Most of Rabindranath Tagore’s art works are preserved at national institutes. Bird, an undated painting in ink on brown paper, is from the private collection of another illustrious artist, the late Nandalal Bose. An undated painting in ink on brown paper, by the late poet and Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore, went under the hammer at an online auction hosted by the auction house AstaGuru on Friday. Tagore, a polymath who was also a philosopher, composer, writer, playwright and educator, created thousands of paintings in different mediums, but his works rarely come up at auction. “Tagore was quite a prolific painter, with over 2,300 creations in a little over 10 years, starting at the age of 60, but most of his work is already public in institutions such as Visva Bharati at Santiniketan, or the National Gallery of Modern Art, which do not sell paintings,” says Santiniketan-based art historian R Siva Kumar. Even when a work does surface, since all his works are designated national treasures, none can be taken out of the country. Paintings by Tagore have, incidentally, fetched crores at auction. Bird, the painting in question, is from the collection of another illustrious artist, the late Nandalal Bose. Bidding began at ?20,000 and the work finally sold for over ?9.36 lakh.