dsubrahmanyam's blog

Recognise this picture? U must have seen this one in your house, Large painting hanging in ur hall or in your pooja room. Also u must have seen Saraswati sitting on a lotus in a lake playng veena with beautiful surroundings and  lovely peacocks and swans surroundin her. Or U must have seen a painting of Srirama Pattabhshekam again framed and hanging in your house. Many of these have became a part of our lives. Lets have a look at the life and times of the originator of these paintings.

All these and many of the other scenes from the epics of Mahabharata and Ramayana were painted by Raja Ravi Verma who is considered as one of best painters India ever produced.

Raja Ravi Verma was born in Kerala in a Royal Palace of Kilimanoor in the month of April 29,�1848. Right from the childhoom he has shown keen interest in drawing and painting. He used to dram on the walls of the palace using the charcoal. He was first trained in water color by Rama Swami Naidu a palace painter of Trivancore. Later he was trained in oil painting by a British painter Theodor Jenson.

Ravi Verma has got wide spread acclaim when he won an award for his paintings in Vienna. He used south indian models for his paintings whom he considered as most beautiful. He travelled almost all india in search of his models. He is well known for his paintings from the stories od Shakuntala, Dushyant, Nala Damayanti, etc. Ravi Varma’s representation of mythological characters has become a part of the Indian imagination of the epics.

Raja Ravi Varma is often criticised for the fact that his paintings overshadowed traditional Indian art forms because of their widespread reproduction as oleographs, flooding Indian culture with his version of Indian myths, portrayed with a rather static realism. Ravi Varma can be considered as having in one stroke undermined traditional Indian art, which was both dynamic and rich in form and content.

By rejecting the traditional models of representation (for example, the Chitrasutra, the treatise on art outlined in Vishnudharmottara Purana), he has reduced mythic heroes to the level of ordinary humans, a form that has been copied in many depictions of mythic history in other media such as cinema and television. Dadasaheb Phalke, considered the father of Indian cinema, is thought to have been influenced by Ravi Varma’s static realism.

Raja Ravi Verma died of diabetes on October 2nd, �1906.�He is an�artist who is credited with bringing about a momentous turn in the art of India, Raja Ravi Varma inexorably influenced future generations of artists from different streams. He was the first artist to cast the Indian Gods and mythological characters in natural earthy surroundings using a European realism; a depiction adopted not only by the Indian �calendar-art�- spawning ubiquitous images of Gods and Goddesses, but also by literature and later by the Indian film industry- affecting their dress and form even today. His dazzling oil paintings of India�s ancient glory delighted turn-of-the-century India and his mass reproductions through oleography reached out to the Indian populace in an unprecedented scale. He is recepent of many awards. He was invited by Maharaja of Baroda where he painted many pictures of the royal family.

His paintings are available as exhibits in Maharaja Fateh Singh Museum in Baroda, Jagan mohini Palace in Mysore and some more in Kerala. Some of hem were with the private collectors. I am fortunate enough to visit Mueseums at baroda and Mysore to see his excellent paintings.

For those who are interested in seeing his collection of paintings please visit http://www.barodaart.com/�

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