Raja Ravi Varma: Encounters With The Botanical

Raja Ravi Varma - Encounters with the Botanical is an educational pack focusing on the botanical elements in some of his selected works.
Varma’s work can be categorised into five broad themes: Indian mythology and
literature, Hindu religious subjects, portraits of aristocracy, paintings of women,
and scenes from everyday life. Significantly, he has used plants within all these themes.
Many of the mythological narratives he portrayed took place in Indian forests, and plants especially abound in these scenes. There are various ways by which his work can be explored for the presence of flora.
His art can be studied for the range of contexts within which plants are seen, as worship and marriage rituals, as decorative elements or as part of natural or developed environment. His paintings and Chromist-made reproductions can also be examined for the different reasons why plants are used within a context, for example as symbols of divinity, aristocratic status or romance, or as metaphors for the feminine.