Dhobi Talao

Pestonjee E. Bomanjee is known as one of the most prominent realist painters of India. He was trained under John Criffiths at the Sir J. J. School of Art. His artworks are greatly influenced by European realism. Although he is known for portraiture, he also painted landscapes with great precision and detail. This artwork depicts a quiet landscape within a rapidly transforming city of colonial Bombay. The place depicted here is Dhobi Talao, a landscape of old Bombay that has largely disappeared. This water tank or pond was used by washermen for washing clothes. The area subsequently underwent reclamation and urban development and the original body of water disappeared. The area around Dhobi Talao transformed into an important and densely inhabited part of the city of Bombay, situated near areas of Fort and Kalbadevi. The artwork depicts three cattle resting on a grassy patch. Two pale coloured cattle are shown in the centre, and a reddish brown one lies in the right. Behind them is a small body of water or a low-lying area and a small hut. The sky is hazy portrayed in hues of cream, yellow, pink and blue. The painting depicts an area that would eventually become one of the crowded parts of central Mumbai. The warm hues indicate the time of late afternoon or evening, and the golden and reddish tones add to an atmosphere of quietness. The cattle connect the painting to the daily life of the people. Dhobi Talao was an area where humans, animals and water interacted. It is interesting though that Bomanji has not depicted the washermen directly. By the late nineteenth century, Bombay was expanding and developing rapidly, with increasing population, construction and infrastructure. But in Bomanji’s artwork, Bombay appears rural. The non-inclusion of buildings, infrastructure allows him to preserves a moment before the landscape was completely absorbed by urban development, thereby creating a visual record. Another aspect of this artwork is its stillness. The cattle are resting, the water is still, the tree is motionless and the sky occupies majority of the composition. A deliberate absence of activity makes the viewer focus on atmosphere. This painting therefore captures a moment of calm within a rapidly modernising metropolis and preserves a memory of nineteenth-century Bombay's environment, reminding us that today's densely populated Dhobi Talao once contained water, grazing animals, vegetation and open ground.