Thanks to the findings made by a British journalist on the eve of the fiftieth anniversary of the construction of the largest palatial residence in Jodpur (Jodhpur, India), the artistic activities of Stefan Norblin - a popular portraitist of Warsaw's bohemian community in the 1920s - have unexpectedly attracted huge international interest .

Stefan Norblin in India

The outbreak of war forced Stefan Norblin (1892-1952) to leave the country in haste. However, this was not the end of his career, but the beginning of a new oriental strand in his work . Norblin - like his great-grandfather, Jan Piotr Norblin (1745-1830) for the Radziwill family in Nieborów - received commissions in India to decorate palace interiors with paintings .

He obtained the first during conversations with the Maharaja Shree Mahendrasinhji Lukhdhiri - the founder of the palace in Morvi (Gujarat state) - who posed for his portrait. A building with a geometrised, expressive volume, whose curves and roundness gave the whole a form referred to in architecture as 'streamline'. Its avant-garde, modernist body, created in the late 1920s and early 1930s, imposed a modern interior, the character of which was emphasised by paintings by Stefan Norblin . The works of art were themed, coloured and sized to match the existing palace interior design already commissioned by the Maharaja from the London firm of Gregson, Batley & King.

Paintings that combine the modern with the exotic

Stefan Norblin created multi-format paintings in fulfilment of the commissioned task. The colourful compositions, inspired by Indian mythology and legends, were dressed in an Art Deco style costume, resulting in an original combination of modernity with a touch of native exoticism. Unfamiliar in his earlier creative activity, the forms turned out to be in line with the expectations and fashion prevailing among young Indian princes, educated at European universities and closely following artistic innovations. Norblin's fascination with art déco style found good conditions for further development in colonial India, fuelled by the maharajas' excessive extravagance and fantasy. This allowed the artist to paint genre and hunting paintings based on his experience and his own observations .

On the other hand, Norblin created paintings of historical and mythological themes, which required a good knowledge of tradition, on the basis of his reading of two epics important for Indian culture: "Ramayana" and "Mahabharata". For Norblin, the possibility of direct contact with local masterpieces of painting and sculpture was of great importance in accurately capturing and presenting the themes running through them. He came across them both in Bombay , where he spent the first months of his stay in India, and during the expeditions he made to the islands of Garapuria and Elephanta . There he was able to admire scenes carved into caves taken from Hindu myths and songs. View stone reliefs dedicated to the cult of the god Siwa and mythological scenes through which he learned about India's past and history.

All these aspects, and the arrangements he made in parallel with his commissioner, resulted in original forms. Painting compositions that are the result of the artist's direct confrontation with the modernist palace interior and the mythological, multicoloured rhetoric of Hinduism. This is evidenced by the paintings with which he decorated interiors serving a representative function or spaces in which - in accordance with the art déco tradition - furniture is accompanied by multi-format canvases.

A new chapter in Norblin's oeuvre

The colourful collection of painting compositions created by the Polish artist in the early 1940s for the modernist New Palace in Morvi opened a new chapter in Stefan Norblin 's oeuvre. It became the impetus for further commissions in which, for the first time in the artist's oeuvre, a rich colour palette - a wide range of contrasting colours, absent from his earlier works - appeared alongside oriental themes , giving his compositions a character in keeping with Indian tradition.

Completing the task entrusted to him by the Maharaja of Morvi, in which the themes of the paintings were assigned to the functions the rooms were arranged to perform, Stefan Norblin created inspiring compositions, accompanied by the full approval of the commissioning authority. The work he produced was admired not only by the Indians, who were hungry for artistic innovations, but also by the Europeans staying in Morvi. This is evidenced by a note in the diary of a Polish diplomat, Henryk Stebelski (1904-1979) , who wrote under the date 28 December 1942: "I met [...] on the road naval officers who were returning from the Duchy of Morvi, where they had spent Christmas. [...] They told me about the pleasant week they had spent in the duchy, but above all they admired the magnificent frescoes of the new palace in Morvi. They were amazed that these wonders were connected with Poland, as they were painted by Stefan Norblin.".

The paintings that the artist produced for the decoration of the modernist palace in Morvi gave rise to further commissions that he carried out during his stay in India.