Raja Ravi Varma

Raja Ravi Varma (1848-1906) was an Indian painter who achieved recognition for his depiction of scenes from the epics of the Mahabharata and Ramayana.

Ravi Varma was born in the royal palace of Kilimanoor, which is situated 25 miles from Thiruvananthapuram, in Kerala, India. Ravi Varma showed talent at a young age. He got the patronage of Ayilyam Thirunal Maharaja of Travancore when he was 14 years of age, and was taught by the palace painter Rama Swamy Naidu. He was later taught oil painting by a British painter Theodor Jenson. The power and forceful expression of European painting fascinated Ravi Varma, which came across to him as strikingly contrasting to stylized Indian artwork.

Raja Ravi Varma came to widespread acclaim after he won an award for an exhibition of his paintings at Vienna in 1873. He travelled throughout India in search of subject for his paintings. He often modeled Hindu Goddesses on South Indian women, whom he considered beautiful and had met. Ravi Varma is particularly noted for his paintings depicting episodes from the story of Dushyanta and Shakuntala, and Nala and Damayanti, from the Mahabharata. Ravi Varma's representation of mythological characters has become a part of the Indian imagination of the epics. He was and still is criticized for being too showy and sentimental in his style. However his work remains very popular in India.

Ravi Varma, Woman Playing the VeenaRaja Ravi Varma is most remembered for his paintings of beautiful sari-women who were very shapely and graceful. He stayed in the city of Bombay in Maharashtra for some years and drew many a beautiful maharashtrian women. After a successful career as a painter, Raja Ravi Varma died in (1906) at the age of 58. His paintings are considered to be one of the best examples of the fusion of Indian traditions with the techniques of European academic art.

Criticism of Raja Ravi Varma
Raja Ravi Varma's philosophical outlook is not known or documented, especially his understanding of the Western Art form, though it should be acknowledged that he received formal and systematic training. Those who seek to critically examine his contribution are severely impaired in their project by the absence of any literature written by him (one would require an interpretation of the diary maintained by his brother - also his co-worker and assistant. This is being published by OUP. Neumayer, Erwin and Christine Schelberger (forthcoming), 'The Diary of C. Raja Raja Verma, Brother of Raja Ravi Verma', OUP).

He is criticised for having overshadowed the traditional art forms by the use of oleographs to flood the society with his form of myth in static realism. By dispensing abstraction in favour of stiffness, Ravi Varma can be considered as having in one stroke undermined the traditional art, which is both dynamic and rich in form and content. One can find an illustration of this argument in the figures of Durga in West Bengal or in the folk form of Madhubani Paintings. In comparison, Ravi Varma's approach clearly lacks this dynamism of expression. Moreover, his approach of frontality, which is in turn an application of the western "Academic Art", has severe limitations in terms of space and movement. By rejecting the traditional models of representation (for example, Chitrasutra is the treatise on art outlined in Vishnudharmottara Purana), he has reduced myth to the level of ordinary humans, a form that has been thoughtlessly copied in all depictions of myth on other mediums such as cinema and television (See TV series Ramayan and Mahabharat). DG Phalke, considered the father of Indian cinema, is considered to have been influenced by Ravi Varma's static realism.

The paintings are the excellent portrayal of the events and scenes that we see around us. The painters are the best cameras of the world. They reproduce many different types of pictures. They even draw imaginary pictures that do not exist in this world. We tend to use both thinned oil paints and dense oil paints. Masterpieces can be dyed more than once, but each time it may be different from the existing paintings.h

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