Vigil, illustration of Rabindranath's poem Gitanjali

Vigil, a brush and ink work by Gaganendranath Tagore, 1912, after a poem from Rabindranath Tagore’s Gitanjali. It's a quiet and slightly eerie scene, a lone figure in a dark, hazy space. It's not some fancy detail that catches your eye, but the difference between that little human form and all that emptiness around it. Gaganendranath plays with ink of varying strengths, leaving some patches heavy and black and others almost bare paper, and that gives the picture real depth without ever telling you exactly where this figure is. The person seems to be standing or waiting in silence which fits the title well, there is a real sense of keeping watch. And you can't see what they're looking at or want to see. This uncertainty appears to be deliberate, I think, because it gets you to start imagining what might be beyond the picture’s edges, a road, a doorway, someone arriving or nothing at all. And the loose brushwork helps too, nothing is too literally spelt out. He is more interested in the mood of the moment, than in describing objects one by one, so the image stays open, instead of closing down into one story. The dark areas can be read as nite, the lighter patches feel like an opening or a faint light somewhere in the distance, the balance between the two keeps the whole thing hovering between hope and doubt. All of which is good for solitude, silence, and expectancy. The emptiness of space too, recalls the Japanese ink paintings where the blank space is as important as the painted area, an influence that ran through much of his early work. It also shows how close the Tagore family kept the worlds of literature and visual art. He is not drawing line after line of Rabindranath’s poetry. He takes its spiritual, meditative feeling, and makes it an image, then leaves room for you to bring your own answer to it. It works because it is so simple. The reserved colour, sparse setting and single figure give it a contemplative mood. No drama or showiness, just a moment of waiting that makes you slow down and wonder what the figure is going through, and what they might be carrying inside that you can never actually see.