‘The Forgotten Atelier’ chronicles the overlooked masters of Raja Ravi Varma’s era
When thinking of art in Kerala, the name that usually springs to mind is Raja Ravi Varma. But the region has a richer artistic heritage
When thinking of art in Kerala, the name that usually springs to mind is Raja Ravi Varma. But the region has a richer artistic heritage featuring everything from mural paintings to Deccani miniatures. Sharat Sunder Rajeev, whose first book on the ivory carving tradition of Travancore was published by the Kerala Council for Historical Research, opens up this world of durbar painters, female artists, and itinerant European masters in his new book The Forgotten Atelier (White Falcon Publishing). Excerpts from an email interview with Rajeev, who teaches at the Department of Architecture & Planning at the College of Engineering, Thiruvananthapuram Kerala’s greatest art ‘export’ is Raja Ravi Varma. Yet, your book brings out a little-known detail: that the earliest painters in his family were women. Tell us more. While Ravi Varma is rightly celebrated as one of India’s greatest painters, the artistic tradition in his family in Kilimanoor began in his grandmother’s generation. Rohininaal Tampuratti and Makamnaal Kunjikavu Tampuratti were sisters, and are believed to have learnt painting from two fugitive princes from British Malabar — a remarkable detail. Ravi Varma’s mother was also an artist, as was his sister, Mangala Bayi. Owing to strict social conventions, these women had limited exposure to the wider artistic world. Yet Mangala Bayi in particular emerged as a fine artist. Even today, this artistic legacy of the female line continues in Rukmini Varma, Raja Ravi Varma’s great-great-granddaughter in Bengaluru. Ravi Varma was a nobleman. But alongside him, there was another artist from a more modest background at the Travancore durbar. Why was Ramaswamy Naidu forgotten, and who was he? One of the most rewarding aspects of this project was tracing the descendants of these forgotten artists through family archives, oral histories, temple records, and scattered archival references. Their descendants have preserved photographs, paintings, and documents that have not entered mainstream scholarship so far. Their generosity in sharing these materials made it possible to recover many marginalised artists in The Forgotten Atelier. Ramaswamy Naidu was one such individual. He belonged to Madurai’s Naidu community, which, like the Rajus of Tanjore and Mysore, was long associated with artistic practice. During the colonial period, many of them formed part of a heterogeneous group referred to as Moochy painters. Naidu, in particular, was among the first Indians to master Western academic oil painting. Arriving in Travancore in the 1860s, he served a junior prince, but soon established himself as one of the court’s leading artists.
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