Szilágyi András (szerk.): Ars Decorativa 24. (Budapest, 2006)

Béla KELÉNYI: Two Trunks from London. Hungarian aspects of the 'discovery' of Nepalese art

BELA KELENYI TWO TRUNKS FROM LONDON.* HUNGARIAN ASPECTS OF THE 'DISCOVERY' OF NEPALESE ART In 1964, an international exhibition of Nepalese art opened at the Asia House Gallery in New York. It was the first exhibition for which works were selected not only from the holdings of major Western museums and private collections, but also from those of Nepalese and Indian ones. It displayed a surprisingly large number of early artefacts and was arranged by Stella Kramrisch, an art historian who had settled in India in the 1920s.

1 The Hungarian specialist literature, however, considers Imre Schwaiger (1868-1940), an art dealer and art collector of Hungarian origin, to be the original 'discoverer' of Nepalese art.

2 The greatest donor to Budapest's Ferenc Hopp Museum of East Asiatic Art, Schwaiger settled in India in 1895 and later opened a shop in London. He began to show interest in Nepalese and Tibetan art very early on. (111. 1) This was remarkable in a Hungarian, the more so because in the late 19

th century Tibet and Nepal were still thought of as worlds closed to Europeans.

1 Although British influence had been strengthened by the Treaty of Sugauli concluded at the end of the Anglo-Nepalese War of 1814-1816 and a British resident exercised ongoing supervision of the Nepalese government, Nepal enjoyed the status of a relatively independent state.

4 This was partly due to the fact that in the course of the Indian Mutiny (1857-1858), Gurkhas rendered considerable assistance to the British. By 'Nepalese art', we basically mean the art of the Ne wars, who are known as the makers of * The study was written with financial support from Hungary's National Scientific Research Foundation (OTKA). project no. T 038316. the famous 'Nepalese bronzes'. The Ne war tribe lives in the heart of Nepal, in the Kathmandu Valley, and is famous for its extensive trade. Scattered groups of Ne wars live in the adjacent countries as well. Their extraordinary creativeness was noted by famous 19

,h-century travellers, although this observation was based on impressions of Newar communities in Lhasa, not in Nepal itself.

5 The first art historian to pay serious attention to Nepalese art was Ernest Binfield Havell (1864-1937), an acquaintance of Schwaiger 's. The culmination of Havell's career in India was his time as principal of the School of Art in Calcutta (1896-1906). By then he was already strongly connected to the 'Bengali school', which aimed to reform Indian art.

6 In a notable book published in 1908, he launched a movement to recognise the aesthetic value of Indian art, hitherto scarcely appreciated in the West.

7 In this book, Havell not only highlighted the importance of the Nepalese-Tibetan school of art, but also - with references to a treatise by Täranätha, a 17'

h-century Tibetan scholar pointed out that some of the Nepalese statuettes held by the Calcutta Art Gallery could be brought into connection with Indian schools, namely with H

Ih-century Päla art.

8 It is a fact that his book presented more Nepalese statuettes than was usual at the time.

0 The attitude he had to contend with is vividly illustrated by a statement contained in a commentary by him on an early Malla (13'

h-century) Nepalese masterpiece: 'The suggestion can easily be made that the wonderfully fine modelling of this figure, as well as the pose, are indicative of Greek