Artist par excellence
- POSTED ON: 30 Dec, 2018
- TOTAL VIEWS: 1390 Views
- POSTED BY: Madhuvanti S. Krishnan
- ARTICLE POINTS: 150 Points
Raja Ravi Varma was born in 1848 in Kilimanoor, Kerala into a family of scholars, poets and artists. When Ravi Varma was young, his uncle recognised his artistic talent and sent him to the then ruling king, Ayilyam Thirunal. He received an education in arts and was exposed him to western styles of painting.
Varma was the first Indian to use Western techniques of perspective and composition and to adapt them to Indian subjects, styles, and themes. He became a much-sought-after artist among both the Indian nobility and the Europeans in India, who commissioned him to paint their portraits. Though his portraits brought him fame, he increasingly painted characters from Indian mythology.
Varma adapted Western realism to pioneer a new movement in Indian art. In 1894 he set up a lithographic press in order to mass-produce copies of his paintings as oleographs, enabling ordinary people to afford them. That innovation resulted in the tremendous popularity of his images, which became an integral part of popular Indian culture thereafter.
Some of his famous paintings include Shakuntala, the Gypsies, Shantanu and satyavati, Arjuna and Subhadra, among others.
Try your hand at these shuffle puzzles to see if you can form the painting.
“The Gypsies”
“Shakuntala”
“Lady in the moonlight”