A History of Fine Art in India and Ceylon, from the Earliest Times to the Present Day c15.s8.t1: I. Pictures in European Style
A History of Fine Art in India and Ceylon, from the Earliest Times to the Present Day c15.s8.t1
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I. Pictures in European Style
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At the Delhi Exhibition of 1902–3 many examples were shown of the oil-paintings and water-colours produced in considerable quantities of late years by students trained in European methods, chiefly at the Government Schools of Art in Calcutta, Bombay, Madras, and Lahore. In Sir George Watt's book Mr. Percy Brown, now (1910) Principal of the Calcutta School of Art, criticizes the Delhi exhibits as follows:—
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‘Until its introduction from Europe, there was no oil painting of any kind practised throughout the country, but the number of pictures executed in the medium shown in the Exhibition reveals the fact that oil picture painting as a branch of study, as well as a means of livelihood, is being taken up seriously by a rapidly increasing class. Some of the work displayed in the Eastern Hall of the Exhibition was remarkably good; in the life studies the modelling and feeling of living flesh being well reproduced, and one or two landscapes showed an atmosphere and a consideration for composition which is [*sic*] worthy of remark. Much, however, of the work shown was of a very ordinary character, the drawing being decidedly defective, and the technique and colouring in most cases crude.’³
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³ *Indian Art at Delhi*, p. 457.
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The most prominent representative of the Europeanized school of Indian artists was the late Rāja Ravi-varma of Travancore, a connexion of the Mahārāja of that State. His works, which are extremely numerous, achieved wide popularity, and have been freely vulgarized by oleographs and other cheap modes of reproduction. The Rāja practised both portrait and landscape painting, and four of the portraits in the Banqueting Hall, Madras, are from his brush.⁴ He was assisted by his relative, Rāja Rāja-varma, and other members of his family. He had received instruction from Theodore Jensen and other European artists who visited Southern India, as well as from Alagri Naidu, a native of Madura, in the Madras Presidency, who was patronized by Swāti Tirumal, Mahārāja of Travancore from 1829 to 1847, and was considered in his day to be the best painter in India after the European fashion. Ravi-varma had a formidable rival in Ramaswamy Naidu, a member of the clan of Nāiks at Madura, who was considered to excel in portrait painting.
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⁴ The four portraits are those of the Duke of Buckingham and Chandos, Sir Arthur Havelock, and the Ladies Mary and Caroline Grenville (Col. H. D. Love, R.E., *Descriptive List of Pictures in Government House and the Banqueting Hall, Madras* (Government Press, Madras, 1903), p. 132. I am indebted to the Government of Madras for a copy of Col. Love’s handsome and scholarly volume.
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Stimulated by the active encouragement of the royal family of Travancore, the Gaikwār of Baroda, and other wealthy patrons, Ravi-varma turned his attention to the illustration of the Hindu legends and epics.
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In his own country his works in that kind are regarded as masterpieces and adequate expressions of Indian feeling. At the hands of recent critics in Europe they have met with a different reception.
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'The art,' writes Mr. Havell, 'which truly reflects the fictitious culture of Indian universities and the teaching of Anglo-Indian art schools, is exhibited in the paintings of Ravi-varma, who is the fashionable painter of modern India for those Indians who do not ignore Indian art altogether.... Certain it is that his pictures invariably manifest a most painful lack of the poetic faculty in illustrating the most imaginative Indian poetry and allegory; and this cardinal sin is not to be atoned for by any kind of technical skill in the execution.'¹
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¹ *Indian Sculpture and Painting*, p. 251.
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Dr. Coomaraswamy, a fellow mystic, is still more severe, and declares that
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'theatrical conceptions, want of imagination, and lack of Indian feeling in the treatment of sacred and epic Indian subjects are Ravi-varma's fatal faults.... His pictures are such as any European student could paint, after perusal of the necessary literature and a superficial study of Indian life.'²
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² *Modern Review* (Allahabad), vol. ii, p. 107.
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In a more recent publication the same author gives his opinion with greater brevity and somewhat less severity to the effect that
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'the late Rāja Ravi-varma was the best known of these painters in a purely European style, but neither he nor any other workers of the pseudo-European school attained to excellence. His work at the best reached a second-rate standard.'
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Probably this last quoted judgement is not far wrong. I have not seen the painter's work, and know it only from coarse prints, among which the portrait of 'Sukēsi, the Beauty of Malabar', seemed to be the most pleasing composition.³
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³ Thirty-five of Ravi-varma's pictures are reproduced in an illustrated collection of Hindī poems, entitled *Kavitā Kalāp* (Allahabad, 1909), edited by Mr. Mahavīra Prasāda Dirvedi, and shown to me by Dr. Grierson. That book also contains prints of pictures in a similar style by Braj Bhūshan Rāi Chaudhri, Bābū Vāmapad Bandhopadhyāya, and Srīyut M. V. Durandhar. The prints are too rough for reproduction, courteously permitted by the editor. A list of Ravi-varma's works and an enthusiastic appreciation of his art will be found in V. Nazam Aiya, *Travancore Manual*, vol. iii, p. 263, a compilation which is a rich mine of information.