Amrita Shergil was one of India's first modernist painters. She was educated in Florence and Paris and developed a style that combined the best elements of European academic painting.
Amrita Sher-Gill was born on 1913, in Budapest, Hungary. She was the elder daughter of Umrao Singh Sher-Gil Majithia, a scholar in Persian and Sanskrit and a Sikh aristocrat and Marie Antoinette Gottesmann, a Jewish Opera singer from Hungary.
In 1923, Marie came to know an Italian sculptor, who was living at Shimla at the time, later in 1924 when he returned to Italy. At sixteen, Sher-Gil sailed to Europe with her mother to train as a painter at Paris. She came to India 1934 and painted prolifically till 1941.Her Famous paintings are Young Girls, 1932, Camels, 1935, Hill Women, 1935.Siesta, Nudes, Brahmacharis etc.
The Government of India has declared her works as National Art Treasures , and most of them are housed in the National Gallery of Modern Art in New Delhi, and a postage stamp depicting her painting 'Hill Women' was released in 1978 in India, and a road in Lutyens' Delhi, was named after her, Amrita Shergill Marg.
Annie Besant
Annie Besant the daughter of William Wood and Emily Morris, was born in 1847. Annie's father, a doctor, died when she was only five years old. In 1867, at age nineteen she married 26-year-old clergyman Frank Besant, younger brother of Walter Besant. He was an evangelical Anglican clergyman who seemed to share many of her concerns. Soon Frank became vicar of Sibsey in Lincolnshire. Annie moved to Sibsey with her husband, and within a few years they had two children: Digby and Mabel. The marriage was, however, a disaster. The first conflict came over money and Annie's independence. Annie wrote short stories, books for children and articles. As married women did not have the legal right to own property, Frank was able to take all the money she earned. Politics further divided the couple. After leaving her husband Annie Besant completely rejected Christianity and in 1874 joined the Secular Society. n 1877 Annie Besant and Charles Bradlaugh decided to publish The Fruits of Philosophy, Charles Knowlton's book advocating birth control. Besant and Bradlaugh were charged with publishing material that was "likely to deprave or corrupt those whose minds are open to immoral influences". Besant wrote and published her own book advocating birth control entitled The Laws of Population. The idea of a woman advocating birth-control received wide-publicity. Newspapers like The Times accused Besant of writing "an indecent, lewd, filthy, bawdy and obscene book". After joining the Social Democratic Federation, Annie started her own campaigning newspaper called The Link. Like Catherine Booth of the Salvation Army, Annie was concerned about the health of young women workers at the Bryant & May match factory. On 23rd June, 1888, Annie published an article White Slavery in London where she drew attention to the dangers of phosphorus fumes and complained about the low wages paid to the women who worked at Bryant & May. he became involved in Indian Nationalism and in 1916 established the Indian Home Rule League of which she became President. She started a newspaper, “New India”, criticized British rule and was jailed for sedition. She came to be associated with rationalistic congress group of workers who did not appreciate Gandhi’s views. Mrs. Besant and Tilak worked together till his death.
She believed that she should be born a Hindu in her next birth. She wanted to be cremated at Benaras on the banks of the river Ganga. She breathe her last when she was eighty-six years old in 1933.
