Pick up your phone. Switch on the camera function. Turn the screen on reverse mode so that it faces you, and just click. That’s it. That’s all it takes to embody the selfie generation that we are part of today. But before we reached this point in technological advancement, master painters would spend laborious hours staring at their reflection in the mirror and expressing their own selves on a canvas for self-portraits. The trend goes as far back as 1512 in the West, when Leonardo Da Vinci created a vision of himself in a piece titled Portrait of a Man in Red Chalk. But it caught on much later in India, in the 20th century, since our art culture was centred more on religiosity and rituals before that, says Roshini Vadehra, director of Vadehra Art Gallery in Delhi, who has now started an Instagram series that showcases the self-portraits of master Indian painters.

Atul Dodiya’s Baazigar-themed self-portrait