Important Notice

M V Dhurandhar's art primarily focussed on scenes from Indian history, literature, and mythology, articulated in a Western academic style. The Kolhapur-born artist is "regarded as the second most popular Indian artist, after Raja Ravi Varma, in the first half of the twentieth century." (Ritu Vajpeyi Mohan ed., M V Dhurandhar: The Romantic Realist, New Delhi: DAG, 2018, p. 13) His "... popularity among the masses, finesse in art and... M V Dhurandhar's art primarily focussed on scenes from Indian history, literature, and mythology, articulated in a Western academic style. The Kolhapur-born artist is "regarded as the second most popular Indian artist, after Raja Ravi Varma, in the first half of the twentieth century." (Ritu Vajpeyi Mohan ed., M V Dhurandhar: The Romantic Realist, New Delhi: DAG, 2018, p. 13) His "... popularity among the masses, finesse in art and related services to the British government" was such that he was awarded the title of Rao Bahadur in 1927. (Suhas Bahulkar quoted in Kishore Singh ed., "M V Dhurandhar," Masterpieces of Indian Modern Art, 2016, New Delhi: DAG, p. 172)

Dhurandhar contributed significantly to the academic style that was popular at the time by creating "impactful works that rooted the alien style in an Indian ethos, thereby bridging the European and the Indian and extending the discourse around the making of a then contemporary Indian art in the early nineteenth and twentieth century." (Mohan ed., p. 23) A gifted artist who displayed "a keen understanding of the play of light and shade" while he was still a student at the Sir J J School of Art, Dhurandhar later went on to gain a formidable reputation "as a great painter in the European academic style, one who painted religious, mythological, historical as well as social themes along with portraits and landscapes." (Mohan ed., pp. 28-29)

As indicated through his extensive body of work including detailed watercolours and lavish oil paintings, Dhurandhar managed to maintain a "fine balance between popular commercial art and the academic realism that Ravi Varma was known for. In his own right, as a dutiful teacher in the British-run J J School of Art and also as a successful painter, Dhurandhar was to impress the coming three generations of artists. Although his use of the brush was almost ascetic, he had a princely eye for detail. No wonder this Kolhapur-born artist, who retained his indigenous and vernacular values in the same breath as the high English etiquette, refined this very dichotomy when he painted." (Abhijeet Tamhane, Manifestations II: Indian Art in the 20th Century, New Delhi: DAG, 2004, p. 91)

The present lot reflects both Dhurandhar's 'princely eye for detail' and his dedication to the realist school he subscribed to. The foliage and architectural structure, rendered in painstaking detail here also reflect his skill in capturing the interplay of light and shadow. While he remains faithful to Western academic realism here, Dhurandhar also successfully plants elements that are distinctly Indian including the characters dressed in local attire and the architectural ruins in the background, displaying his "ability to combine cultures" which "earned him respect gaining him imperial as well as royal patronage. As a result, several of his works found their way to museums, chiefly within the Presidency."(Mohan ed., p. 23)

While Dhurandhar was immensely popular amongst the royal families of the region, his works also reached out to the masses since "Swarnamala regularly featured one coloured and eight black-and-white illustrations by Dhurandhar. The artist, not surprisingly, reached the common as well as the elite class." (Suhas Bahulkar quoted in Kishore Singh ed., "M V Dhurandhar," Masterpieces of Indian Modern Art II, 2017, p. 222)

In 1933, Dhurandhar received a royal commission from the Maharaja of Chhota Udaipur, a princely state in Gujarat. The commission included the creation of 16 murals on themes that "represented the diversity of work in which, so far, he had proved his skill, consisting of paintings ranging from subjects of mythology to landscapes as well as representations of Indian seasons. While there was some unpleasantness in the commercial agreement and how it was ultimately settled, the works that Dhurandhar left behind in Chhota Udaipur were indeed grand." (Mohan ed., p. 51) The present lot, painted in 1934, is believed to have been created as a part of the same commission.

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