A family affair: Few know about the artistic prowess of Raja Ravi Varma’s siblings

In 1888, in Ooty, Raja Ravi Varma met the Gaekwad of Baroda and secured a commission of 14 Puranic paintings for the Durbar Hall of the new Lakshmi Vilas Palace at Baroda. Tapati Guha-Thakurta has described this as the “most serious of commissions”, one that “required, above all, a more thorough testing of the authenticity and ‘Indian-ness’ of the images and personages he used in his mythological illustrations.”

In this significant venture, he was assisted by his sister, Mangalabai Thampuratty, and his brother, C Raja Raja Varma, who toiled for over a year in their Kilimanoor home on these paintings. What ultimately emerged was a set of 14 illustrations: all either adventures of Krishna from the Bhagavata Purana or events from the Ramayana and Mahabharata.

Until his death in 1906, Ravi Varma was arguably the most celebrated and successful artist India had ever known. Scattered over the princely states and temple towns of Southern India, Ravi Varma lived his life in the changing world of court and bazaar artists, as alien tastes and aesthetic standards transformed the terrain of artistic experience in India. Often, he would adapt his style from court to court to meet the taste and preferences of his patrons. And, in...

Read more

from Scroll.in https://ift.tt/3k6ZcHJ
via IFTTT