Untitled

Towards the end of the nineteenth century, art school-trained artists started stepping out of their studios to paint en plein air from life. This practice was especially popular in western India, particularly in regions such as Kolhapur in Maharashtra and towns outside the metropolitan centre of Bombay. M. V. Dhurandhar too painted in this genre, though he is better known for his narrative sequences in which landscapes featured as a background. Even so, his landscapes had the ability to capture the fluid contours of the region’s geography. Here, Dhurandhar paints the falling twilight on the Western Ghats, a prominent geographical division of the Indian subcontinent.