Rabindranath learnt drawing in his childhood and was attracted to the sketches drawn by his elder brother Jyotirindranath.
In 1924, while writing Purabi he started doodling on the pages of his manuscript. Thus, Rabindranath Tagore's famous world appearence as painter in France in 1930 was not sudden. Long before the Paris exhibition which catapaulted him to worldwide fame, in 1926, Tagore had long discussions on his art with Romain Rolland. Himself a Nobel Laureate, Romain Rolland wrote in his book "Inde-Journal" on 3rd July, 1926, that Tagore had been discussing on his application of colour in paintings. He likes very little red colour, the dominance of red colour in Italian village did not attract him. His love was for violet and blue, and for green. Tagore had discussions about art with another Nobel laureate, French Poet, St John Perse, over their several meetings in 1920s.
Rabindranath transformed his lack of formal training into an advantage and opened new horizons in the use of line and colour. He was prolific in his paintings and sketches as he was in his writing, producing over 2500 of these within a decade. Over 1500 of them are preserved in Viswa Bharati, Santiniketan.
