David McCutchion
Early life
McCutchion was born in Coventry, England, and attended the red brick-built King Henry VIII Grammar School. While there it was bombed in a German raid and he was evacuated for a time. After the war he spent a year on national service in Singapore with the R.A.F. He went up to Cambridge in 1950 to read Modern Languages (French and German) at Jesus College. An interest in the East was whetted by his time in Malaya, and after a period teaching in schools in southern France, he decided to travel out to India.
An academic in Bengal
In Jesus College his interest in the East had led to him being a keen member of the
Terracotta temples
Around 1960 McCutchion met and developed an important friendship with Satyajit Ray based on a relaxed rapport. They both shared a taste for western baroque music. Ray asked him to help translate his film dialogue from Bengali into English, a task that helped inversely to increase McCutchion's command of Bengali. It was while on shooting location in Birbhum district for Abhijan in 1962, that McCutchion developed a fascination for the brick temples scattered across the Bengal landscape.[3] Over the next decade they became a passion; of categorising, conservation and documentation, driving his use of photography as a recording device. His photographic collection amounting to some 20,000 images (colour slides and b/w prints) was acquired by the V & A with copies held by the 'International Centre for Study of Bengal Art (ICSBA)'. He also studied and collected the Bengali patua art, or scroll paintings of traditional artists, which developed out of the religious art surrounding the temples. This collection was later bequeathed to the Herbert Art Gallery in Coventry.
Early death
It was the arduous demands and hazards of tramping the Indian countryside that brought about his early and sudden death, a result of
Selected bibliography
- The Temples of Bankura District(Calcutta, Writers Workshop [c1967])
- Indian Writing in English: Critical Essays (Calcutta: Writers Workshop, 1969)
- Late Mediaeval Temples of Bengal: Origins and Classification (Calcutta: The Asiatic Society, 1972)
- The epistles of David-Kaka to Plalm’n [1960-1971]: the record of a friendship (Calcutta: Writers Workshop, 1972)
- Brick Temples of Bengal: From the Archives of David McCutchion, (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1983), his research collected, interpreted and published by George Michell.
- Patuas and Patua Art in Bengal by David McCutchion and Suhrid K. Bhowmik, (Calcutta : Firma KLM, 1999).
- Unpublished Letters & Selected Articles by David J. McCutchion, (Calcutta : Monfakira Books, 2009).
References
- ^ "Rollason, Robert, Obituary from Jesus College Annual report 2005, p117" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 7 June 2011. Retrieved 18 June 2009.
- ^ "Rollason, Christopher, "David McCutchion, Pioneer Critic of Raja Rao", published as a chapter in the book Raja Rao: The Master and his Moves, ed. Jaydeep Sarangi, (New Delhi: Authorpress, 2006), pp9-20" (PDF). Retrieved 10 August 2009.
- ^ Ray, Satyajit in 'Introduction' to Brick Temples of Bengal: From the Archives of David McCutchion edited by George Michell, (Princeton University Press, 1983)
- ^ W. Andrew Robinson. Satyajit Ray, The Inner Eye – (London: Andre Deutsch, 1989), pp. 329–331.
- ^ Das, Soumitra (10 January 2010). "Davidbabu's Data Bank". The Telegraph. No. Kolkata. Archived from the original on 3 February 2013. Retrieved 28 August 2015.