Important Notice

The present lot is an oleograph print published by The Ravi Varma Fine Arts Lithographic Press using Draupadi Vastraharan (lot 13) as an exemplar. Set up in Bombay in 1894, the press went on to popularise Ravi Varma’s religious and Puranic paintings across India while considerably extending his reach, reputation, and patronage.

These mass-produced prints led to the widespread proliferation of his unique and compelling... The present lot is an oleograph print published by The Ravi Varma Fine Arts Lithographic Press using Draupadi Vastraharan (lot 13) as an exemplar. Set up in Bombay in 1894, the press went on to popularise Ravi Varma’s religious and Puranic paintings across India while considerably extending his reach, reputation, and patronage.

These mass-produced prints led to the widespread proliferation of his unique and compelling imagery. “No other phenomenon was quite so responsible for moving Ravi Varma’s images forward as the printing of oleographs that transferred the likeness of his paintings onto an altogether different medium. The oleographs accelerated the dissemination of his images and propelled them forward. They were also responsible for the conversion of his imagery to other visual mediums, each adapting his representations to suit its specific stylistic and technical demands.” (Rupika Chawla, Raja Ravi Varma: Painter of Colonial India, Ahmedabad: Mapin Publishing Pvt. Ltd., 2019, p. 253)

The press was partly born out of Ravi Varma’s desire to democratise his art. “Ravi Varma was acutely aware that his paintings could only be commissioned by the wealthy and that the palaces and mansions where the paintings hung were out of reach for others less privileged. At the same time he was of the view that art had to be much more accessible to those with few opportunities.” (Chawla, p. 279) The establishment of his press “carried Ravi Varma’s endeavours beyond palace walls and stately homes to the humble domain of the ordinary man. They stirred the imagination of a nascent India seeking its identity. A hundred years have gone by since this journey started and his images of Hindu gods and goddesses as well as countless other manifestations of calendar art have become part of India’s visual culture.” (Chawla, p. 291)

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