Rabindranāth Tagore's contribution to the visual arts in India is twofold: his own work as a painter and his role in bringing about a new turn in Indian art. These two achievements cannot be separated. His role as a critical interlocutor must be considered alongside his success in becoming an acknowledged painter after having failed initially. Given his multifaceted creative personality, his paintings must also be related to the rest of his works.

Tagore began to paint only in 1928, at the age of sixty-seven. He held his first exhibition in Paris two years later and left an oeuvre of more than 2,300 paintings. However, his interest in painting has a longer history. In his reminiscences, he mentions drawing as an item in the all-round education he received at home as a boy. As with literature and music, he was first drawn to painting by the activities of his elders. His brother Jyotirindranāth, who had a pervasive influence on him, and his cousin Gunendranāth, whose sons Abanindranāth and Gaganendranāth became pioneers of modern art in India, were amateur painters of talent. Rabindranath recollects how, even as he was first gaining recognition as a writer, he would spend afternoons with a drawing book, ‘toying with the desire to make pictures’. He significantly continues: ‘The most important part was that which remained in the mind, and not a line of which got drawn on paper.’ At thirty-nine, he writes to Jagadishchandra Basu (Bose) that his artistic impulse remained as ineffectual as before. Soon after, he gave up the effort until, almost surprising himself, he resumed it successfully in late life.

Abandoning his initial efforts to become a painter did not end his interest in art. His continuing engagement as a critical viewer and interlocutor helped not only to develop a new trajectory of Indian art but also to discover new expressive possibilities in himself. His early response to art was, however, no different from that of other members of his class and time. His first recorded comment on modern Indian art is an appreciative response to Ravi Varmā, who imported the British academic style into Indian art and applied it to Indian subjects, especially mythological.