The Painter

Ravi Varma was born on 29 April 1848 on a small estate in Travancore, and he would grow up to be more famous than the ruler of his own kingdom. His uncle noticed his early talent for art and took him as a teenager to the royal court, at the king's invitation, to study painting. Seven years later, when a Danish painter came to portray the Maharaja and his wife, the twenty-year-old boldly outdid him by presenting the king with a more flattering portrait of the royal couple just as the official one was unveiled. The Danish painter, Jensen, never forgave him.

From then on Ravi Varma's reputation only grew. He brought the realism and sensuality of European oil painting to Indian subjects, including the gods themselves. His 1890 exhibition of mythological paintings in Bombay, the first public showing by any Indian artist, drew endless queues, and his prices were astronomical. When he set up his own printing press and produced oleographs of his work, he became a household name, and soon nearly every home had a Ravi Varma print.

Deepanjana Pal's account shows the contradictions in the man. He was the darling of the royal courts who gave his wife and children little of his time, a nobleman who made the radical choice to be an artist yet insisted on the borrowed title of raja, and an idealistic entrepreneur who ruined himself with the press even as his dream of bringing art to ordinary people came true. Pal blends fact with imagination, writing with wit and lyricism, to bring him to life.