Shobha Tharoor Srinivasan’s ‘Prince With a Paintbrush: The Story of Raja Ravi Varma’, introduces youngsters to the multifaceted artist
Author, poet and voice artiste Shobha Tharoor Srinivasan brings alive the life and instances of Raja Ravi Varma, the celebrated artist, in Prince With a Paintbrush: The Story of Raja Ravi Varma, her ebook for youngsters. The richly-illustrated ebook, which launched on Monday, introduces youngsters to the legacy of the artiste whose works have influenced and proceed to encourage designers, artists and historians. Excerpts from an e-mail interview:
Raja Ravi Varma is an uncommon topic for a ebook for youngsters…
So many youngsters are aware of artists within the western canon; they’ll recognise DaVinci’s Mona Lisa, or Van Gogh’s Starry Night, however can not recognise work of well-known artists from India. The concept of a ebook assortment on Indian artists had thus been in my thoughts for some time. I had begun wanting on the artwork of Raja Ravi Varma and Abanindranath Tagore as I used to be planning on doing a sequence of artwork books for younger youngsters with poems to accompany the artwork. These artists had their work within the public area so their artwork may very well be simply included in a ebook with out operating into copyright violations.
Ravi Varma is one in all India’s most well-known nineteenth Century Indian painters. What gave him the sting over different painters of his technology was that he used the artwork methods of European Realism to inform Indian tales and paint portraits of Indians. At a time when journey was not straightforward, he travelled throughout India representing the variety of the nation with such expertise. He was additionally one of many first to make use of oil paints on canvases. Yet so few youngsters appeared to know him! I believed there was no higher time to handle this lapse. Red Panda endorsed the concept and proposed an illustrated biography for younger readers. By studying this ebook, readers will uncover that Ravi Varma’s use of color and life like renditions of portraits have been “copied” in outdated Bollywood posters and in Amar Chitra Katha comics. Children many even be drawn to the tales from the Indian epics and the Puranas that have been represented with such dramatic element by Ravi Varma in his work.
How Did You Go About The Research?
I learn extensively on the Internet, which was my main supply. There are attention-grabbing anecdotes and private reflections from members of the family. I learn articles on Ravi Varma’s portray approach, commentary on the breadth of his travels all through India and many others. Since this can be a youngsters’s ebook, my process was to border the story in a way that labored for them. How the narrative is framed is as vital because the biographical data inside the pages. It has a toddler narrator who’s current on each web page and thinks about her personal creative manufacturing in the midst of the story.
Ravi Varma was a painter and businessman, maybe the primary to begin the printing of Indian artwork works…
My most important objective for the ebook was to introduce Raja Ravi Varma’s work to youngsters. I wished to showcase Ravi Varma’s portraits which have been lovely and memorable, and in addition wished to share just a few of his mythological work which gave Hindu gods their hottest renderings. I really feel now we have represented fairly a little bit of the artist’s selection within the ebook.
Of course, the truth that he began a printing press which made it doable to mass produce his artwork and make it reasonably priced is vital as effectively. In reality, the general public acquisition of his work allowed gods to be worshipped at dwelling. This was vital throughout a time when many Indians have been excluded from visiting temples due to caste restrictions. The ebook contains enjoyable details, vibrant illustrations, biographical particulars and shares the artist’s story and artwork journey with younger readers.
It will need to have been arduous to strike a stability between the nuances of artwork and the narrative…
It was vital to me that younger readers discovered themselves on the web page as they learn the ebook. Rayika Sen’s illustration of the narrator is pleasant; youngsters love vivid colors, and luxuriate in characters with character. It was vital that the illustrations complemented Ravi Varma’s unbelievable artwork and didn’t take away from his tone and elegance. His artwork is visually interesting and his work have been characterised as “a burst of colour”. You will see within the ebook that the illustrations accompany the artwork with talent and creativity. I wished readers who’re artists themselves to have a chance to consider their very own creativity.
Ravi Varma is regarded as much as for inspiration for his depiction of textiles, saris, jewelry, vegetation… He is usually credited with popularising the sari as it’s worn now…
Many of the themes of Ravi Varma’s work have been the ladies that the artist met throughout his life and travels, so the work mirror quite a lot of apparel and physiognomy. His work have introduced a renewed curiosity in portraits of sari-clad girls who’re historically attired. His life like type permits us to see particulars, together with the folds of the pleats on the sari, study the stylistic variance of jewelry in several states of India, and extra. His portray Galaxy of Musicians represents Indian girls in regional costumes and showcases quite a lot of Indian textiles. The girls on the canvas are additionally proven as practitioners of various musical devices and traditions. It’s a outstanding portray that illustrates the variety of India in such an attractive method and, in my thoughts, celebrates nationwide integration. A few years in the past actors and dancers recreated Ravi Varma work for an unique calendar as a fund-raising effort for a charitable belief. The artist’s illustration of girls continues to be seen because the “ideal” by many.
So a lot of his artwork evokes me. The life like particulars, the illustration of individuals throughout the nation, his dramatic renderings within the mythological tales so that you simply see the story unfold on the canvas. His industrial sense can also be commendable. He made artwork reasonably priced to strange individuals and never only for rich patrons. He introduced “god” into individuals’s properties by his work.
Not many books about Indians within the artwork and tradition subject are written for youngsters. Hence your ebook opens a brand new chapter on this space.
We have a treasure trove of artwork, classical tales and extra in India to deliver again into our collective recollections. People of my technology bear in mind tales from the Panchatantra or the Jataka Tales or Tenali Raman or Akbar and Birbal however I believe youngsters as we speak are rising up on a special food regimen of books. But I’m assured that the curiosity exists. The success of my lockdown read-aloud from the classics on YouTube is testimony to this reality. And the excitement in social media about Prince With a Paintbrush: The Story of Raja Ravi Varma does make me really feel hopeful that youngsters and their dad and mom are able to embrace a ebook about him.
Many homes in Kerala had Ravi Varma prints of their pooja rooms and houses. Any such recollections of prints in your ancestral dwelling in Palakkad?
We have many Raja Ravi Varma lithographs hanging on the partitions of our household’s tharavadu, Mundarath, in Palakkad. The work are all from the epics, and these prints have been usually the springboard for story-telling classes at dwelling from my grandmother and, later, my aunts. The photos are nonetheless on the partitions. I’ve a few prints in my dwelling in California as effectively.
