BENGALURU: Raja Ravi Varma’s Lady with the Lamp or Galaxy of Musicians best explains the work of the legendary artist. The paintings are snippets from the life of a woman in her home or show the picture of a society that has threads of many colours in its fabric.
Ravi Varma, however, has not been explained in as much detail as a painter of the masses as he has been as a royal who wielded the brush to give faces to concepts of divinity.
Ganesh Shivaswamy’s series of six books does just that – explore the painter as a force that helped democratise art in India. He also views how the Lonavala-based Ravi Varma Lithographic Press, which made chromolithographs of the paintings, made Ravi Varma a household brand.
A lawyer, Shivaswamy’s entry to the field of art curation and academics was unusual. The research involved was unearthly; 25 years of life with Ravi Varma’s paintings and exploring facets of the painter’s world from unseen quarters.
“I visited the Kilimanoor Palace, home of the artist, where there was a repository of information,” says Shivaswamy. “For 26 days, I took copies after copies of his writings and works of not just him but his artist-brother Raja Raja Varma as well. It was there I got to know the identity of the nameless figures in the doyen’s paintings that adorn the walls of Indian homes.
Remember the famous Lakshmi painting of Ravi Varma? The model’s name was Rajibai Mulgaonkar, a devadasi from Mumbai.” Another place Shivaswamy frequented for research was the Ravi Varma press. And unlike the popular understanding, the press did not just print Ravi Varma; there were a host of painters whose work received the patronage of the press.
“Ravi Varma died in 1906 and the press functioned till 1918. There were several paintings reproduced by the press even after 1906. Which means there were several painters who shared Ravi Varma’s knack for mass connect,” notes Shivaswamy. He also visited the Hasthashilpa Heritage Village in Manipal where the remnants are kept of the press, which was vandalised and brought down.
Two parts of the book series, An Everlasting Imprint, one on the life of Varma and then on the press, have already been launched and the third, on the depiction of divinity in Varma’s paintings, will be launched on March 3. “The third, fourth, fifth and the sixth will look at the varied themes on which Ravi Varma painted,” adds Shivaswamy.