After being stowed away in store rooms for years together, 65 paintings from the historic Bombay school look almost pleased to be out in a well-lit gallery so chilled by the air conditioner that it will make your glasses fog up.
In the past three years, the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya, or CSMVS, has hosted exhibitions from Britain and the Netherlands, and displayed artefacts of Egypt and Persia, among other regions. While the shows received praise, it also struck local artists like Dilip Ranade and Suhas Bahulkar as ironical that the museum had not hosted art that had developed within the city. This is set to change with Pravaha: Glimpses of the Art of Bombay School, a showcase of key artworks of the Bombay style from the 1870s to the 1950s.
The show, curated by Ranade, will open with a talk on the subject by Bahulkar. It will give viewers a sense of the flow of the school's development through four phases - the European academic style, the en plein air landscape painting with the influence of Impressionism and Post-Impressionism, Bombay Revivalism and the breakaway approach of the Bombay Progressive Group. Many pieces are part of the CSMVS' collection but have not been exhibited before. Some works also belong to the Jehangir Nicholson Art Foundation.
The Bombay style emerged from the Sir JJ School of Art, which was set up in 1857 to train Indian artists who were helping British artists in their assignments. Here, Bombay's painters such as Rustam Siodia, Abalal Rahiman and Manchershaw Pithawala were introduced to concepts like perspective and scale. The exhibit for the academic phase comprises mainly portraits and the most striking works in this style are by Pestonji Bomanji, a contemporary of Raja Ravi Varma. While considered equally talented, Bomanji fell behind Varma in recognition because his subjects were gloomy while Varma's were bright and eye-catching, says Ranade.
Seeking to bring the effect of light into their works, artists gradually ventured into the open air to draw impressionistic landscapes. The interest in watercolour landscapes was stirred by Cecil Burns, principal of JJ School from 1898-1918, who excelled in the form. The resulting works depict scenes from Mahim Bunder and Karla. Notable among these is After Fishing by K B Chudekar, which expertly portrays shadows and reflection.
Lamentably, large chunks of the Bombay school have been forgotten for lack of systematic documentation. "Even if people have heard terms like 'Bombay Revivalism', they most likely do not know what it means," says Bahulkar. Revivalism here was a consequence of the efforts of W E Gladstone Solomon, a former army captain and dean at JJ School, who introduced the study of human anatomy and nude drawing. The indigenous Indian-style paintings by J M Ahivasi and R D Dhopeshwarkar display nuances that set them apart from Bengal revivalist works. They were more realistically driven, accurately depicting biceps and folds of skin at the joints while the treatment in Bengal was suppler.
In 1947 came the Progressive Artists' Movement, which denounced rigid art school education and explored Western contemporary styles with a strong sense of national identity. It fizzled out after a year due to lack of a clear ideology but its members went on to get individual fame. Assistant curator Prasanna Mangrulkar points out an expressionist portrait of sculptor A R Leyden's mother by Austrian painter Walter Langhammer, who was one of the Europeans to support the progressives. It is flanked by very early works of K H Ara and S H Raza. Langhammer's influence is hard to miss. Raza's piece also draws from French fauvism with a beastly use of colours.
An encyclopaedia on the Bombay school in Marathi titled Chitra Charitakosh, authored by Bahulkar, was published last year. The artist, who is working on an English translation, has also proposed a museum on the legacy of the JJ School of Art. He hopes the exhibition will kindle an appetite for this slice of art history so that the paintings will not return to dark storage spaces.
The exhibition will open on June 11 and continue until August 17 at Premchand Roychand Gallery, CSMVS
