When the Gods Came Home

In September 1894, the press launched the chromolithographs of goddesses Lakshmi and Saraswati. These were to become two of Ravi Varma's most famous and recognisable images. Significantly, Varma’s illustrations were among the first popular images of Hindu deities depicted in three dimensional human likeness. These chromolithographs–and many later images derived from them–would soon develop a ubiquitous presence in households across the country. Calendars and ticket labels that featured them were often collected, framed and revered as images of the gods – placed in puja rooms and worshipped.

This calendar promoting Vinolia, for instance, features Ravi Varma's Lakshmi. In fact, Vinolia, an expensive luxury soap which had the distinction of having been supplied on the ill-fated Titanic, issued a series of calendars from the mid 1920s to the mid 1930s that featured the Ravi Varma depictions of Lakshmi and Saraswati. For the companies publishing calendars and advertisements like these, the deities served the role of celebrity endorsers and built brand recognition.

Ravi Varma was to also influentially shape visual culture around the representation of mythological stories from Indian epics and Puranic texts. The painter and art historian Ghulam Mohammed Sheikh notes that “his most interesting innovation lies in the choice of his themes. He virtually invented the visualisation of the legends of Harischandra-Taramati, Shakuntala, Vishwamitra-Menaka among others, as there are hardly, if any, traditional prototypes of these. With a bias towards a theatric tableau and physical freezing of scene, he was adding a new dimension of portrayals of traditional narrative. Traditionally, a continuous narration had avoided the projection of a climactic moment. In looking for new themes to paint, he seems to have unearthed from the ancient and medieval storehouse many with a vast potential for the nostalgic and sentimental, the Indian middle class seemed craved for.”

This oleograph (a print that mimics an oil painting) depicts Damayanti, the protagonist of the Sanskrit epic Nala Damayanti. In the story, Damayanti and King Nala fall in love with each other after hearing about their respective noble traits, intelligence and beauty.

Here, Ravi Varma depicts her engrossed in Nala’s thoughts, and possibly confiding in her attendant Keshini who stands nearby fanning her. It appears that Ravi Varma was quite taken with the story of Nala-Damayanti as he painted multiple works that feature different episodes from their tale.

Many of Varma’s most iconic compositions were adapted from photographs of theatrical productions or illustrations of Old Master paintings and other images in European magazines.

The painting that this oleograph is based on, for instance, was inspired by a photograph from a theatre show called, The Feast of Roses, L’inamorata (c.1900).

Ravi Varma skilfully adapts everything from the posture and stance of the actor in the photograph to the Indian context, transforming the folds of her costume into the pleats of Damayanti’s sari.

The gold ornamentation and borders of the womens' sarees are intricately rendered, as was expected in Varma’s paintings (and their subsequent reproductions).

Another signature element of Ravi Varma’s compositions is expressed in the verandah floor of this illustration. Strewn with delicate flowers, it draws viewers’ eyes to the emerging shadows and contrasting light effects from the skies above.

Even after the artist’s death, the Ravi Varma Press, which had been sold by Varma to his printing technician Fritz Schleicher, continued to make prints of Hindu gods, sometimes finding itself in controversies over the politics of its imaging. In 1911, the Bombay Government invoked the Press Act and banned the image ‘Ashtabhuja Devi’. All copies of this picture were confiscated by the government, as “visible representation like to incite to acts of violence and bring into hatred and contempt certain classes of Her Majesty’s subjects in British India”.

Although Schleicher claimed in court that the British Government’s interpretation of the image (as an assault upon two butchers who have slaughtered a cow) was erroneous, Christopher Pinney points out in his book 'Photos of the Gods' that the print in question could in fact have been read in this manner in the absence of any textual knowledge. The Government and Schleicher were to reach a compromise and the latter agreed to minor modifications in future copies of the print, including making the buffalo darker and removing the blood stains from the fallen figure's sword (which is trimmed out, showing only the hilt, in this composition).

With his eye for detail, interplay of light and shadows, mastery of texture, and skilled working of perspective, Ravi Varma crafted a novel experience of realism for his audiences in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It earned him a pre-eminent place in Indian art history, whether classified as a classical or bazaar artist, whether producing high or low art. Thus, from the rustle of the pleated folds of saris, and the delicate glint of jewellery to the swaying of flowers in the breeze and the sighs of parted lovers, he brought his subjects to life – building in the process, an enduring legacy that continues to influence how a million people imagine them.