I’d be delighted to show them and gave them a time.

They seemed astonished when they entered my studio with its wall-full of paintings. The old man studied them intently and when he came to “Handsome Young Man” said something in Chinese which the young Chinese interpreted to me.

“We haven’t been able to paint such eyes since the Han dynasty”.

Just before that I had had a Tibetan girl staying with me. One night there was a knock at the door. An Englishman stood outside.

“Are you the artist?”

“Yes!”

“I’d like to see your work”

“Come tomorrow in daylight.”

“Please let me come in now. I can see your paintings over your shoulder and I am impatient to see them.

I let him in.

“I asked my landlady if there were any artists in the town” he explained, and she said she knew of one at the hotel down the road- an English woman. She hadn’t seen your work. I thought’ perhaps a missionary doing little daubing! When you opened the door and I saw you I thought I was right, but when I glanced over your shoulder I could see it was anything but daubing. Why do you look like a missionary?

“My disguise” I replied.

This fellow was around when I received an invitation to dinner at the Chinese artist’s and he took it upon himself to gate-crash the interpreter who brought the invitation told us the Chinese artist was also known for his culinary expertise. There was a special dish in China named after him.

I went with trepidation, not being at all venturesome when it came to food.

Alas! The Chinese artist’s table was groaning with food- dishes of all kinds. All tucked in except me. I, after a description of what it was, contented myself with a whole cabbage, cooked inside a pastry covering. It looked like a bomb.

After dinner, the artist showed us something of his treasures. He enrolled long scrolls of ancient Chinese art- of a time when the artist depicted the life and fun of the people. They were full of movement and expression.

“Don’t tell anyone I’ve got these” I was warned.

“They were sold to me by soldiers who had ransacked the museum during the war”.

I met the curator of the Darjeeling Horticultural Gardens.

“Come down to my place” he invited

“See some of my price flowers”.

I went. He showed me into a greenhouse full of pots of begonia, I had my water-colour equipment with me and sat myself before a bloom that was like a sunburst. I was left alone there.

I worked all day on that painting and felt frustrated. I had put all my endeavours into the painting but the original outshone my humble work.

I showed it to the curator first to assure him I had not wasted his kind invitation but I carried it home with a feeling of disappointment. When I reached my grey room and opened up the water –colour there was a sunburst!

The Chinese artist, who had now visited my studio three or more times, went in raptures over it. He gave me a printed poster of one of his paintings. I had a feeling he expected me to give him the sunburst but I was not giving an original for a print. (I eventually gave the flower-painting to a lesser mortal.)

The interpreter told me that this artist had been invited to return to China (he was now domiciled in Hong Kong) to lead a people’s movement in Art. He had said “I couldn’t do it, but she could”, referring to me.

The young Englishman asked me if I would go sketching with him. I consented for the day. We climbed the hill above Darjeeling until we were out of reach of people and sitting on a rock, we sketched Kanchejanga in all its icy beauty, the three peaks of it. I did my study in pastel.

This same friend, on another day said

“You should go down to the marked place some early morning and see the women, huddled in their shawls against the cold. There is a picture for you!”

I agreed and went down to see the women.

There they were in groups, their faces ruddy-red against the white of their enclosing shawls. With the help of my pastel study, I painted the three sister-peaks of Kanchenjanga and below put in the foreground a group of three Nepali women muffled up in thin shawls. I called the picture “Kanchenjanga”

Many people were now making their way to my studio. They understood, in that they kept their visits to the evening, when I had finished painting for the day. There was the school-master who lent me books; a Sanyasi who talked with me on the question of religion, a Polish gentleman with his secretary. He was in Darjeeling writing a history of Poland. He had been Polish Ambassador to China before the war and his secretary told me that he had possessed the largest private collection of paintings in Poland. All was gone now.

I finished the year with a small picture of a group of “Tibetan Woman” in all their colourful satin dresses with their striped aprons and wool-embroidered boots. It filled up a little panel I had lying around. I did not bother to give them faces, they were so small. They had all their ornaments.

My Nepali carpenters had been wonderful. They had made frames for my pictures and eventually packing cases for their transportation to Calcutta. Even that was easily arranged in Darjeeling without much worry to myself.

I had had a visit shortly before leaving to go down to the plains for the winter, from the vicar of the Dow Hill church. He said his family would love to have me visit them for a few days on my way down to the plains. I declined because I felt I had to accompany my pictures.

Once more in Calcutta I went straight to the museum where Lady R was on her knees among a vast amount of pictures of all sizes and shapes, some standing in stacks against the wall, others before her where she was possibly selecting and rejecting.

“Oh Stella!” she exclaimed in a disarmingly friendly voice on seeing me.

“You haven’t submitted anything!”

“What is the use when you persuade people not to buy them?”

“What nonsense! How did you get that idea?”

“I have been informed by very reliable sources.”

“Well! If you don’t want to exhibit, don’t!

“What would be the point?” I replied.

I had now to think of exhibiting my work. I made arrangements to do it in the spacious venue of ‘Art in Industry’. I had not arranged an exhibition before and had no-one to help me and no idea how to go about it.

A framer’s shop opened in Park Street. They invited artists to the opening. They said they were there to help artists. I spoke up and said I wanted help with the hanging and arranging of my exhibition. The shop proprietor was not ready for such requests. It was another sort of help he had in mind; framing at fat prices. A voice rang out from the visitors

“I’ll help you.”

It was Desmond Doig. Thus I met him for the first time.

His help was invaluable. Apart from hanging the pictures, he arranged for advertisement and the press and the list of pictures with prices.

The assassination picture “Father Forgive Them” was centre piece. I filled the three rooms. I had asked former buyers to lend me their purchases, “Coolies among Fern” came back, but Tagore said a visiting American had seen my “Tibetans loading their Mules” and had asked to borrow it to show it in America. It had not come back.

The exhibition went well though it was not a good time for selling. Europeans had left India in droves after Independence; Indians had not yet found their feet. A lady came in and asked, did I still have “Boys with Stag Beetle?” she had seen it last year and walked up and down in front of it, biting her nails, wondering if she could afford it. Alas, it was now gone but I directed her attention to “Children playing with the wind”. She bought it. Another lady said she would have bought the Tibetan lady’s if they had had faces. Another lady however did not mind the lack of faces, so that one went, but I mentally resolved to put in faces in future however small. The water-colour heads of Nepali women went. So did the “Cheating sugar Merchant” and the “Egg Stall”.

“Delousing” was a bigger picture. It was bought by Mr Bently; unfortunately his wife didn’t take to it. It gave her the itch. So he passed it on to a friend for his wedding present. The friend hung it on the wall half-way up the stairs. A guest coming to the reception stopped admiring it asked who the painter was. If she could be found he’d like to commission three pictures from her. But that was in England and I was in India, as usual on the move. I was told of this many years later (1959) when I met Mr. Bently.

Mrs Waller bought the “Boy with Orchids.”

Miss ? took away “Kanchenjanga” and another picture ( I don’t remember which) for publication in a magazine with which she was connected. They would accompany an article she was writing on her visit to Darjeeling.

Soon after I heard she had fallen down the stairs and dislocated her neck, the magazine returned the pictures to me. My mind went back to the French Cultural attaché and what befell him. Was I to be thus baulket by accidents to those who would back me?

I was invited by the Delhi Fine Arts and Crafts Society to send some work to their coming exhibition. I sent them “Handsome young Man” and “Nepali Dancers”. I found it far more difficult to get pictures packed and despatched in Calcutta. It was a case of ‘Money will make the mare to go’ and I was not the money-laden memsahib who could oil every ‘go slow’ with a bribe. In tense irritation I stuck my ground and paid in time but it did not leave me eager to venture again sending beyond Calcutta when in that town.

My picture “Nepali Dancers” won the first price for modern painting in the Delhi exhibition (money, I was pleased to hear). It was bought by the Central Government of India. The Delhi Fine Arts and Craft Society sent the exhibition travelling to other venues around India. My picture “Handsome Young Man” won the price medal for the best painting in oils in Bihar and was bought by the Bihar Government.

I now began to feel I was an artist. I had gathered money to allow me to go back to Darjeeling and paint some more. I could perhaps earn my living, albeit a modest one, as a free-lance painter. A lovely feeling of independence swelled me. I told my erstwhile sponsor that he need not subsidize me longer.

I was back in Darjeeling before the winter and cold had completely gone. The sky was grey, the yellow light of the sun weakly trying to penetrate it in a wire-netting pattern, Children were huddled together shivering, their chubby cheeks as red as apples. I did three heads in a triangular composition against this grim wire-netting sky. I called it “Winter-bitten” after those apple-red cheeks.

The tourists and fair-weather visitors had not yet begun to arrive. The Chinese artist had gone. His interpreter was coming to me every evening with his text-book on Psychology. He had gone through the Chinese translation when in University in China. He had now found it in English, more up-to-date and he wanted me to explain the English words he did not know. I’m never averse to learning something new and soon I found I was actually teaching him, not just explaining English words. I was concocting little incidents to illustrate each theory.

The children came up to stay with me for a while. During their visit there were serious landslides following continuous rain that took great areas of the surrounding mountain-side away and even cut us off from the plains. Water supply and electricity amenities went. Darjeeling was cut off except for radio. Refugees came pouring in from outlying areas. The children’s father enquired by radio whether the children were safe and then came up to lead them down to safety.

The landlord asked me to give up my cheapest room for a better one in the main building for the same rent in order to accommodate refugees.

The new room was higher, the front portion divided by partition from the back to make a tiny sitting room. The back portion, the bedroom, was the larger part and so it was there I set up my easel. I was not happy here. The light was not the same; the wall was not as long. I found it difficult to get going.

I started a picture of three girls in the wind; the girls’ skirts were blown up to their knees. They would laugh and giggle as if some lusty swan were ruffling them up. Each would sharply turn to face the wind again. Their hands held their head veils against their faces to prevent them from being blown away. I had almost completed the picture when I felt the three girls were too cramped for space. The subject needed a bigger canvas. I did the tedious chore of repeating the theme on a bigger ground so that I could get in the dark hills in the background, a windswept sapling and a few daffodils blown in one direction in the grass.

The front girl had her back to the wind, her face turner towards the viewer to suggest she was ready to turn again.

The middle girl was laughing as her skirt was beginning to ride.

The far girl was leaning further forward into the wind.

“What will you do with that one?” asked the interpreter, indicating my firs effort.

“Prime it again to paint over”.

“Please give it to me. I’ll give you another canvas for it”.

Weakly I said “alright”.

“Please paint in some faces”

“I have no time for that”

“I’ll make time for you. I’ll wash your dishes, clean up the room …”

“Alright then!”

This fighting to achieve a subject was another dampening of my spirit.

After “Girls in the Wind” it had to be “Girls in the rain”. On a rainy day I went up the tarmacadem road and stood waiting at a spot opposite the restaurant. I watched the raindrops as they fell on the road their splashing making little crowns of secondary drops. Soon some girls came by, huddling under one umbrella; I noticed the extra effort it needed to walk bare-foot on the wet shiny road; the feet twisting inward having no grip, the girl’s bottoms waddling like ducks as a consequence. I thus did them with their backs toward me, a man, his face hidden by his umbrella coming towards them. All cast their watery reflection on the road at the bottom of the picture. At the top were other umbrellas in the distance as people were moving on higher levels.

Another painter was staying in Darjeeling by then: Effendi of Indonesia. I went and saw him painting a large canvas. He was depicting the people of the hills, using very liquid paint so that it ran down the canvas in a series of multicoloured, perpendicular lines, ending here and there before reaching the bottom, with a build-up of congealed paint. I again began to feel uncertain of myself. I had so little to show him in my place. He said on seeing mine, “we both paint with the same objective.”

I saw a funny scene one day near the market. A poor man’s dentist, with his box of implements by his side, was at work on the teeth of a customer, who with a look of pain on his face had his lip lifted up on the side, where the implement was working. I made a swift sketch of the box of implements. The two men were squatting while the operation was going on. This inspired the picture “Wayside Dentist”. There was a suggestion at the bottom part of passers-by in the background.

I did a similar picture of “Nepali women with girl” to make use of my knowledge of their faces and to pass time until more interesting themes could crop up.

Then came a massive one. News of China’s invasion of Tibet and their advance on Llasa, shook the hitherto sense of peace. I wanted to do the flight of the Lamas; I did one of three Tibetans on horses looking back as they rode furiously, to see if they were being followed. There was s spare horse in the background of sombre reds and deep maroons. I spent some time up on the Mall, studying the horses in movement there, watching their muscles at work. I called this picture “Storm over Tibet”. I primed a canvas for a more ambitious “Flight of the Lamas”, but I had been too hasty in preparing the canvas and the picture, once done, began to flake. Someone in Calcutta satirically called it Lamas on the Grand Trunk road; but though I was put out I knew I was thinking of the flat plain in front of the Dalai Lama’s palace in Llasa, The ‘Poltala’ I think it is called.

One day I found myself at the top of a flight of steps, about to descend them to a lower level. At the bottom were some Nepal’s looking up and laughing at me. This experience prompted the painting “What have they to laugh about?” I went back home wondering how I should depict the laughter. There was a mirror in this room-perhaps inside a wardrobe. I stood in front of that mirror and laughed. I saw myself raise one hand to cover my laughing mouth and the other hand to still the shaking tummy. Men put their hands on their hips, (if they had no trouser pockets) and gave vent. I did a picture of three women and one man. One woman had a hand on her tummy her other hand covering her mouth. The other woman was laughing with two hands on front waist. The third woman behind that one lifted her veil to cover her mouth, the man, legs akenibo, had a hand on his hip. The other side of him was hidden behind the woman with the heartiest uncovered laugh. Then I had to return to the spot to note details of houses. There’s a tiny little women in the background, sitting sewing or knitting. The name of the picture “What have they to laugh about?”

Another day, going up the road to get my bacon, bread and cakes, I noticed the poster outside the cinema house. So! The American Western reached even here. The entire world’s people fell for them. That triggered off the painting “Cinema Fans.” This was the culmination of my season. It was a picture that was a delight to paint. I had had to fight over all the others. This one came as if another hand was painting it through mine. Coming down the steps of the cinema front are two Nepali girls in their pastel, spring colours, the end of their diaphanous drapery fluttering in a slight breeze. Behind them come a Tibetan man and woman in their darker richer colours. Still further behind them are Europeans. A young Nepali lad comes running down a few steps behind the Nepali girls. He is giving them a ‘wolf-whistle’’. I took great pains to make the Nepali girls’ faces beautiful. This became my favourite picture.

Two requests for pictures for exhibition came after I had finished “Cinema Fans”. The Delhi Fine Arts and Crafts Society asked for three from me for their Indian Cultural Mission to the Middle East and Far East. Then an exhibition of paintings in Darjeeling itself was being organised and I was asked to submit. I now had the idea that I should get my pictures photographed professionally in case I should lose, not only evidence that I had painted them, but even my memory of them.

I only had to go up the road, as for everything else. The photographer put each picture under suitable light, and then hid his head under a black cloth, covering himself as well as a black box. A click! Then he drew out a plate. Thus he proceeded for each picture. If only I had been able to get all my pictures thus photographed instead of relying on the occasional passer-by with camera. Many pictures missed reproduction, going out of my reach and perhaps recollection altogether.

“Cinema Fans”, and “Storm over Tibet” were the two I especially set aside for the Indian Cultural Mission. Of the rest I selected “Wayside Dentist” “Girls in the Wind” Nepali Women with Young Girl “and “What have they to laugh about” for the Darjeeling exhibition. Before it opened I went to see where they were hung. They were in the section directly inside the opening. When I heard the Governor and his retinue approaching I hastily retreated to the inner recesses; always too shy to meet crowds yet in command on a stage.

Someone came and found me.

“come and meet the Governor” he said.

“No! I don’t want to”

“You should hear them laughing at your pictures”

“Why laughing?” I said suspecting a slight.

“Didn’t you expect people to laugh?”

I thought of the particular pictures I had there

“Yes, I suppose so” I said resigned.

“Come and hear them they needn’t see you. They’ll be on the other side of the screen.

I succumbed; but this was only his trick to get me introduced.

“Here is Stella Brown” he announced

“I was just saying” said the Governor

“I should buy that one and give it to my dentist” he pointed to “Wayside Dentist”

I went again, later in the day, to see the main gathering. Everyone had been kept out whilst the Governor and his party were there.

The girl at the desk said

”There have been seven people wanting to buy your “Girls in the Wind”. The Maharaja of Burdwan who came in with the Governor had already booked it”

“You have surpassed yourself this time Stella” said someone

“I’ve better ones back in the studio”

“Is it possible?”

Two Nepali artists from Kathmandu asked me

“How is it you portray the spirit of our people better than we do?”

I heard the ordinary work-a-day Nepal’s saying

“How she portrays the beauty of our young girls!”

Later I was accosted by a man in the road.” Are you Stella Brown?” I wanted to buy your picture “Girls in the Wind.” The same thing happened later down in Calcutta, this time it was an Eastern European lady.

The Polish historian came to visit me. He saw “Storm over Tibet”

“Give me first refusal of that one” he said.

Later his secretary told me of what ‘the doctor’ was saying about me in private.

“He says, in three hundred years time people will be coming here to find out more about your”.

Naturally with all this I was encouraged into thinking that I was an artist who could ‘live’- be contributing to life something that would grow in value after my death. I was conscious that the volume of my work in this year did not compare with that I had achieved in the few months of the previous year. I had been slowed by the change of room and a growing feeling on loneliness.

“Storm over Tiber”, “What have they to laugh about” and “Cinema Fans” were packed and despatched to Delhi. They later wrote to say they were not sending all my pictures to the Middle East. They were keeping some for the Far East.

The rest of the pictures were packed for me to accompany down to Calcutta, once more for the winter.

Money was getting short.