The offered lot depicts Bengali poet, Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941). The first non-European to win the Nobel Prize in Literature (1913), the Gitanjali author, was highly influential in introducing the best of Indian culture to the West and vice versa. He is generally regarded as the outstanding creative artist of modern South Asia. Born in Calcutta, Tagore began writing poetry as an eight-year old. By 16, he had released his first substantial poems under a pseudonym, being seized upon by literary authorities as long-lost classics. He was taught at home as a child, but left for formal schooling in England in 1878 to study law at University College, London; however, he never finished his degree. Tagore returned to India in 1901 where he began an ashram in Shantiniketan which became his focal point for writing and his view on schooling. After being awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, his writings became known internationally. Due to his fame, Tagore traveled extensively, giving lectures and recitals around the world. His compositions were chosen by two nations as national anthems (India’s Jana Gana Mana and Bangladesh’s Amar Shonar Bangla). Besides a poet and composer, Tagore was also a humanist, universalist internationalist, and nationalist – he denounced the Raj and advocated independence from Britain. He was an exponent of the Bengal Renaissance and founded the Visva-Bharati University and co-founded the Dartington Hall School in Japan. He died at the age of 80 in 1941. Every year many events pay tribute to Tagore. His birth anniversary (Kabipranam) is celebrated by many groups scattered across the globe, the Tagore Festival is held in Urbana, Illinois and walking pilgrimages are held in his honor from Calcutta to Santiniketan.

Paul Paulin (1852-1937) was born in Chamaliers, France and began his professional career not as an artist, but a dentist. However, his passion for art led him to make the acquaintance of several prominent artists and he eventually pursued a secondary career as a sculptor. His primary focus was in modeling and casting busts of important figures like Tagore and his artistic friends, including Rodin, Monet, Renoir and Degas. He retained his career as a dentist throughout his artistic career, but found success as an artist exhibiting at the Salon des artists Franics from 1882 to 1889 and at the Salon des Beaux-Arts in 1901. Forty-six years following his death in 1937, an exhibition of Paulin’s work was held in Clermont-Ferrand, France where museums and private collectors from around the world displayed works by Paulin.