Rabindranath Tagore
Artist: Violet Oakley (American, , 1874-1961)
Date: Early 20th century
Medium: Watercolor on paper
Collection: Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA, United States
Rabindranath Tagore
Rabindranath Tagore (7 May 1861 – 7 August 1941) was an Indian polymath who worked as a poet, writer, playwright, composer, philosopher, social reformer, and painter of the Bengal Renaissance. He reshaped Bengali literature and music as well as Indian art with Contextual Modernism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Author of the "profoundly sensitive, fresh and beautiful" poetry of Gitanjali. In 1913, Tagore became the first non-European (non-White) and the first Asian to win a Noble Prize in any category, and also the first lyricist to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. Tagore's poetic songs were viewed as spiritual and mercurial; where his elegant prose and magical poetry were widely popular in the Indian subcontinent. He was a fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society. Referred to as "the Bard of Bengal".
