Raja Ravi Varma's kin want paintings back for his museum

Strange as it may seem, the home museum of renowned painter Raja Ravi Varma at Kilimanoor Place near here does not have a single original of the maestro on display and his descendents want back some of his paintings currently with the state museum to rekindle its glorious past where he was born and learnt the art before attaining fame.

Pained by the absence of originals, descendants of the legendary artist have sought a probe to trace and restore some of the precious works of their illustrious relative to the gallery, which displays only the prints of his paintings.

Ravi Varma, known for his vivid and graceful depiction of scenes from Hindu epics, was born in a royal house of Kilimanoor, some 30 km north of here, in 1848. A prolific artist, he left hundreds of oil paintings before he died on October 2,1906. Hundreds of paintings and sketches left by him are scattered in galleries and private collections in India.

The Palace Trust, which looks after the home museum, recently lodged a complaint with the police, seeking a probe to trace some invaluable works of the artist, either missing or remaining unaccounted for after having changed hands over the decades.

The family claims that as many as 75 paintings of the master were handed over by the Travancore Royal administration in 1940, which had been transferred to the Kerala Government after Independence.

According to Biju Rama Varma, joint secretary of Palace Trust that maintains the museum and the home studio of Ravi Varma, it was due to the initiative of GH Cousins, art adviser to the then Travancore Maharaja, that the royal administration obtained the paintings as "permanent loan."

The Kilimanoour family, which has marital ties with the Travancore Royal House, had then handed over the works without putting a price on them. Biju said that recent inquiries, including those made under the Right to Information Act, found that all these 75 paintings are not in government custody.

However, the director of the Museum and Zoos Department of Kerala, Vijayakumari Amma, when contacted, said all the 62 Ravi Varma works listed in the stock register of the Museum are still with them and preserved properly.

Of these, 43 are on display at the Sree Chitra Art Gallery on the Museum complex here and another nine paintings and two pencil sketches are exhibited in the government art gallery in Kozhikode. The remaining eight paintings are kept in the store in the Museum since they are not in a condition to be put on display, she said.

In its complaint to the police, the Palace Trust wanted an inquiry to be held to ascertain if any original paintings of Ravi Varma had gone to anybodys personal collection "from the reign of Maharja of Travancore to this period."

It also sought to know if the paintings had been maintained and treated properly or kept in the store of the Museum and whether any original Ravi Varma works had been taken away or stolen. "Our aim is not to blame anybody. Our deepest concern is to ensure that all the paintings are in proper hands and preserved well for posterity to see and enjoy them," Biju said.

"It is also a painful truth that we dont have a single work of our great forbear at the palace and Ravi Varmas studio attached to it, kept as a memorial to the great artist," Biju said.

Though Ravi Varma spent much of his career in places like Bombay, Baroda, Mysore and Thanjavur, often enjoying the royal patronage of the erstwhile princely states, he had returned home and died in the studio at his home palace, he said.

"It is a humble and genuine wish of the family that the Ravi Varma memorial should have at least a few of his (original) paintings at its preserve", he said.

Biju said a few years back, there were reports that some Ravi Varma paintings in the "Vasantha Sena" series had been smuggled out and sold at a huge price in an auction in London. No effective inquiry had been held into the loss of the national treasure, he said.

It is quite painful that the memorial at Ravi Varmas home palace did not have a single original on display and visitors, including foreigners, had often expressed disappointment over that, he said.

The Government, as custodian of bulk of his paintings, should return at least a few of them to the Ravi Varma memorial under the Palace Trust, instead of dumping them in the museum store, denying art lovers a chance to enjoy them, he said.

Though the government had often promised to do this, the commitment was yet to be honoured, he said. "After all, it was here that Ravi Varma was born and learnt the art," Biju said.

The Chitrashala Press and studio he set up in Bombay (now Mumbai), on which he invested a large fortune had also been alienated over the years, he said.