RAJA RAVI VARMA: PAINTER TO THE NATION (2/2)

Kilimanoor-the name has a magical ring no!- sounds uncannily like Kilimanjaro, the highest peak in Africa!? That is a place a tourist in the right mind should visit when in Kerala. It’s divine connect matches that of Sabarimala or Guruvayoor. So when in Kerala a while back, we were determined to pay our respects to the ‘Prince among Painters and Painter among Princes’, Raja Ravi Varma right at his birth-place, the Kilimanoor Palace. Every famous place in Kerala is located between two famous places, given the linearity of the state. In our present case, Kilimanoor town lies off the MC/SH 1, mid-way between Kollam and Thiruvanathapuram, a stretch of 80 KM approximately.  Kilimanoor literally means “land of the  parrot and the deer”….

Reaching the place is tricky. While Sreebesh, our energetic young pilot and guide knows quite a bit about Kerala history, Kilimanoor leaves him stumped. It is not there in “Kerala guide-syllabus sirrh” he says jokingly. Maharaja Marthanda Varma however looms large over his imagination, incredibly versatile as he was. Marthanda Varma (circa 1706-1758) was the greatest King of the Travancore state, the only Rajah in the whole of India who bested a European army (Dutch). Kilimanoor was under the sway of the Nair octet, the Ettuveetil Pillamar (Pillamar= Lord, from which derives the Nair title Pillai) and when the local tribal chieftain rebelled against Travancore authority, it was annexed by Marthanda Varma, reigns of the Kingdom handed over to the matrimonially related Koli lineage. The clan is supposed to be simply Kshatriyas, no ifs and buts like other Kerala castes. As Vivekananda once said in exasperation, Kerala is a ‘mad-house of castes’!

So…there we are…come heritage town Kilimanoor, and we are led to the Palace by tentative sign-boards, and alas...the wicket gate and the massive doors are closed. The only photo-op seems to be this snap which Sreebesh clicks.

THE PALACE AND US

We allow for the possibility of the monument being deserted, and stakes being so high, try to force the wicket gate open, it swings inside with a rasping sound, and as we raise our camera for another picture, out storms a tall, dark, handsome man with a regal mien, expostulating that the estate is not a public place. We sheepishly explain the design behind our visit, and acknowledging our erudition, he gives us full marks, then invites us inside. He is none else than Rama Varma ‘Biju’ (the appellation serves to distinguish him from his cousin, the renowned musician from Ravi Varma’s direct lineage, Prince Rama Varma). The Palace wears white and radiates an old world beauty and charm...

Biju Rama Varma a constituent of the family, heads the Ravi Varma trust. He is a practising classical musician, and sings and composes both Caranatic and Hindustani. Swathi Thirunal, his legendary ancestor has hundreds of Hindustani compositions to his credit, we are informed. We apprise him of the musical pedigree of Missus. He is thrilled and proposes an impromptu mehfil in the hallowed hall where the Raja painted some of his most celebrated canvases. What a windfall says Missus and she suspends the artiste’s innate disinclination to perform unaccompanied and on the spur of the moment. BRV whips out his cell phone and switching on the tanpura utitlity, seeks her base note, it’s the white sixth she responds. Given the stature and seniority of Rama Varma, it is decided that Missus will lead and BRV conclude. They keep it ‘light’ and Missus renders her favourite Ram ka gun gaan kariye by the twin Bharat Ratnas Pt. Bhimsen Joshi and Lata Mangeshkar, set to Bhairav by Pt. Shriniwas Khale. The magic of the studio rubs off on her and she sings as if possessed. Dramatically, BRV’s assistant emerges from inside and literally performs a sashtanga before her! Leaves her flushed with gratitude really.

IMPROMPTU MEHFIL

BRV then sings his Madhymawati, Anupama Sundara as we reported in our previous dispatch. We are dumbfounded by the rich timbre of his voice and his range, spanning three octaves. The taar saptak finale is simply grand.

This video was uploaded by BRV's sister. BRV is a well-known composer, having given score to a number of Malayalee movies, and eminent singers, including Yesudas have sung for him.

Conversation naturally veers around to the topic of the Raja’s painting. The Raja’s painting is egalitarian…of ‘utility’ to everybody, rich or poor, he says, without distinction of caste, creed or station in life. He thoroughed every scripture before he painted the Gods, and went by the basic common denominators, lest orthodoxy raise a finger. So much so that in the present day, the paintings are themselves pointers for the Faithful (chaddidharis excused, ha, ha…)! He had a way with faces, which are suffused with emotion and charm. But alas…BRV laments, in the original home of the painter, there is no Original. The Raja usually painted in his room on the first floor. Like a true blue Malayalee, he went all over the world, and many of his major works, particularly those of the Marathi ladies in nauwari sarees, were painted in Baroda, where he was invited by erstwhile Baroda regent Sir Madhavrao, earlier the Dewan of the Travancore state. The originals of Goddesses Saraswati and Laxmi, the Ram Durbar, the Shakuntala are among the hundreds preserved at the Baroda Heritage Art Gallery. Ravi Varma paintings are scattered as in a diaspora, and his originals are displayed in numerous galleries, like the Modern Art Gallery, New Delhi and the Sri Chithra Art Gallery, Thiruvananthapuram. The Trust under the dynamic leadership of BRV arranges retrospectives and art festivals in Kilimanoor, and is engaged in the effort to acquire at least some originals for the benefit of aficionados like CVB who are prone to visiting the Palace. Paintings by the Raja are known to command prices in crores at international auctions, BRV confides. The palace was maintained by Ravi Varma with the sale proceeds of some of his paintings says BRV…

LIVING QUARTERS AND OFFICE

We ask for permission to shoot in the sanctum sanctorum, and BRV has a hearty laugh. Believe us-his words are- you and I are long lost brothers of a previous birth! Here is the clip:



Finally, he takes us on a guided tour of the palace (built circa 1753). We are shown the place where pujas were performed (kaavu) and only family could enter-you know- the caste requisites were more stringent in Kerala than anywhere else…We love the small mandapam with carved doors and arches for windows, which BRV says has hosted the greatest musicians of present day India.

KAAVU ENTRANCE

And finally, in spite of our words of dissuation, the Prince, in all grace and modesty, accompanies us right upto Sreebesh's Honda City and we wave a warm mutual good-bye...Senior and Junior are duly updated about the day’s events with the anticipated seasoning. Senior’s tribute to YT for the industry demonstrated by us in tracking down the Painter to the Nation’s abode makes our day: “All sorts of things happen when you are around Dad!” says he…

GOD'S OWN PORTRAITIST: RAJA RAVI VARMA (1/2)

THE RAMA DURBAR

LAXMI

SARASWATI

That God created Man lies in the realm of conjecture, but the reverse is an empirically proven fact. Created Him in his, that is man’s, own image. An anthropomorphic God. Let’s undertake a little census.  

The Hindu pantheon is  said to be populated by 33 crore ( a third of a billion) Gods. As Sahir  rightly  pointed  out  the other day, the earth’s miseries result from the inequality ⁿG<ⁿH, i.e. the fact that the total number of Gods is less than that of humans: aadmi hain anginat, devata hain kam….he, he, he….According to the 2011 Indian Census, there are around 10 crore ( a hundred million)  Hindu urban households in the country. We can safely assume that each buys at least one of the above displayed pictures every year (people call them photographs, which usage IK does not subscribe to). Extrapolating, one can safely state that at least 5 crore of each of these have been sold in the country annually over, at least five decades!  So-over 2.5 billions have been sold since these Gods were conceived by the Creator, painter Raja Ravi Varma (1848-1906). Far more in number than the very population of Gods as per the Divine census! Undoubtedly the Raja is the most sold painter ever, and el Niῆa Mona Lisa, the most celebrated of paintings, pales into insignificance, going by the sheer number of prints sold!  More than that, the Raja magically ignited and seared in the Hindu mind, the munificence of Goddess Laxmi, the bright scholarship of Saraswati, the benign visages of Lord Rama, Sita and Lakshmana, the upright loyalty of Hanuman, or the insouciant callousness of one of our greatest Rishis, when confronted by Menaka with his love-child Shakuntala! The endearing images that flew from his mind to those of bhaktas must have contributed in no small measure to the peaceful nature of Hindus, till the spanner was thrown into the works with the sick images of Rambo Rama and Sambo Siva who rather resembles Nandi! Panduranga, asude…!

It will however be an over- simplification to ascribe to the Raja’s two hands this monumental feat in vacuo, sort of ignoring the Historical dialectic behind l’ affaire des Dieux…Behind the benign Gods lie a host of determinants, such as the compulsive talents of contemporary Malayalees in general,  the complex caste grid, British intervention, not to speak of the Neoclassical and Romantic movements pervading the 18-19^th century European art scene. Bengal and Kerala apparently were the two states which picked up the best of British tradition. It’s again not a coincidence that these were the two states where Communist parties first came to power in the 1960s- speaks volumes for the open-mindedness of the people there.

*****

The Kilimanoor Royalty connections of the Raja, his wedlock into the matriarchal lineage of the great Chera King Swathi Thirunal, culminating in the present status of the Kilimanoor Palace, more about which later, is but the stuff of gossip…more important being the admixture of the swirling eddies of Indian theology and shades of  major European art movement that played on the Raja’s colourful palette, bursting into a riot of images which are today cardinal to 'Hinduism'....Well, the British, represented whether by the Company Bahadur or the British Crown were historically on the same wave-length as the artistic Cheras ruling from Travancore. Swathi Thirunal (b. 1813) was the ‘Garbha Sreeman’, for he was proclaimed King while still in the womb, though it would be more accurate to address the baby as ‘heir to the throne’ to take care of both sexist eventualities of child-birth! The "garbha sreeman" stuff  owes to the East India Company’s Travancore representative Col. Munro who, in order to keep the doctrine of lapse at bay, informed the British Government about arrival of the heir 4 months in advance... There is a tradition that none other than Munroe visited the Padmanabhasami temple to pray for the birth of a boy, matriarchal succession not withstanding. The regent of the unborn sovereign was the mother Gowri Lakshmi Bayi. When the child was merely 4 months old, she held a Durbar where Col.Munroe was invited, and there she handed over the child’s custody to Munroe, exhorting him to take care of the Prince and the State!

Our protagonist Raja Ravi Varma was a scion of the Kilimanoor Royal house-hold, and in the absence of a regular teacher, learnt the basics of painting under the tutelage of the Travancore King, Ayilam Thirunal. The British administrator Edgar Thurston had a major role in carving the Raja’s destiny. The Raja’s painting style that emerged was greatly influenced by his training under contemporary British-Dutch painter Theodor Jenson (1857-1943), who had been then commissioned to paint a portrait of Raja Ayilam Thirunal. Jenson is known for the subtle interplay of light and shade in his oils, which is the distinctive feature of the Romantic style..

In the Europe of the day, the dominant style was termed ‘the Academic style’, after the beliefs obtaining in various European Academies. The ‘rebel’  Impressionism was to follow later on. The Academic style sought to achieve a happy union of the Neo-classical style, which stressed the prominence of the 'line', with the Romantic style’s  romance with ‘colours’…The Classical, the Neo-classical and the Academic styles account for the overwhelming bulk of paintings displayed in the Louvre. Historically, Romanticism was the manifestation of Europe’s march towards Republicanism, from Monarchy, which in turn had incubated Classicism right from Michelangelo days. Goya’s ‘Third of May 1808’, commemorating the Spanish resistance to Napoleon’s armies, is a classic example of this association of the Romantic style with Nationalism and Republicanism. Some critics believe that the Raja’s works were superior even to some leading European Academic school painters. This is what Frank Moraes says (not THE Frank Moraes but the British columnist of ‘Franklycurious’ fame):

"What I appreciate about him is how he brings western and eastern traditions together. You might say he was the William Bouguereau of India. But much as I love Bouguereau, Varma is much more than that. His colour palette is far more intense. And his religious painting is far more interesting….”.  This is Frank’s favourite from the Raja’s work:): there.

MURUGAN: FRANK'S FAVOURITE RAVI VARMA

Storming Kerala a few months back, we made it a point to visit Kilimanoor, where we had a delightful tete-a-tete with Biju Rama Varma, a descendent of the royal family. Biju heads the Ravi Varma Trust which is doing a lot to preserve the Raja’s heritage. Our next dispatch on the high water-mark of our tryst with God’s Own Country….

NEO-CLASSICAL CUPID AND DIANA BY BATONI (1761) : NOTE THE ETCHED LINE FIGURES

ACADEMIC: THE THIRST BY WILLIAM BOUGUEREAU

ACADEMIC STYLE: ROSA HARRIET LENOX BY RAJA'S GURU JENSON (1864)

JESUS MARY AND HER LITTLE LAMB: BOUGUEREAU

ROMANTIC STYLE: THIRD OF MAY 1808 BY GOYA

By the way, 'Swathi' or 'Ayilam' signifies the 'nakshatra' of birth (the Birth Star). Marathi for Ayilam is Aslesha.

KILIMANOOR SNAPS:

BIJU  RAMA VARMA REGALES US WITH RAGA MADHYAMAVATI BRINDABANI  SARANG) BHAJAN ANUPAMA SUNDARA

GATHERING BEFORE THE PALACE

THE RAJA'S STUDIO

THE SIMPLE MINDED SARDARJI CHARANJIT SINGH, HERO OF OUR 7TH JAN POST BREATHED HIS LAST THIS 5TH JULY; WE'LL NEVER FORGET PAAJI, FOR HE HAD A LOT TO PROUD ABOUT IN HIM, BUT HE NEVER CLAIMED GREATNESS. HOPE HE TEACHES DISCO FUSION TO THE 'GANDHARVAs' AND 'APSARAs' UP THERE ! CHEERS....!!!