THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Adjacent to the Sree Chithra Art Gallery, here, once stood an abandoned old mansion of the 1880s which served as the official quarters of the then museum and zoo director Dr Jeevanayakam. The exterior was recently demolished during the lockdown when the Napier Museum have been out of bounds for visitors due to the pandemic, and the debris auctioned off, all to pave way for an exclusive art gallery in memory of Raja Ravi Varma that is set be a reality in eight months.
Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan will lay the foundation stone for the Rs 8-crore state-of-the art complex on November 2. The structure of the 15,000 sqft building is being maintained as such which would now be converted into a two-storey building on a par with international standards. Currently, most of the paintings of Kerala’s renowned painter are housed at Mysore Palace art gallery and at the Maharaja Fateh Singh Museum at Vadodara in Gujarat.
In a befitting tribute to the painter, the gallery will house 96 sketches by Raja Ravi Varma, apart from 38 paintings by his brother C Raja Raja Varma and also one of the paintings by Mangala Bai Thampuratti, says Dr V Venu, additional chief secretary of Cultural Affairs (Archaeology, Archives, Museums) who was the earlier director general of National Museum, New Delhi and the brain behind the new initiative.
He says the new gallery would make up for the shortcoming that the state has not done justice to the illustrious painter of India. The upcoming museum will also put on display Ravi Varma’s certificates awarded to him from Chicago and Vienna in 1893 for his works sent from Kilimanoor palace. It will also have a lab facility, as of international museums, to conserve the longevity of paintings.
“Currently, Varma’s paintings are crammed in an extremely inconvenient and awkward setting. My idea is to treat and place his works with due dignity they deserve. So Ravi Varma Art Gallery will be a proper platform to display his paintings with due eminence,” said Venu. The Sree Chithra Art Gallery, opened in 1935 by the then Maharaja of Travancore, Sree Chithira Thirunal, has a sizeable collection of paintings of Ravi Varma, Russian painters Svetlova and Nicholas Roerich as well as exquisite works from the Mughal, Rajput and Tanjore schools of Art.
Naseeb Mehmood, under whom the Gujarati street in Kozhikode had evolved into a creative hub, is the lead designer behind the new art gallery. S Abu, director of Museum and Zoo said the Kerala Museum will act as the nodal agency in the design and construction of the new art gallery.Once the complex is ready, the existing works of Ravi Varma at Sree Chitra Art Gallery will be shifted to the new art gallery.