The private creative world of Rabindranath Tagore, the man Yeats called ‘greater than any of us’

I t’s easy to run out of words to describe Rabindranath Tagore. The first non-European to win the Nobel prize in literature, Tagore was a Bengali poet, musician, novelist, philosopher, songwriter, painter, humanist and educator.

Born in 1861, Tagore left an indelible mark on the subcontinent’s literature, music, education and art. Among his enduring legacies are the national anthems of India and Bangladesh.

As Nobel laureate economist Amartya Sen once wrote , Tagore was “a towering figure in the millennium-old literature of Bengal”, whose songs resonate across eastern India and Bangladesh, while his ideas on education, nationalism and freedom of the mind remain relevant today.

Yet his work also made a deep impression on the literary world far beyond the shores of India. WB Yeats is said to have described Tagore as “greater than any of us”. Gitanjali, the collection of poems that won Tagore the Nobel prize that same year, was praised by the committee for its “profoundly sensitive, fresh and beautiful verse”. Tagore’s English translation was published in London that March and reprinted 10 times by the time the prize was announced in November.

Tagore’s life and works have, of course, been well documented, but a collection of material preserved in a private family archive is now being brought into public view for the first time at an exhibition by Christie’s, opening in Mumbai this month. The archive draws from Tagore’s visits to the family home of his protege, Maitreyi Devi, in the bucolic village of Mungpoo in Darjeeling between 1938 and 1940. He died in 1941.

An intimate glimpse … one of Tagore’s unseen artwork on display. Photograph: Christie’s Images Ltd 2026

The collection on display – artworks, manuscripts, letters, photographs and personal effects – offers an intimate glimpse into Tagore’s creative process and personal world in his final years.

I spoke to the exhibition curator, Nishad Avari, head of south Asian modern and contemporary art at Christie’s, about the stories behind the archive.

One instructive document Avari points to is a manuscript from 1940. It appears to be a draft of Tagore’s memoir Chelebela or My Boyhood Days, in which he reflects on his life – from growing up in a large family in Calcutta (modern-day Kolkata) to the rapidly changing world ushered in by electricity and the motorcar.

For Avari, what stood out was how the ideas in the document echoed the educational philosophy Tagore put into practice in Santiniketan (or Abode of Peace), the experimental school he set up about 100 miles from the state capital.

“He speaks about how education is like being in prison and that it should be open and free … about the idea of wonder and even fear as inspiring creativity,” Avari told me.

“That’s a direct relationship to Santiniketan and the open model of the school where people sat under trees with their gurus and learned in the open. Education didn’t feel like a restriction, prison or imposition,” he added.

Window to a master’s practice … A manuscript by Rabindranath Tagore, on display at Christie’s. Photograph: Christie’s Images Ltd 2026

Avari points to another detail that makes this particular document valuable. Of the 10 complete manuscripts in the exhibition, it is the only one dictated to Devi, whose father was a close friend of Tagore’s. For Avari, this speaks to their close relationship and the trust he placed in her.

“If you look at the collection as a whole, she has copies of almost every single one of his publications signed to her by him,” he says. The collection includes hundreds of letters, too: first between Tagore and her father, and later between Tagore and Devi herself.

There are doodles among corrections, Avari explains, which show how his literary practice fed into his artistic practice. Alongside the manuscripts and correspondence are vintage photographs and personal effects, including a kurta and a lungi that Tagore left behind at the family home.

Among the artworks in the collection is a portrait of Devi, particularly notable because Tagore’s figure studies were not generally attributed to specific individuals in the way that portraits by his nephews, Abanindranath and Gaganendranath, often were, Avari said. There is also a landscape depicting the forests of Mungpoo, which Tagore embraced as a retreat.

On the international art market, Tagore’s paintings command significant prices. This year, Sotheby’s sold one of his watercolours for £1.02m (Rs 12.97 crore), nearly four times its low estimate.

Institutions such as Visva-Bharati in Santiniketan and the National Gallery of Modern Art hold much of Tagore’s archival materials, making the discovery of a private archive particularly rare.

He hopes that making these materials public will offer historians, scholars and admirers alike additional perspectives on Tagore. “We hope to add to the understanding of the artist, their career, and in this case, of course, our understanding of the man beyond his art as well.”

Rabindranath Tagore and Mungpoo runs between 10 November and 18 December at Christie’s space in south Mumbai.

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