Osian's Auction Catalogue ABC Series III | March 2007

ABC Series III 14 6 H.M. PHADNIS (1885–1954) Brahmin Signed in English ‘H.M.’ l.r. Charcoal on paper, c .1929 23.6 x 17.5 in (60.0 x 44.5 cm) INR 500,000 – 625,000 USD 11,300 – 14,100 5 M.V. DHURANDHAR (1867–1944) Nude Study S/d in English ‘M Dhurandhar 1943’ l.r. Watercolour on paper, 1943 10.1 x 5.2 in (25.6 x 13.3 cm) INR 160,000 – 200,000 USD 3,600 – 4,500 ‘Young Dhurandhar’s fascination withVenus de Medici and Apollo Saurochthonos had drawn him to art: gure painting remained a lifelong passion with him though a private one. Dhurandhar continued to produce nudes even as a teacher, though models were not easily available. Like many other colonial artists, he mostly relied on prints and photographs, and sent regularly for English books on gure drawing as well as Parisian photographic studies of the nude, commonly used by Western artists. It was in the 1920s that regular drawings from undraped gures were introduced at the school by Gladstone Solomon. Even then Dhurandhar never ceased to use photographs as a source for gure work. This constant scrutiny of the human form gave him the condence to produce large-scale gures…’ – Partha Mitter rpt. in Art and Nationalism in Colonial India 1850-1922: Occidental Orientations, 1994 pp. 92-4.