Maharashtra's Ravi Varma

The sketch of a lady washing her exposed rear with a lota is not what you'd usually expect to find at an art exhibition in India in the genre of conventional academic realism – the art of replicating real life in art, verbatim. Nor of a Maharashtrian lady in nine-yard sari locking lips with her man. Or the crumpled body of a man just run over by a bullock cart. Or of a very panicked Menaka in Valmiki's Ramayana hurriedly putting on her clothes on seeing sage Vishwamitra having caught her nude. Or of a nubile pre-pubescent girl bathing at Nashik ghat as the elders wash their dirty linen that can elicit discomfort in the times of #MeToo.

All the above themes, painted by Mahadev Vishwanath (MV) Dhurandhar (1867-1944) form just a fraction of his vast oeuvre. This JJ School of Art alumni from Kolhapur, Maharashtra, was a compulsive sketcher, attempting both, traditional and radical themes in watercolour – festivals, still life, portraiture, landscapes, epics, Shivaji's one-upmanship against Mughal rulers, costume-study of every class and caste – from the barber, fisherman, Hindu widow, Parsi priest, female nudes, and even women at weddings for the variety of voguish garb of the times.

Recognising him a crucial chronicler of the times, two Mumbai art spaces are commemorating his 151st birth anniversary through individual exhibitions – The National Gallery of Modern Art (NGMA) at MG Road is showing 'The Romantic Realist' and the Bhau Daji Lad Musuem (BDL) in Byculla has 'Chronicles of an Artist Little Known', ongoing.

The time-starved can visit the BDL exhibition – prints and books from Delhi-based art collector Omar Khan – as despite it being smaller than NGMA, it touches on all the high points in Dhurandhar's 50-year career. The enlarged prints of his early 1900's morality tales on display here, are quite chuckle worthy. For instance, there's a 10-postcard series of the love-triangle between a bourgeoisie husband his wife and the new maid in the house – the latter ultimately shown the door. "Soon after these works, Dadasaheb Phalke founded Indian cinema, and these same stories were put into his movies, with the original screenplay on postcards illustrated by the likes of Dhurandhar. I'm sure there was a relationship between Dhurandhar and films," says Khan about the first Indian postcard artist. In fact, the JJ School of Art recently published a second edition of his Kalamandiratil Ekkechalis Varshe (Forty One Years in the Temple of Art), where he records his growth as a student to becoming its first Indian director.

To witness the sheer range of his themes and mediums, the NGMA show makes for an ideal in-depth study. The Romantic...displays 238 of paintings on canvas and as illustrations for book covers, posters, picture postcards, advertisements in newspapers, labels of products, certificates and letterheads, and scrap books in pen and ink, pen and colour. Notable are his illustrations for books authored by Europeans such as Otto Rothfield's Women in India, a video display of 175 sketches of his two wives in My Wife in Art, and his medals in gold, silver and bronze.

These are juxtaposed by paintings from contemporaries, role models – JJ principal John Griffiths, artists Pestonji Bomanji and Raja Ravi Varma, and daughter Ambika. The artworks are sourced from collections of DAG (almost 50 per cent), Swaraj Art Archives (SAA), JJ School of Art, Sangli Museum, Shri Bhavani Museum and Library in Aundh, and private collections of individuals like art historian Saryu Doshi.

Despite his calibre, Dhurandhar, and even Raja Ravi Varma, were only looked at as calendar artists by the Progressive Artists' Group. "But I strongly feel that an artist should be evaluated as per the context of the time period he lived in. None of Dhurandhar's contemporaries attempted the vast range of subjects like him," says Suhas Bahulkar, chairman of NGMA Mumbai's advisory committee and show curator. For Bahulkar, the show feels personal as he became acquainted with the painter's works at age 10, after winning an art competition by Dhurandhar Kala Mandir during his centenary celebrations in 1967. Bahulkar later became good friends with Dhurandhar's daughter Ambika, and she even gifted him one of her father's works. SAA's Vijay Kumar Aggarwal, who owns 120 Dhurandhar artworks, including the medals on display, says he purchased them fearing "someone would melt them. I like works that have some Indianness in them, and Dhurandhar's does." Even DAG's gallerist Ashish Anand, who begun collecting Dhurandhar 20 years ago, confidently says, "He has done far far more works in much more varied themes than Ravi Varma!"

And in a rare curatorial move, the curators from BDL will organise NGMA's weekend outreach programmes for better gauging of the artist's works, like his portrayal of communities or theatrical leanings in placement of his characters. On the last day, shahirs (folks singers) will perform Shivaji powadas – a 17-18th-century form of glorificatory folk poetry on Shivaji.