Untitled

Pestonji E. Bomanji was once acknowledged as ‘India’s Rembrandt’ for his realistic oil portraits of the Parsi community, to which he belonged and whose members he painted profusely. However, at the beginning of his career, he excelled as a landscape painter, of which this Untitled oil is a captivating example. He was part of Sir J. J. School of Art’s numerous painting expeditions to Ajanta and eventually headed it in 1880. This landscape seems to be a snapshot of the beautiful scenery somewhere between Bombay and Ajanta, the soft pink light of the ethereal dusky sky casting a spell on the land below.