A Forgotten Goan Christian Painter

Was Angelo Fonseca a victim of Indian Nationalism and anti-colonial trends of contemporary art?
asks Teotónio de Souza

Historical Explorations

On 30th July 1946 Tristão Bragança e Cunha was awarded eight years of exile and fifteen years
of suspension of political rights by the Territorial Military Court of the Estado da Índia. One of
his alleged crimes was the publication of a booklet on Denationalisation of Goans. Also in a
speech to the Goan Youth League in Bombay in April 1946 T.B. Cunha denounced the lack of
political consciousness among the Goans who seemed proud to be Portuguese, and quoted
from an electoral speech of Dr. Froilano de Mello who had just then been elected to represent
Goa in the Portuguese parliament.

These were developments in the wake of the notorious Colonial Act of Salazar regime. It had
reduced the Goans to a second-class citizenship. During all this period the church and priests of
Goa were indoctrinated by preachings and writings of the Archbishop D. José da Costa Nunes.
In one of his sixty and odd monthly letters to Goan clergy he sought to convince them that
without the Portuguese they would be nothing! T.B. Cunha became one of the first Goan
freedom-fighters to be sent to Fort Peniche jail until he was granted amnesty in 1950 with
restrictions on domicile and obligation of reporting regularly to the Police Department. His
escape from Portugal is a different part of this saga.

The Indian independence movement and the overall world pressure against Colonialism posed
challenges to the Indian Christianity linked to the Portuguese Padroado and the English church
denominations. It is not surprising if some in the Church leadership foresaw the need of making
concessions to the Indian nationalism to secure a less troublesome future for the continued links
with the colonial church.
It is against this logic that I tend to view the artistic performance of Angelo Fonseca and the
patronage he experienced from the European Jesuits in India, more particularly Marion Batson
S.J. of Patna Mission, H. Heras S.J. of Bombay, and M. Lederle S.J. of the Goa-Pune Province of
the Jesuits. I had the opportunity of knowing Angelo Fonseca while I was a novice of the Jesuits
in Deshnur in 1967, and much later, as Director of the Xavier Centre of Historical Research
obtained through Fr. Joe Ubelmesser, S.J. the Jesuit procurator of missions in Nurnberg a dozen
of Angelo Fonseca’s originals for the Xavier Centre. That was the beginning of a collection
which more recently has grown sizably with the help of Mrs. Ivy Fonseca, the widow of the
artist. The housing of this sizable collection of a pioneer Indian Christian painter is a privilege,
but simultaneously a challenge to the Xavier Centre of Historical Research and its intellectual
mission.

Despite a Vatican promoted international exhibition of his art, and despite some parallel
exhibitions elsewhere in Europe, including Lisbon, this talented Goan painter remains
ostracized from the family of better-recognized Indian artists in India and worldwide. The
prominent Portuguese Art historians, such as José-Augusto França, a contemporary of Angelo
Fonseca, and probably aware of his exhibition in Lisbon in 1948, or Pedro Dias, who includes
illustrations from the paintings in the Xavier Centre of Historical Research, do not make any
reference to Angelo Fonseca. Pedro Dias did not forget the Moghul miniatures and the Jesuit
connection, but failed to discover the parallel in Angelo Fonseca’s paintings and his Jesuit
connection as depicted in his inclusion of Fr. Heras in the Moghul court.

There is much to be researched to help us understand why so little is known about Angelo
Fonseca’s links with Lisbon at a time when T.B. Cunha was languishing in the Peniche jail. The
patronage of the exhibition by the SNI chaired by António Ferro, a cultural propaganda
machine of Salazar regime, needs to be better known. Probably, the post-doctoral research grant
of the Portuguese Foundation of Science and Technology (FCT) to the director of the Xavier
Centre of Historical Research, may enable Fr. Délio Mendonça to provide us some answers.
There is also a doubt raised by Fr. M. Lederle, S.J., whose talks and writings, furnished
interesting details about the life and work of Angelo Fonseca, but there is a blank about the
Lisbon visit and exhibition. Was that to avoid any political embarrassment?

It could be interesting to analyse the above mentioned ostracism of Angelo Fonseca in the
context of the recent hindu revivalism in India and the rough treatment meted out to Christian
minorities in some parts of the country. Was Angelo Fonseca a victim of the Indian nationalism
and the anti-colonial trends of then contemporary art? Would Angelo Fonseca be suspected of
playing a game of the Christian church leaders who sought to indigenize Christian art as a
political strategy? How would one compare Angelo Fonseca’s ideology with Sadhu Sunder
Singh?

We should not forget that in Europe, including Portugal, the period in question is marked by
modernist trend in art. This trend was heavily marked by anti-establishment feelings, and was
obviously opposed to the political marriage of the Church with Salazar’s New State. But then as
later, the Portuguese of all political colours saw themselves differently from the colonial
«natives». While they could fight against their oppressive regime at home, they failed to
understand the right of the Indians or Africans to reject their colonial rulers and their
impositions. This and other ambiguities of Portuguese modernists need further study.
To conclude, one final reflection: If any Tagore ever advised Angelo Fonseca to go and paint
churches, was that a helpful advice, or did it condemn Angelo Fonseca to the ostracism we have
laid bare? We need a much more documented study of Angelo Fonseca than any so far in
existence. This is my challenge to the historians of the Xavier Centre of Historical Research or to
any other historians in Goa or elsewhere. This is also a special challenge to art historians to
define better what they understand or we should understand by modern art.

Published in HERALD, Panaji – Goa, Vol. CX, Nº 107, Saturday, 24 April, 2010, P. 8