Untitled (Keechaka and Sairandhri)

One of India’s most awarded artists whose association with Sir J.J. School of Art in Bombay as both alumnus and faculty inspired and influenced future generations, Rao Bahadur M. V. Dhurandhar famously followed in the footsteps of Raja Ravi Varma as a portraitist and history painter. Where he differed from his senior peer was in giving representation to his Pathare Prabhu community by way of clothes, jewellery, and architecture in setting his mythological scenes. The story of Keechaka and Sairandhri from the Mahabharata, greatly popular among the local population, had become a trope for colonial oppression and exploitation, in turn replicated plentifully in art as well as in Marathi theatre. In this dramatic recreation by Dhurandhar, Draupadi, in her disguise as Sairandhri, confronts the lusty Keechaka in a scene that had previously also been painted by Ravi Varma.