Glimpses of early 20th century Gujarati ladies and their outfits

The Columbia University website has wonderful collection of water color paintings by M.V.Dhurandhar(1867-1944) online. The paintings take you to first half of last century. How Gujarati women from Memon, Bohra, Parsi, Nagar etc. communities used to dress during first half of the last century is visible in these paintings.

We the people of India adopted western outfits and just killed the culture of our original outfits almost unanimously. How colorful was our culture? What a diversity was there? One could identify cast and region of a person looking at his/her outfits. Dhurandhar did commendable job of documenting Gujarati ladies. Enjoy the watercolor paintings on links given below. It’s a wonderful voyage.

Bhil girl
Bohra lady Surat
Cambay type
Dye girl Ahmedabad
Gypsy woman

Glimpse at a door in Gujarat
Jain nun
Muslim artisan in Kathiawad
Khoja lady Mumbai
Memon lady walking
The milkmaid
A Nagar beauty
Parsi fashion
Rajput lady Kutch

About M.V. Dhurandhar

M.V. Dhurandhar (1867–1944), renowned for visually documenting the city of Gujarat and its people, as well as painting scenes from Hindu mythology, was born in Kolhapur in Maharashtra as the son of an artist. He studied art at Bombay’s Sir J.J. School of Art, where he won several prizes and medals; he was later to become the first Indian director of this School. In recognition of his talent, the British government conferred the title of Rao Bahadur upon him in 1927. He was accomplished in oils, watercolours and pencil drawings, and nearly 50,000 works have been credited to him, excluding drawings and sketches. A number of Dhurandhar’s works were reproduced for mass circulation at Ravi Varma’s presses. Unlike Ravi Varma, his senior contemporary, Dhurandhar was a trained academic realist.