My Favorite Painting Is Finally Home
Art is meant to fill people with emotion and inspiration, but one painting always had my heart.
I’ve been living away from my country of birth, Bangladesh, since 1998 and to be completely honest, I feel more disconnected with her than ever. I guess that’s only normal after being away from a place for over two decades. But like watching aging parents and relatives, it’s also a very sad truth to accept. That seems to be a constant as I enter deeper into my 40’s: sad truths.
Recently, I brought back a relic from my childhood in Dhaka, Bangladesh that I always coveted but never thought would own: my favorite painting. I loved it so much as a little girl and I appreciate it even more as a woman.
I kept the painting in my home office for weeks until I finally took it to be framed in DC. I spent hours looking at it every day and it makes me cry with nostalgia. Not only does it make me reflect on how far and long I’ve lived away from my Motherland, but how much joy this piece of art brought me as a child. The memories make me smile through my tears.
I just love the colors and poise of the women and the pose of their bodies. They are so connected yet clearly so individual, as I think is depicted through their bold sari colors. The women look like they share a secret.
This painting hung on the main wall of the “fancy living room” in my parent’s Dhanmondi house, greeting guests who came to our frequent political dinner parties. It was a centerpiece in a home filled with work from iconic Bangladeshi artists. But despite all the others, it was this Quamrul Hassan piece titled, Tin Kanya, meaning “three women” in Bengali, that delighted my siblings and I.
Rural women and their plight is a common theme in Hassan’s work and his portrayal of them highlight the female connection. Hassan usually paints women in groups and it is rare to find a solo painting of a woman by him. According to Hassan’s Wikipedia page, his paintings of women can be divided into three phases: the 50’s love and premarital stage, the 70’s happy conjugal life, and then the 80’s period of marital separation.
I always assumed Hassan was influenced by Picasso’s cubism but it was apparently Henri Matisse who he drew inspiration from. Despite Hassan’s death in 1988, his art remains a part of Bangladesh's political history, and the artist was active in the country’s Liberation War against Pakistan in 1971.
Taking this original Quamrul Hassan painting that I grew up with in Dhaka to the framing store last week in Washington, DC and selecting its new mounting, made me overcome with emotion. I was literally encasing one of the most beautiful pieces from my childhood, my past.
I managed to hold back tears as I thought not only about having a part of my family’s Dhanmondi house in Bangladesh at my home in DC, (such a full-circle life moment), but the gratitude I have for my parents for giving me a piece of our family history, and my Motherland’s, to always have with me.
My favorite painting is finally home.