Important Notice

Born in Kolhapur in 1867, Mahadev Vishwanath Dhurandhar was a leading figure of the Bombay School. During the late 19th and early 20th century, while the Revivalist Movement in Bengal challenged the dominance of British academic art education by advocating a return to indigenous artistic traditions, artists in Bombay embraced the techniques of Western academic realism while applying them to distinctly Indian subjects. Dhurandhar was at the... Born in Kolhapur in 1867, Mahadev Vishwanath Dhurandhar was a leading figure of the Bombay School. During the late 19th and early 20th century, while the Revivalist Movement in Bengal challenged the dominance of British academic art education by advocating a return to indigenous artistic traditions, artists in Bombay embraced the techniques of Western academic realism while applying them to distinctly Indian subjects. Dhurandhar was at the forefront of this approach, employing the language of European naturalism to depict subjects drawn from Indian history, mythology, literature, and contemporary life with exceptional technical skill. His meticulously executed watercolours and oil paintings bridged academic realism and popular visual culture, earning him widespread acclaim and establishing him as one of the most celebrated Indian artists of the early 20th century, second only to Raja Ravi Varma in popularity.

Dhurandhar studied at the J J School of Art in Bombay from 1890 to 1895, where he mastered the principles of European academic realism—such as life drawing, anatomy, linear perspective, chiaroscuro, and oil painting—under the mentorship of the school’s principal, John Griffiths, an accomplished oil and watercolour painter. His exceptional talent was recognised early on while he was still a student. In 1892, he received a cash prize from the Bombay Art Society for his charcoal drawing Household Work, and three years later became the first Indian artist to win the Society’s gold medal with Do You Come Laxmi?, exhibited at its seventh annual exhibition in 1895.

Painted in 1899, the present lot is among Dhurandhar’s earliest and most accomplished mythological paintings, executed just four years after he graduated from art school. The work is notable for its scale and is one of his largest known single‒deity portraits, setting it apart from the genre scenes and multi‒figure compositions for which he is well regarded. Its subject, the Hindu goddess Mahalaxmi, reflects a broader shift in late 19th‒century Indian art, popularised by Raja Ravi Varma, in which divine figures were increasingly rendered in more naturalistic forms that viewers could identify with more closely. Dhurandhar not only admired Ravi Varma—whom he met in 1896—but also developed a strong working relationship with him and created several works for the Ravi Varma Press over his career. The choice was also likely a personal one. The artist’s hometown of Kolhapur is known for its Shri Ambabai Mahalaxmi Temple, considered one of the Shakti Peethas or holy sites associated with the goddess Sati.

Encouraged by Griffiths, Dhurandhar spent much of his spare time sketching from life. He paid close attention to the way people dressed and the nuances of their behaviour and body language and cultivated a sharp eye for detail. He often drew women going about their daily lives–walking, cooking, tending to their children, or at leisure—with unusual delicacy. For a conservative Maharashtrian artist of the period, this sustained interest in the female figure was unusual, setting him apart from many of his contemporaries and broadening the range of his work. These studies later informed his illustrations for publications such as Otto Rothfeld’s Women of India (1920) and Percival and Olivia Strip’s The Peoples of Bombay (1944). More importantly, they lent his watercolours and large‒scale paintings an exceptional degree of naturalism, enabling him to endow even mythological figures, like that of the present lot, with a convincing human presence.

Dhurandhar constructs the figure of Mahalaxmi according to the ideals of classical European sculpture, with slender limbs, a narrow waist, softly modelled forms, and prominent drapery. Recalling his first encounter with this aesthetic at the J J School of Art he remarked, “Standing in front of the huge plaster‒of‒paris statues of the Venus de’ Medici, Apollo Belvedere, Apollo Saurochthonos and The Discobolos I felt as if in a dream... went round and round the statues and yet I was not sated...Even out in the street, I felt like one possessed and kept seeing them appear before me.” (Artist quoted in Suhas Bahulkar, “Master Artist of India’s Colonial Era”, M V Dhurandhar: The Romantic Realist, New Delhi: DAG, 2018, p. 32)

Yet despite its classical modelling, the goddess remains unmistakably Indian in appearance. Dhurandhar, who was from Maharashtra’s Pathare Prabhu community, portrays Mahalaxmi wearing a traditional Maharashtrian nauvari (nine‒yard) sari with an elegant gold zari border. Notably, he clothes her in white—a colour more commonly associated with the goddess Saraswati, symbolising purity and knowledge—rather than the red traditionally worn by Lakshmi. She is further adorned with finely detailed Maharashtrian jewellery, including a nath (nose ring), bugadi (an upper‒ear ornament), and tode (thick bangles).

Drawing from traditional Indian mythological iconography, the goddess holds a chakra (discus), a lotus, a panapatra (drinking vessel) containing amrit, the elixir of immortality in Hindu mythology, and a gada (mace). Dhurandhar departs from convention by placing her at the water’s edge rather than upon a lotus pedestal, with the flowers floating gently beside her. This iconography presents Mahalaxmi not merely as the consort of Vishnu but as an autonomous divine force. By placing attributes more commonly associated with Vishnu—such as the chakra and gada—in her hands, Dhurandhar elevates her from a symbolic embodiment of wealth and emphasises her independent authority and cosmic power to bestow protection and abundance.

The dark, atmospheric landscape recalls the conventions of European academic painting but its location is deliberately undefined. This draws the viewer’s attention to the radiant figure of the goddess and lends her a mysterious aura. As a whole, the composition exemplifies Dhurandhar’s ability to merge the academic principles taught at the JJ School of Art at the turn of the century with Indian visual traditions. This synthesis became a hallmark of his practice, earning him imperial and princely patronage and securing places for many of his works in museum collections across the Bombay Presidency.

The present lot is further distinguished by its exceptional provenance. It originates from the collection of Sheth Purushottam Vishram Mavji, a prominent Indian merchant, publisher, philanthropist, and collector of the early 20th century. Dhurandhar began a long professional association with him in 1901, when the artist was commissioned to illustrate Mavji’s periodical Suvarnamala. Over the following decade, Dhurandhar also produced numerous mythological illustrations for Mavji’s Laxmi Art Printing Press, where the pioneer of Indian cinema, Dadasaheb Phalke, was briefly a partner. Mavji later contributed a substantial number of objects from his private collection to the Prince of Wales Museum (now the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya) in Mumbai. The painting remained in the Mavji family by descent before entering a private collection in Mumbai in 2014. Its continuous ownership history, beginning with one of Dhurandhar’s earliest patrons and collaborators, gives the work a remarkably strong and well‒documented provenance, rarely encountered for paintings of this period.

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