Copy of painting inside the caves of Ajanta (Cave 2)

Griffiths employed oil paint to replicate the luminous colors and fluid contours of the ancient frescoes, adapting a Western medium to an Indian context. The copy emphasizes the original’s rhythmic brushwork and layered pigments, though the texture and materiality of the oil medium differ from the lime-plaster technique of the Ajanta murals. The result is a faithful translation in tone and composition, not in technique.

Commissioned in the 1870s by the Bombay School of Art, this copy was one of approximately 300 produced over thirteen winters spent at the caves. It emerged from a deliberate project to replace copies destroyed in the 1866 fire at the South Kensington Museum. The work was later transferred to institutional collections, including the Victoria and Albert Museum, where many of these reproductions remain today.

Ajanta’s caves, carved between the 1st century BCE and 5th century CE, represent the earliest major tradition of Indian mural painting. Their rediscovery in 1819 sparked colonial interest in documenting India’s artistic heritage. Griffiths’s project occurred amid broader imperial efforts to preserve and classify cultural artifacts, yet the involvement of Indian students ensured a local, hands-on engagement with the source material.

Griffiths’s copies became essential references after the original murals deteriorated further. They provided scholars and the public with access to compositions that might otherwise have been lost. Though not originals, these reproductions preserved visual knowledge of a vanished artistic tradition, influencing later studies and conservation practices in South Asian art history.