Raja Ravi Varma quotes

Raja Ravi Varma was an Indian painter renowned for blending European techniques with Indian subjects. His works helped popularize Indian mythology and made art more accessible to the wider public. He is celebrated as one of India’s greatest and most influential artists. Here are 5 of his quotes:

Who knows if these very pictures, now painted for maharajas, will not find their way to the museums one day.

Raja Ravi Varma

The more I saw, the more I admired the Master's genius - his uncanny ability, through the magic of his brush to depict mood, emotion and atmosphere and to encapsulate the whole story in the selected scene. I felt even then that a state of the art folio on his works needed to be brought out. Only, I never imagined that it was I who would eventually be doing it.

Raja Ravi Varma

This painting [By Varma] takes the view of the 18th century politics ...looking at [it] one immediately thinks of the whole ...of the great warrior. So he must be congratulated.

Raja Ravi Varma

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.

Raja Ravi Varma