The 100-year-old collection of the Mumbai art school (JJ school of Arts) was recently on display at the Museum art gallery. Shridhar Andhare claims that this collection of portraitures is one of the best kept and well-maintained collections of art works of the Bombay School of art, in the country. He says, “This collection of Dinesh Thacker and his sister Varsha Thacker is in a very good condition. Their parents, Madhu and Manju Thacker were great art connoisseurs and they have picked all these art works that are of historic importance and their kids have done a phenomenal job in looking after them.”
Dinesh and Varsha do all they can to maintain the quality of these works. Dinesh says, “Though it is a known fact that the works bought for Rs100 to Rs500 then will not demand a fitting price now, they are rare and priceless in terms of availability, rarity and historic importance.”
The collection boasts of the works of masters like AM Mali, MV Dhurandhar, SL Haldankar, GS Haldankar, G Deuskar, GV Chandwadkar, NR Sardesai, VG Kulkarni, among many others. Of the most interesting aspects of the exhibition is the opportunity to explore some age-old art techniques, many of which are completely obsolete at present. Shridhar says, “About 100 years ago, one wouldn’t get large size photographs, so they had to hire an artist to enlarge their small picture on a canvas and the artist would make the sketch look absolutely like photograph. Many of such works are in the collection.” He adds, “The transparent water colour technique is very difficult to pull off. In this technique, artists use the white of the canvas and don’t use any white colour in its purest form.”
