Ravi Varma in Kerala- A Limited and Limiting Legacy

R. Nandakumar

Ravi Varma had spent the active years of his artistic career outside Kerala under the patronage of Chamarajendra Wodeyar of Mysore and his successor, Krishnaraja Wodeyar, Sayajirao Gaekwad III of Baroda and many other kings of the princely states. Therefore in his native land it was not his better known canvases that made him known for what he is but the oleographic prints of the latter day. It is known that on two occasions, around 1905, some of his canvases were put up for public view in the School of Arts in Trivandrum. On one occasion they were the paintings commissioned by the king of Mysore, shortly before they were sent to him. The enterprising and ambitious professional that he was, Ravi Varma did not bring to bear upon his work much that was characteristically rooted in the Kerala tradition.

But then, it is perhaps equally true to say that such a living tradition sustained by a process of historical continuity and organic evolution that defined its distinctive identity, was non-existent in the case of visual arts in Kerala. Though Stella Kramrisch, while speaking about the wooden carvings outside Malabar temples depicting Ramayana stories in a non-iconic style observes that they are ‘truly popular’, and Clifford Jones points towards the influence of Kalamezhuthu on the style of the later murals and, again recently Kapila Vatsyayan refers to the folk character of the leather puppetry narrating Ramayana stories, what is doubtful is whether a confluence of all these various strands did add up to a substratum according an orientation point to perceptual modes and sustaining terms of communication so as to form a tradition of visual culture which is a vital presence in the collective life-experience of the people. It appears that pageants and spectacles associated with estivities and other religious observances, as distinct from an articulate image-making for pictorial expression, had always been a staple of the Kerala visual culture.