Workshop on Raja Ravi Varma and Phalke, Mumbai

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1870

Dada: It is the year of my birth. And far away from Trymbakeshwar, an artist is being born, the artist who I feel is the father of my imagination. In Travancore Diwan Madhav Rao is watching his protegee, Raja Ravi Varma, paint. The 22 year old Ravi Varma is working on the canvas of his first commission, a portrait of a upper class nuclear family from Trivandrum. The group of five are looking back at the painter. The woman is all clothes, and a small face. The young Ravi Varma has spent the time reserved for her carefully delineating the folds of her clothes. The littlest boy is pushing himself further into his mother's lap. The other two boys stand between their parents, staring at the painter. Ravi Varma's eye shies before the eye of the patriarch- the dark skinned, bearded man, the head of the Khizakkepat Palat Family , least innocent in the group sitting before the artist, his eyes most tired, most knowing. His gaze seems to consider the painter standing before him. Ravi Varma has spent a large time trying to 'capture' that which arrests him about this man, and failing. That vitally alive being, that expanse of brown skin remain frustratingly outside the grasp of his brush. What he paints is flat brown canvas, nothing compared to the contoured body that sits before him, just beyond that canvas. Ravi Varma is confining himself to that which he knows better- the ornamentation he has learnt from his uncle. He deftly paints a single pearl in the patriarch's ears, and is reassured by the perfect gleam. He then tries to make pearls of those eyes. He carefully works on the patriarch's mother of pearl eyes and places on them, like inlay work, the beads of those dark, shining irises, crowned with the deepest gem of the pupil. Like a necklace that speaks on the neck of a woman, those eyes are suddenly his, the painters', the portrait has comes alive. More confident now, the young man paints, and soon, the middle child's irises show the fear of a little animal that is caught, the oldest one's are opened up like the eternally startled doe of Shakuntala(the painter likes that). And the woman's face, guileless as a child, her gaze blinder than everyone else's as she faces the painter. The gaze of a creature dulled by her unexpected exit from the confines of her routines, into this sunlight, facing a young good looking man, being asked to be still, sitting around her family. If Ravi Varma's own family were to be painted, a galaxy of artists would come alive- a poet mother, a painter uncle, a sibling immersed in music, the other two showing the promise at painting. Ravi Varma faces the frustration of having to make the world out of a thick piece of cloth. I bring a cloth alive too. But I always feel that his was the greater skill, dependent on one person, his brush and his mind.

Thamiraparani

Sawantwadi childhood1.gif

Shakuntala Patralekhan from 1876 [1] Marathi literature, late 19th century

Lady with Flower Chitrashala Press started by Chiplunkar (1869- ammunition factory shifted from Mumbai to Pune) also Kavyaitehas Sangraha- monthly- Marathi literature and poetry also the Aryabhushan Press next year started a bookshop for inspirational Marathi books the year after- Kesari and Marata collaborator with and influence on Tilak --- Photogravure Karel Klic, artist in 1874, he had started the periodical Nibandhamala with his father also translated a Samuel Johnson- Rasselas and an English translation of the Arabian Nights into Marathi "He that has much to do will do something wrong, and of that wrong must suffer the consequences; and, if it were possible that he should always act rightly, yet when such numbers are to judge of his conduct, the bad will censure and obstruct him by malevolence, and the good sometimes by mistake." s Johnson This period in Marathi literature- influence of english, long sentences with several subordinate clauses the book was a loose narrative about the quest for happiness "We are long before we are convinced that happiness is never to be found, and each believes it possessed by others, to keep alive the hope of obtaining it for himself." from 1878 also from 1878, Ravi Varma paints an eponymous portrait of the Duke of Buckingham, who is the Governor of Madras.

Victoria Terminus

from 1879 Art School teachers are organising public exhibitions. In 1879, Perstonji received the Viceroy's gold medal for his Head of a Gosain. He had won the overall prize at the exhibition, which went some way in loosening the category of a mere 'native artist'. 25 women artists also participated in 1879, most of them Bengali and married.

Sita Bhoomipravesam from 1880

Ravi Varma takes class in JJ

Ravi Varma spends time in Baroda from 1881

[[1882][ Dhundiraj Phalke's notes for a possible script? on Raja Ravi Varma

parallel trajectory with Kirloskar Sangeet Natak Mandali

parallel history of photography

1884 much written about Ravi Varma for this year

1885 Ravi Varma and Raja Varma travel to Mysore, and spend time painting different members of the Royal Family. Apart from remuneration, Ravi Varma is also gifted two elephants. check this from 1886, what is it? Budhwarkar Felici - sculptor(Indian h Raja Ravi Varma White Pavilion Solomon/Sister of begum of Janjer

1887while portraiture was becoming the new valued art form in art schools and high society alike..there was a percolation within the middle classes too. If the rich were getting portraits painted, the middle class were keen to get photographs taken, portrait photography. So there were art school students setting up studios, and if they could not afford that, being employed to tint photographs in commercial studios. No matter how skilled the painter, his work was always in fee to an inescapable subjectivity. The fact that a human hand interveneed cast a shadow of doubt over the image. Again, the essential factor in the transition from the baroque to photography is not he perfecting of a physical process(photography will long remain the inferior of painting in the reproduction of colour); rather does it lie in a psychological fact, to wit, in completely satisfying our appetitie for illusion by a mechanical reproduction in the making of which man plays no part. The solution is not to be found in the result achieved but in the way of achieving it. ab Photography aaffects us like a phenomenon in nature, like a flower of snowflake whose vegetable or earthly origins are an inseperable part of their beauty.


1888 14 portraits for Laxmi Vilas Museum

1890Gurusaday Dutt "the living traditions of the distinctive arts of each province existed in an almost unbroken current in its rural areas from remote antiquity"[4] When the brothers are painting in Bombay, many Brahmain women walk in, to see the divine sight of the gods on earth. The paintings, when they are completed, are first exhibited in Trivandrum, in a large, unprecedented kind of public exhibition. then they travelled to and were shown in Bombay, before reaching Baroda. Paintings: Nala Damayanti Radha and Madhava Bharata and the Lion Cub Arjun and Subhadra Vishvamitra and Menaka Shantanu and Ganga Kamsa Maya Disrobing of Draupadi Harischandra and Taramati Keechak and Sairandhari(also titled: Beauty and the Beast) Sita Swayamvaram Birth of Krishna Devaki and Krishna Shantanu and Satyavati