The painting is currently at a private collection but was up for auction at Saffron Art in December 2023
Pestonjee Bomanjee was a prolific Indian painter of Parsi descent. Bomanjee initially wished to become a sculptor and trained under John Lockwood Kipling for the same purpose and studied at J.J. School of Arts in Bombay under John Griffiths and in 1872, he was appointed as a draughtsman by Griffiths and was sent to study and copy the painting of Ajanta in 1890 and in 1894 he became the very first Indian teacher at J.J. School of Arts. In 1877 he worked as an an apprentice under Valentine Cameron Prinseps which drew him towards creating portraits. Bomanjee generally drew portraits, landscapes and scenes from people's daily lives with oil on canvas and sometimes pastel.
"Portrait of a Parsee Gentleman" is a perfect example of his focus and precised work. The painting depicts a Parsee man wearing a traditional headgear with a crisp white shirt underneath a black coat with spectaclesthat sit perfectly on his nose. Pestonjee has very precisely painted the mustache, sideburns and hair and eyebrows of the man which make it look a lot like a photograph and less like a handmade portrait.
Bomanjee has chosen pastels on paper as the medium for this painting. He has chosen colours like black, white and hint of cream and grey for this painting. The overall portrait is not made with very bright colours but that doesn't mean the portrait feels depressing, it is rarther calming even with a muted palette. The exact creation date of the painting isn't mentioned anywhere but it's said to be painted around late 19th or early 20th century.
Bomanjee's style of art is very distinct from others and it clearly shows in his paintings. He worked with great precision and focus which made his portraits look less like creations of one's owm hands and more like a photograph taken by a camera for the way he balanced light, colours and painted the people exactly they looked like. This painting is an excellent example of his precision and focus.
Portrait of a Parsee Gentleman, Pestonji E. Bomanji. While technically very skillful as an academic portrait, this painting from 1895 captures the sitter’s sense of self and the evolving Indian social setting of colonial Bombay.
Pestonji E. Bomanji, a Parsi artist educated in the western academic realist style, quickly became well-known for his portraits of the Parsi community, and as such Bomanji became an artist with a significant ethnographic component in his work. For me, what really stands out is the sitter's minimalism – no distracting opulent jewellery or scenery, just the unique headgear of a Parsee man, his subdued, dark attire, calm bearing, and a look of gaze direct yet contemplative. These minimal devices help draw attention from wealth or social standing to a sense of individual character, such integrity, dignity, presence and self-awareness, conveyed through the modeling of his features. All in all, the portrait reflects a community's claim on presence and identity in 19th and early 20th century India with Bomanji's realism that makes the viewer feel as though it's an almost documentary depiction of an everyday scene, and in so doing immortalises a hitherto unnamed individual.
