In memory of our dear friend
BN Goswamy was India’s most eminent art historian — distinguished with the highest honours by the Indian government and admired by his readers and listeners for his deep and traditional understanding of Hindu religiosity as well as Muslim Sufi culture; his erudition was impressive and he had this marvellous gift of quoting sacred and poetic texts and verses off the cuff, be it in Sanskrit, Hindi, Punjabi, Urdu, Persian or English.
His memory was remarkable, even in advanced age, as was his intellectual presence at lectures. He was able to dictate book texts, almost ready for print, and knew quotations from literature as well as important dates safely by heart. His interpretations of paintings and images were not only meticulously precise, but also highly poetic. It was astonishing to experience how much more you saw in a picture by listening to his words and views!
But it was not the rhetorical brilliance of BN Goswamy but his capacity as a scholar that revolutionised Indian art history with his research work on an 18th-century painter dynasty in the Himalayan foothills (the “Pahari” region) and who, with his unerring gaze and unsurpassable visual memory, was able to draw all the shades of art information from an Indian painting.
No other institution had the good fortune of being able to collaborate so intensively and closely with Prof Goswamy as did the Museum Rietberg.
— The writer was Director, Museum Rietberg, Switzerland (1973-1998)
