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Trivandrum with Raja Ravi Varma
Portraying India
In the late nineteenth century, the princely state of Travancore held temple rituals, matrilineal royal courts, and Sanskrit scholarship with British-influenced schools, missionary presses, and European art in royal collections. Colonial lithography and photography challenged traditional temple murals while caste hierarchies and social reform debates simmered beneath courtly life.
Against this backdrop, Raja Ravi Varma’s work became a bridge. He borrowed techniques from European oil painting and realism, but filled his canvases with Indian gods, epics, and regional histories, offering a new way for a changing society to see its old stories. His paintings and later mass‑produced prints turned palace imagery into something people could take into their homes, carrying a sense of shared culture across cities and small towns.
Raja Ravi Varma was born in 1848 in Kilimanoor, within the former princely state of Travancore (now Kerala), into an aristocratic family with close ties to the Travancore court. His father was a Sanskrit scholar from a respected Namboothiri Brahmin family, while his mother was a poet and a member of the Kilimanoor royal lineage. Raised in the cultural milieu of the Travancore court, he was exposed early on to classical literature, music, and visual traditions, forming part of the elite education of his time. In Kerala’s matrilineal society, where lineage is traced through the mother’s side, his maternal uncle, Raja Raja Varma, played an important role in his upbringing, recognizing and nurturing his early artistic talent, a path that was unconventional for someone of his social status.
At the age of thirteen, he travelled to the Travancore royal court, where the ruler, Ayilyam Thirunal, invited him to stay and observe the court painters. It was here that he first encountered European painting styles, such as those of Theodor Jansen, a visiting Danish artist, whose work intrigued him and influenced his own artistic direction. Although he would later become renowned for his use of Western academic oil painting techniques, Raja Ravi Varma did not receive formal training in the medium. Up until he was nearly nineteen, Raja Ravi Varma largely taught himself, refining his skills and developing his unique artistic style independently.
The Brave Kusumavati (mother of Emperor Ashoka), Raja Ravi Varma, c. 1896
In 1870, Raja Ravi Varma left his hometown for the first time to go on a pilgrimage to Mookambika in what is now Karnataka. After spending time there in prayer and meditation, he started his journey home to Travancore. On the way back, he got his first commission to paint a family portrait for Kizhakke Palat Krishna Menon. This was the real start of his career as a professional artist, and it opened doors far beyond his home state. In the early 1880s, he found steady work with Maharaja Sayaji Rao Gaekwad III of Baroda (in today’s Gujarat), along with jobs from other royal courts. This meant he didn’t have to depend on just one patron. Around this time, he also started working with his younger brother, C. Raja Raja Varma. Raja Ravi Varma focused on painting people and complex scenes, while his brother was especially good at painting backgrounds and landscapes.
Raja Ravi Varma drew inspiration from many sources. He studied Tanjore painting, the realistic style of Company School art, Victorian paintings, and colonial portraits. At the same time, he stayed connected to Indian traditions like Kathakali dance-drama and drew from ancient Puranic texts and poetry. He taught himself a naturalistic European style by studying printed copies of European artworks. His skills improved dramatically over time. Later portraits, like Portrait of Maharani Chimna Bai II (1889) and Portrait of a Lady (1893), exhibit rich colors, realistic depth, and dramatic light and shadow.
Shakuntala Looking Back (c. 1898) is among Raja Ravi Varma’s most widely recognized works and remains one of the most reproduced Indian paintings globally. The scene shows Shakuntala pausing mid-step, turning back under the pretext of removing a thorn from her foot, while searching for King Dushyanta with her eyes. The painting’s strength lies in its restraint as desire is conveyed through posture and gaze.
A significant formal choice in his body of work was costume. Raja Ravi Varma established the saree as a shared visual language across regions, allowing mythological figures to appear familiar to viewers across India. His female figures moved away from individualized portrait likeness toward idealized forms that aligned with Indian aesthetic conventions.
“Many paintings by Raja Ravi Varma and his brother, C Raja Raja Varma feature a simple white cloth called a ‘kasavu’, a white-and-gold drape from Kerala. This fabric was worn both by men and women and across social strata. The cloth, therefore, in many ways, transcended barriers.”
Goddess Saraswati, Raja Ravi Varma, c. 1894
What really spread his influence was the mass printing of his paintings. Cheap color prints of his work made images of Hindu gods and goddesses like Lakshmi and Saraswati affordable for ordinary families. These prints became so popular that they almost completely replaced European religious images in middle-class Indian homes. In India, he received steady support from royal families in Travancore, Baroda, Mysore, and Jaipur. In 1904, the British Crown awarded him the Kaisar-i-Hind Gold Medal for public service, and that same year, Viceroy Lord Curzon officially gave him the title “Raja.” His work also traveled internationally to exhibitions in Vienna (1873) and at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago (1893).
The real turning point came in 1894 when he set up the Ravi Varma Fine Art Lithographic Press in Bombay. This press produced affordable color prints and calendars featuring his paintings, which became hugely popular across India. These ‘calendars’ hung in homes, shops, tea stalls, and offices everywhere. For the first time, ordinary people could own beautiful images of Hindu gods and goddesses painted by an Indian artist. His calendars replaced the European religious prints that had been common in Indian homes, offering instead familiar mythological scenes painted in a style that blended Indian subjects with realistic European techniques.
These images became part of everyday life as they were used in advertising, religious ceremonies, and later inspired India’s early cinema. Even today, you can still see his influence in calendar art, religious posters, and popular culture. The Ganesh Shivaswamy Foundation now works to preserve and share this legacy. Raja Ravi Varma’s realistic painting style made Indian art accessible to millions of people in ways that had never been possible before.
Thiruvananthapuram, or Trivandrum, is Kerala’s capital, known as the “Evergreen City” for its lush hills, Arabian Sea beaches like Kovalam, and backwaters. It is home to the ancient Sree Padmanabhaswamy Temple, one of the most sacred abodes of Hindu deity Vishnu. The city embodies Dravidian architecture, palaces from the Travancore Kingdom, and growing modern IT/biotech hubs. It is quieter than other Indian metro cities, with a strong reading culture, public libraries, and a visible legacy of nineteenth-century reform movements. The city still functions as Kerala’s administrative and intellectual center.
Explore Trivandrum’s architectural masterpiece with a striking 19th-century building with red-and-black striped walls, carved rosewood ceilings, and colored glass. Inside, discover 2,000 years of Kerala history through bronze sculptures, ivory carvings, and royal artifacts.
Recommendations for Further Exploration
To Read
Raja Ravi Varma: An Everlasting Imprint – six volume series by Ganesh V. Shivaswamy
Hidden Truth: Raja Ravi Varma: The Inside Story by Rukmini Varma
Raja Ravi Varma: A Novel by Ranjit Desai