Chronicling the brand called Raja Ravi Varma
THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Raja Ravi Varma’s ‘Lady with the Lamp’ or ‘Galaxy of Musicians’ best explains the work of the legendary artist who could see India from the eyes of the common man. The paintings are snippets from the inornate 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 India’s 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 Lonavla-based Ravi Varma Lithographic Press, which made chromolithographs of the paintings, made Ravi Varma a household brand for over a century now.
Ganesh, 48, goes a step further to analyse how people understood the paintings and how it shaped their outlook and ideology.
“To me, it was a healing process, having been diagnosed with cancer when I was just 18,” says Ganesh. “The doctor who treated me, R N Verma, was from Ravi Varma’s family. Through him, I started my journey into the paintings, their structure, the way they got popularised, the life of the artist in the context of both his paintings and the social milieu he was in, and finally how the paintings were taken to the masses by the Ravi Varma Press.”
Being a lawyer, his entry to the field of art curation and academics was unusual. The research involved was unearthly; 25 years of life with Raja Ravi Varma’s paintings and exploring facets of the painter’s world from unseen quarters, and also analysing his works and that of those promoted by the Ravi Varma press to understand the flow of work that shaped a generation of art appreciation in India.
“I visited the Kilimanoor palace, home of the artist, where there was a repository of information on him,” recalls Ganesh.
“For 26 days, I took copies after copies of his writings, records, works, and diary details 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 featured 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 Ganesh 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 Ganesh.
“Some of them were M V Dhurandhar, G V Venkatesh Rao, K S Siddalingaswamy, etc., whose names remained eclipsed by the Ravi Varma brand that the press promoted.”
Ganesh 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 in Thiruvananthapuram. “The third, fourth, fifth and the sixth will look at the varied themes on which Ravi Varma painted,” adds Ganesh.
The series thus promises to be arguably a comprehensive academic treatise on the artist and the art of his era that could aid future research.
Notably, Ganesh is also curating the Sri Chithra Art Gallery, where the paintings of Ravi Varma are kept. On March 2, he will be organising a curator’s walk when he would introduce the public to the renewed curation of the legendary artist who now has a chronicle that calls him a ‘people’s brand’.