Unfortunate History

Earlier a few artists had copied the Ajanta paintings. Spending years together of selfless devotion. Major Robert Gill reproduced the paintings for 27 years. Later a second attempt was made by Johan Griffith, the Principal of Bombay School of Arts who worked for 21 years.

In 1981, Japanese copiers, headed by Sentaro Swamura, a Professor of Oriental art at Kyoto University also carried hundreds of exact impressions by dampening sheets of thin Japanese art paper. The other effort to reproduce the tempera paintings was made by Victor Goloubeco of the Ecole Francaise D’Estreme Orient and a team of French experts.

But there supposed to be a some bizarre desire of Nature, that this work should have been completed through only Mr. Pimpare that’s why whoever else tries to reproduce the paintings come across by misfortune and whole collection got destroyed like-

1. Major Gill who spent his life time in reproducing the paintings met with misfortune in 1906 after he sent his entire collection to London. It was destroyed in a London fire in the Crystal Palace.

2. In June 1885 when John Griffith exhibited his entire copies of Ajanta paintings in Victoria and Alert Museum most of them were burnt in a major fire. It was curious fact that although the fire burned for three hours, the only object touched by fire burned for three hours, were Ajanta reproductions.

3. The Japanese took of hundreds of exact impressions to Japan. But the entire collection was destroyed in earthquake.

4. Few years later while the team of French experts who carried negatives of the photograph of the reproductions met with an accident while being shifted to Japan and lost in ocean.

A number of reproductions have been produced since and lying either in the custody of the Archaeological survey of India or a few national museums. But no copies have been matched up the way Pimpare has ventured.