(Published in Mint Lounge, November 08 2025)

In 1907, barely a year after the death of the celebrated Raja Ravi Varma, the press in Madras was all praise for another artist with the same last name. As much as “the people of this country” were in mourning for Ravi Varma, The Patriot observed, it was a source of “genuine pleasure” that he left behind an heir who “even while so young,” had demonstrated “brilliant possibilities with his inherited brush.” Some years later, The Hindu too would speak of this other Varma as displaying “the same perfect drawing, the same wealth of imagination, and the same profusion of colour” in his canvases as his acclaimed father. “The Mantle of Ravi Varma,” it was added, had “surely”—if also somewhat predictably—“fallen” on the son. Yet another silky newspaper profile would proclaim the younger Varma “an artist of considerable achievement and great promise”, particularly in painting mythological works of the type that had won his father fame.

Rama Varma Raja (1880-1970)—yes, in his case, the “raja” is suffixed to the name, rather than worn at the start—was perhaps the first “nepo baby” of India’s art scene. On the face of it, his life was all privilege and networks. His father, of course, was a popular figure across colonial India, with access to everyone from British viceroys to nationalist leaders. Through his mother, Rama Varma was descended from royalty, and nephew to the maharani of Travancore. Later, in fact, two of his nieces would become queens of the same princely state, while his brother-in-law served as its final dewan (minister). It wasn’t unusual for the press to carry the most purple prose about him; one essay, authored, without irony (or disclosure), by his own offspring, notes how he had “the dignified bearing of a born aristocrat”. In today’s world, Rama Varma would probably have been hung out to dry for not playing down his glamorous heritage.

And yet, behind perfectly toned appearances, the artist’s life wasn’t entirely without smudges. He was born at a time when his father’s career was taking off, and for much of his childhood, Ravi Varma was busy with his travels, and away from the nursery. His parents, in any case, had had a tempestuous marriage, and Rama Varma’s mother, Mahaprabha, was memorably described by one relative as a “great drunkard” (the vaguely more elegant “addicted to drink” also appears in the record). One of his grandfathers in the 1860s was caught up in an unusual criminal case, with a botanical weapon of murder: a jackfruit. It was an incident that attracted notice in newspapers as far as Britain. Rama Varma also watched his own brother pick up the bottle—in 1912 this sibling vanished and was never heard from again. All in all, the artist’s early years, at least, were not what we would define as idyllic.

Without doubt, though, Rama Varma was a talented painter. Unlike the primarily self-taught father, the son managed to formally train at the Sir JJ School of Art in Bombay, topping this up with a stint at the Madras School of Art. It had its own complications: the elite milieu from which Rama Varma came frowned on men of their class painting as a vocation. Art as a hobby was acceptable; art for payment less so. Ravi Varma himself had to face objections on this count. With Rama Varma, his preferring a diploma in art over a college degree was another source of irritation. An 1899 diary entry by his uncle notes, for example, how the boy’s aunt, the Travancore maharani, was much annoyed at his “resolution to give up his studies and take to painting.” Professionally speaking, Ravi Varma was respected in India; at home, however, his more priggish relatives did not see him as a role model even for his own son.

Defying these pressures, by his 20s, Rama Varma began to occasionally travel and paint with his father. Affection certainly existed between the two, and the fact that Rama Varma (or “Appay” as his relations knew him) kept fragile health caused Ravi Varma grave anxieties. The boy was an asthmatic, and an attack of dysentery one year—a life-threatening illness in those days—caused real dread. But Rama Varma recovered and in the last two years of Ravi Varma’s life became his primary assistant. He was, thus, by his father when he completed his final set of paintings for the maharajah of Mysore. But then in 1906, when Rama Varma was 26, his illustrious (but also diabetic) father died. Hereon, the son would have to craft his artistic reputation on his own.

In the beginning, the Varma brand helped. As those newspaper pieces suggest, doors did opened for Rama Varma because of his old man’s standing, and he was happy to be recognised as the inheritor of that legacy. Or in the words of Sharat Sunder Rajeev, author of the forthcoming book, The Forgotten Atelier: Painters, Patrons, and the Artistic Legacy of the Travancore Court: “The Ravi Varma tag was very important for Rama Varma.” And not due to any naked sense of careerism: there was a whole circle of Ravi Varma’s disciples who were sincerely “proud of that tag”. They all painted in oils in the academic style, and derived confidence and their identity from links to the master. In the early years, this also meant royal clients were generous to Rama Varma, who painted for durbars in Baroda and Rewa. So, for a start, things looked promising.

For some years—through the 1910s and 1920s—Rama Varma painted pictures based on the epics and Sanskrit literature: the felling of Vali (from the Ramayana), Malavika dancing for Agnimitra (from Kalidasa), and a whole set around Shakuntala (from the Mahabharata). Not only did he pursue his father’s style, there are also actual figures from Ravi Varma’s canvases who reappear in his son’s pictures, not-so-subtly suggesting continuity. For example, a shrouded background character in a depiction of Shakuntala by the father appears in two scenes from the same story painted by the son. In addition to this, Rama Varma also made copies of his father’s work—Ravi Varma’s Aja’s Lament is a case in point. And despite a few differences, at a glance one would be unable to tell the paintings apart.

Where Rama Varma truly shone, however, was in portraiture. Besides private collections, several hang in the collection of the Kerala Museum in Kochi. One picture depicts a judge; another a friend in “Muslim dress”. A puzzling study of Winston Churchill also exists; evidently Rama Varma was better at capturing brown skin than white. And of course, he did a painting of his father. A skilled photographer—Rama Varma held a franchise from Kodak to sell camera equipment—many of these portraits were made from photographs, rather than having subjects sit in person. “He is,” that essay by his son holds, “pre-eminently a portrait painter”. Indeed, in later life, he even “gave up depicting deities and…religious themes.”

And yet, Rama Varma would not achieve Ravi Varma’s pan-Indian celebrity. One factor was that the world had moved in a new direction. Ravi Varma’s death coincided with nationalism in India assuming a more aggressive avatar. In this age of swadeshi, Western influences in art also came to be resented. It did not matter whether you painted Indian themes; if you were a proponent of academic realism and European oil painting, you were suspect. Rama Varma was alert to this: in his son’s writing we find a revealingly defensive line on how he never “cared to paint pictures for pleasing anybody or for acquiring popularity”. As a result, despite his skill and talent, and despite encouraging beginnings, the “Varma” name would not eventually serve our artist. Not least because Ravi Varma himself, in death, was for years consigned to unpopularity.

But so powerfully had the realist style of painting struck Kerala that Rama Varma and his art circles kept that flame alive even after it became unfashionable. In his hometown, for instance, he established the Ravi Vilas Studio, which as Sharat Sunder remarks, was the cradle for several generations of Malayali artists. It helped that Rama Varma was not in want of money; given his background, he could afford to paint as he wished, ignoring the avant garde. In the 1930s, thus, while India was discovering the likes of Amrita Sher-Gil, Rama Varma was travelling to Europe to study renaissance masters. The establishment did respect him: in 1921 he was on a committee to reorganise his alma mater in Madras, and in the 1960s he would head the Kerala Lalithakala Akademi. But the most sensational action in Indian art was largely taking place at some distance from the establishment.

In his last decade in the 1960s, Rama Varma was revered as the “doyen of Kerala artists”, even making occasional radio appearances. In 1962 we find him delivering a “reminiscential talk”; five years later it was a more general lecture on art. But outside the state, he was a non-entity. Today, however, there is renewed interest in the man. One reason is that his work now has a historical significance, and that nationalist anti-Westernism is not in play. But market logic is a factor too—Ravi Varma has become prodigiously expensive; in 2024 his Mohini sold for nearly ₹20 crore. Those with smaller budgets are therefore looking at others in the Varma circle, who painted in the same fashion but are more affordable. Here Rama Varma is attractive: a Shakuntala of his sold in 2021 for just over ₹2 crore.

In that sense, our artist continues in his father’s shadow. And given his career arc and choices, he would not have minded. Among his last paintings is a copy of Ravi Varma’s Mahananda. The original depicts a Malayali woman with a stringed instrument, playing by a garden, and in his prime, Rama Varma’s copy would have been near exact. By the 1960s, however, given his age, it was difficult for the artist to incorporate the more intricate details his father painted. Rama Varma’s Mahananda, therefore, is a fuzzier image when viewed up close (he was using a print as reference). He avoided featuring the garden altogether, but as he told the picture’s recipient, there was one more missing element. Thanks to his shaking hands, the veena in Rama Varma’s painting has no strings!

In some ways, this lends the work a wistful charm. But what is more telling—and neatly encapsulates the whole of the artist’s career—is the signature. For at the bottom of the canvas we find, alongside the date 1968, the inscription: “After Ravi Varma, Rama Varma.”