Four Portrait Studies

One of the pictures painted by Raja Ravi Varma in the last year of his life, it is possible these four portrait studies on a single canvas were painted for the Ravi Varma Press to be made into chromolithographs. It is known that Raja Ravi Varma painted two pictures on a single canvas and that these were used as exemplars for the chromolithographs. In Rupika Chawla, Raja Ravi Varma Painter of Colonial India, Ahmedabad, 2010, on p. 332 and 333 is one such example of two pictures on a single canvas (The Killing of Kamsa and an unfinished painting of a Youthful Krishna). The present painting incorporates four portrait studies on a single canvas