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A retrospective of the works of Elizabeth Brunner, who painted some of the great Indian visionaries, was recently held at the Hungarian Cultural Centre in Delhi, reports Mukesh Khosla
Elizabeth Brunner first saw India in her dreams. She was awakened one night by a strange illumination. "I was shaken; I still get gooseflesh when I think of it," she recalled in one of her last interviews before her death in 2001. She said she saw a figure holding a light coming towards her and the light grew bright as she followed it and she found a face glowing behind the light. When she related the experience to her mother, the old lady exclaimed, "You saw Tagore!" The two rushed to a nearby post office and sent a letter to Rabindranath Tagore, written in Hungarian, seeking his permission to visit him. In two months’ time, Tagore replied to the letter, in Hungarian, inviting her as his honoured guest to Santiniketan. Elizabeth Brunner came
to India with her mother in 1930 and it was the start of a long
association that came to an end in 2001 with her death. India
commemorated Brunner’s seventh death anniversary with an art
retrospective titled Soul to Soul at the Hungarian Culture Centre in
Delhi last month.
In the course of her stay, Elizabeth experienced vivid moments of Indian history since her work provided the opportunity of meeting famous personalities of the time. Rabindranath Tagore, Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi, Dr Sarvapalli Radhakrishnan, Sarojini and Padmaja Naidu — these were the subjects of Elizabeth’s portraits. Each one of the luminaries she painted grew to be an intimate friend. That is why Brunner was not just an ordinary VIP painter but a living treasury of a crucial phase of Indian history. Brunner’s life has been compiled in 1992 in a book, A Mystique Link With India, along with photographs, which provide a glimpse of this remarkable woman’s life with a passion for India. Her Padma Shree in 1985 was but a single honour bestowed on her. Encounter with Gandhi After staying at Santiniketan, Elizabeth headed southward. The sojourn was made eventful by an encounter with Mahatma Gandhi. She writes in her book`85. "When I met Gandhiji, he just swept me off my feet. It was in 1934, in the first week of January, in Bangalore, that we met for the first time." A stipulation on Gandhi’s part of granting only 30 minutes when she asked him to pose for her put the young painter in a flurry. By the time she had set up the tools of her trade, 10 minutes had elapsed, and Bapu, with his sense of punctuality, warned her that the clock was ticking away. An instant brainwave, however, saved her day. She pleaded that the time taken to set up the canvas should not be taken into consideration as the Mahatma had hardly posed during that time. The great man broke into an impish laugh at her presence of mind and her sketch was completed after two hours! She was to have another brush with history when she was permitted by Jawaharlal Nehru to do his portrait. She overcame the problem of painting the busy Prime Minister by setting up her easel in his South Block office. While he continued to work, the quiet painter pursued her craft. With Indira Gandhi, it was a more personal liaison. She wrote in her book, "I remember three occasions. The first time I met her in Mussoorie when she was on a holiday with her children." While doing Indira’s portrait at her Teen Murti residence, Elizabeth heard a noisy quarrel in the adjoining room. "Children again," muttered Mrs Gandhi. She got up and went across, and came back later, saying. "The boys must learn to share. They are quarreling all the time." By the time the Partition took place in 1947, Elizabeth had been in India for over 15 years. In those turbulent days, she plunged herself heart and soul into relief work for the East Bengal refugees. Elizabeth’s style has been unique in the sense that she has had an uncanny knack of coaxing out the human side of the leaders, imparting an entirely new dimension to their portraits. She writes in her book`85"When painting them, I used to ask them to think of something very beautiful that they liked, and their face would naturally assume an attractive expression. That was how I sketched a portrait of Nehru." Through much of the nineties decade the paintbrush became a thing of the past for Elizabeth due to her arthritic fingers. She was more or less confined to her rocking chair and whiled away her time recalling her past. By the time she passed away in 2001 Elizabeth had become a virtual recluse. Nobody recalled her association with people like Gandhi, Tagore, Nehru and Dr Radhakrishnan. Even her neighbours in Delhi hardly knew about the frail, old lady who had captured the great leaders of Indian history with the stroke of her brush. But the artist had no regrets. She died a content woman living amid her memories and the large portraits that adorned the walls of her cluttered house. — NF
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