M. V. Dhurandhar

Biography

The book is called Kalamandiratil Ekkechalis Varshe, in English “Forty-one Years in the Temple of Art”. Dhurandhar published it in 1940, and it tells the story of the Sir J. J. School of Art in Bombay, where he spent almost his whole life. For the history of art education in British India it is one of the few accounts from the inside.

He was born on 18 March 1867 in Kolhapur, into a family of the Pathare Prabhu community. He studied at Rajaram High School in Kolhapur, and in 1890 he was admitted to the Sir J. J. School of Art in Bombay. His teacher there was the Englishman John Griffiths, who worked in India. Dhurandhar won many medals while still a student and completed the course in 1895.

In 1896 the school offered him a teaching post, and he stayed there for the rest of his career. In 1910 he was appointed Head Master, and in 1918 Inspector of Drawing and Craft, a position he held until 1931. For the last two years before retiring he was vice-principal. In 1938 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in London.

He drew a great deal; it is said that over his lifetime the total came to several thousand paintings and illustrations, but such a figure is hard to verify. He documented Bombay and its inhabitants, painted scenes from Hindu mythology and made a series based on Omar Khayyam. Some of his work was turned into lithographs, for example the illustrations for Otto Rothfield’s Women of India (1920). He made postcards, and many of them show women of that era at everyday occupations. He illustrated By-Ways of Bombay (1912) by the author S. M. Edwardes and Deccan Nursery Tales by the author C. A. Kincaid, and drew cartoons for the Gujarati periodicals Aram and Bhoot. For the Ravi Varma Press he produced religious illustrations.

In 1926 the ruler of Aundh State, Maharaja Bhawanrao Pantpratinidhi, commissioned paintings from him on the life of Shivaji.

After retiring, Dhurandhar went on painting and prepared his memoirs. He died in Bombay on 1 June 1944.