Why lithograph is serious art
A glimpse of a private Raja Ravi Varma lithograph collection, to be shown at the NGMA, Bengaluru in July
To say that Ganesh V. Shivaswamy is an ardent collector of Raja Ravi Varma would be an understatement. Of the several mythological paintings made by Ravi Varma, 134 were made into lithographs—made by drawing the mirror image of the original painting on stone and then mass-printing them. Bengaluru-based Shivaswamy’s collection—put together by scouring antique shops across the country—covers 127 of these.
Shivaswamy, a litigating lawyer, claims he is the only collector in India to possess the particular lithograph based on Lord Krishna’s devotee Sudhanva and his wife Prabhavati.
We meet him at Gallery G, located off Lavelle Road in Bengaluru, to talk about the show, Raja Ravi Varma: Royal Lithography And Legacy, opening at the National Gallery of Modern Art (NGMA) in the city in July. The show is being organized by The Raja Ravi Varma Heritage Foundation, a registered trust that was started last year by septuagenarian Bharani Thirunal Rukmini Bayi Varma, a sixth- generation descendant of the artist. Gitanjali Maini, the chief executive officer of the foundation and founder of Gallery G, calls this show a “magnum opus". She isn’t far off the mark.
Shivaswamy’s lithographs (he began collecting when he was 13 years old) will be on display along with five more, sourced from individual collectors. “It is a rare show as some were printed after Ravi Varma’s demise in 1906," Shivaswamy says.
Raja Ravi Varma Koil Thampuran (1848-1906) needs no introduction. At least not to those who grew up in a south Indian household. He was the first Indian painter to use oil as a medium to create portraits in the Western academic style. He started his career in the princely state of Travancore—he was related to the royal family—where he was the court painter from 1857-72. In 1881, when the newly crowned maharaja of Baroda, Sayajirao Gaekwad III, was looking for a painter to create his portrait, his diwan, or chief minister, Madhava Rao recommended Ravi Varma.
Ravi Varma created such a magnificent portrait that the maharaja invited him to paint mythological paintings. This is when Ravi Varma’s popularity grew exponentially. He travelled from Travancore to Lahore, sketching what he saw. He painted women with the skin colour of north Indians, who draped the sari like Maharashtrians and wore the jewellery of the south. The paintings were first exhibited publicly at the Durbar Hall of the Laxmi Vilas Palace in Baroda (now Vadodara) and then in Bombay (Mumbai) in 1894.
“People queued to see the works," Shivaswamy says. This is when Ravi Varma decided to open the first printing press, which made it possible for the common man to keep prints of his works that had been seen hitherto only in palaces. The press was opened in Ghatkopar (Mumbai) and later moved to Malavli, about 100km outside the city. The lithographs were one of the reasons why Ravi Varma became a household name, Shivaswamy explains.
In 1901, Ravi Varma sold the printing press to a German lithographer, Fritz Schleicher, who continued to manufacture the lithographs and spun off a range of products like calendars, matchbox labels, posters and tin sweet boxes.
“People often ask me why I give such importance to lithographs." Shivaswamy’s stock answer: How would you make a copy of a painting if there were no cameras and offset printers? The answer lies in stone—limestone, actually. “For every colour, one slab of limestone would be etched with the mirror image of the painting and filled with that colour. About 12-24 different-coloured stones would be printed on the same sheet of paper, one after the other, to create one lithograph. Remember, it was all handmade. So much of precision is unimaginable on a mass scale."
Serendipitously, Maini found that Vijaynath Shenoy, trustee of the Hasta Shilpa Heritage Village (a cultural project aimed at restoring and conserving traditional buildings, artefacts, art and craft) in Manipal, had rescued the original printing press, which had been abandoned when the press room caught fire. It has now been set up at the village.
“We managed to get an exclusive peek of the printing press before the village opens to the public," she says. Photos of the printing press, the limestones and inks, will also be displayed at the show. Apart from that, every lithograph will be accompanied by a comprehensive curatorial note.
A few paintings by Ravi Varma will also be displayed, including family portraits of aristocratic families from Coimbatore.
Raja Ravi Varma: Royal Lithography And Legacy will be on display from 8 July-14 August at the National Gallery of Modern Art, Bengaluru.
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