Lot 45: RAJA RAVI VARMA (1848 - 1906)

RAJA RAVI VARMA (1848 - 1906) Untitled; Lakshmi Colour lithographs, metallic threads, fabric and sequins Each 19 1/4 x 13 1/8 in. (48.8 x 33.3 cm.) Signed 'Ravi Varma' lower right Ravi Varma found artistic success by depicting Indian subject matter using European styles of painting. The effects he could achieve by using oil paint became a staple of his oeuvre. 'Oils are able to stimulate reality by giving a sense of weight and volume of substance. Bodies, flesh, jewellery, costume furniture and architecture acquire a striking materiality, a verisimilitude.' (Christopher Pinney, Photos of the Gods, Reaktion Books, London, 2003. p. 62.) His work gained a large following as it resonated with two very distinct audiences simultaneously, both the "early cultural nationalists who saw in his work an aspiring new national imagery, and [the] imperial patron, who admired his accomplished mastery of technical conventions of European portraiture." (ibid, p. 60) The demand for his work led him to create a company to make reproductions to reach a wider audience. Oleographs of Varma's work were created as early as 1884, but it was not until 1890 that the images were mass-produced as photographic printings. In 1893 he established the first printing press in India, known as the Ravi Varma Oleographic and Chromolithographic Printing Workshop. To help produce his paintings, Varma employed Franz Schleischer of Berlin to act as manager of the workshop, a printer who was highly qualified in colour lithographic printing. Responding to an outbreak of the bubonic plague in Bombay at the turn of the century, the workshop was relocated to a little known hill station called Malavali in the Western Ghats, about eighty miles from the city.
Franz Schleischer paid the first installment of four thousand rupees towards the purchase of the first print works in 1903, at which stage the firm was renamed the Ravi Varma Fine Art Lithographic Works.