Face to Face

Portraiture has long been one of art’s most enduring gestures—an encounter between the artist and the human face, where vision meets likeness and identity meets aspiration. Across cultures and centuries, portraits have served as record, testament, tribute and now, as tools for reflection. They have honoured rulers, chronicled empires, captured everyday life and preserved the individuality of the human race. In Bombay, a city shaped by empire, migration and commerce, portraiture becomes a powerful lens through which to view the many communities and individuals key to its evolving identity.

This exhibition traces the trajectory of portraiture in and around Bombay, beginning with the academic realism brought to India through colonial art schools. Under British rule, European naturalism and institutions like the Sir J.J. School of Art introduced a new emphasis on empirical likeness and modelling. Western painters such as Frank Brooks produced portraits of local royalty, articulating early visual codes for power and prestige. Indian artists trained in these schools—M.V. Dhurandhar, M.F. Pithawalla and D.C. Joglekar—adopted and transformed this language. Their portraits of Parsi patrons, princely families and the everyday people of Bombay now stand as a vital visual archive of a city in transition.

As portraiture expanded beyond nobility, the city’s cultural and social rhythms surfaced in these images. Abalal Rahiman’s portraits of regional royalty sit alongside depictions of Bombay’s lay communities, where attire, bearing and self-presentation signal profession, aspiration and belonging. The Progressives who followed—F.N. Souza, M.F. Husain, Akbar Padamsee—recast the portrait altogether, deviating from academic conventions to explore depth and selfhood.

Portraiture, thus, becomes more than representation; it becomes a way of reading history. Each face is an entry point into the social, political and cultural worlds of its time. Bombay—restless, layered, plural—finds its reflections in these portraits: rulers and reformers, communities and individuals, the known and the unknown. Together, they form a collective memory of a city and its people.