Norman Douglas Hutchinson, who died in Marrakech, Morocco, last week, had a life that was lifted out of a fairy tale. Norman was an Anglo-Indian who did not know his parents till he became an adult. He was abandoned and taken into that unique institution, Graham’s Homes, Kalimpong, when he was an infant. He grew up in the Homes and it was there that he discovered his talents as a painter. He shot into prominence with his portrait of Lady Mountbatten, then the vicereine of India. Norman was only 18 then. He never looked back and never forgot his roots.
Norman decided to make a career as a painter of portraits. The early days were not without hardship. He bore them with humour and the support of his wife, Gloria, whom he married when he was a young man. His talents were too good to go unrecognized; soon, commissions started coming in. He painted Jawaharlal Nehru, Elizabeth II, Prince Philip and many other luminaries. There hang in quite a few Calcutta drawing rooms paintings by Norman that show his special gifts of eye and craft.
Norman painted with “a sincere hand and a faithful eye”. His portraits were life-like and displayed his outstanding craftsmanship. Degas once said, “We were created to look at one another, weren’t we?’’ Norman’s portraits were reminders of this insight from one of his favourite artists. The person Norman loved to look at and paint again and again was his wife. Gloria was Norman’s muse.
The Hutchinsons moved from Calcutta to London in 1959 and then to France and finally to Morocco. But in many ways, Calcutta and Kalimpong were Norman’s homes. He came back every year during the winter and always stayed in Fairlawn Hotel on Sudder Street. He had an unalloyed loyalty towards Graham’s Homes to which he made many endowments.
He made the effort to find his parents. He discovered that his father was of the lineage of the earl of Queensberry (hence the middle name Douglas) and his mother an ordinary Anglo-Indian girl who, when Norman discovered her, was living in penury. Norman supported her till her death. Norman himself had risen from poverty to affluence. This made him extraordinarily generous.
Norman was an unforgettable man. This will be borne out by all who met him in Calcutta and elsewhere. He had a wicked sense of humour, and laughter was constant when he was around. There was, however, a very serious side to him. He was very conscious of his dignity as an artist. And perhaps because he drew portraits, he could size up an individual’s character and persona almost always correctly and that too at the first meeting. He was also immensely knowledgeable about Western art. I recall sitting with him in a noisy dinner party when he waved everyone away and spoke to me about Degas’s drawings. I came away enriched.
It was apposite that Norman died peacefully before the pain of cancer destroyed his mind and body. Gloria kept from him for one year the news that he had the dreaded disease. He told her that she, their three daughters and all his friends should mourn for him. One can mourn the fact that Norman’s brush will never touch canvas again, one can mourn that his inner eye will never capture the individual he painted, but Norman the man is difficult to mourn because he had so much talent and because he was so much fun. One can only raise a toast to him and expect him to join us from the vaulted sky above where he now resides with the painters.
Rudrangshu Mukherjee
