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Up for grabs: Ravi Varma's rare work

The picture is so vivid, you can almost hear the sound of the water beating against the boat and feel the sultry heat at the Vallakadavu Boathouse, as the Travancore raja shakes hands with the governor general of Madras. But the rich painting, done from the perspective of the calm backwaters, belies the thick intrigue in which the subjects in the work and painter-royal Raja Ravi Varma are embroiled.



The 41.5 inches high x 57 inches wide painting is the most expensive piece listed in the large art collection of fugitive jeweller Nirav Modi , which is set to come under the hammer on March 26. To be conducted by a Mumbai-based online auction house on behalf of the Income Tax Department, the total value of the 68 lots is pegged between Rs 30 crore and Rs 50 crore. The reserve price on the Ravi Varma is set between Rs 12 crore and Rs 18 crore. The painting had last been acquired at an auction conducted by Bonhams in London by a private collector, believed to be Modi, for Rs 5.5 crore in 2007.

The piece is “inscribed and dated by Ravi Varma Coil Tumporran/January 1881”, according to the catalogue of the auction house.

The painting by Ravi Varma depicts Maharaja Visakham Thirunal, who ruled Travancore from 1880 to 1885, receiving Richard Temple-Grenville, the 3rd Duke of Buckingham and Chandos and governor-general of Madras from 1875 to 1880, on his official visit to Thiruvananthapuram. The Duke arrived on a barge and the event likely took place in the Vallakadavu Boathouse, which the catalogue states “was built in the 1820s and served as an important waterway hub for travel and cargo activity during the Travancore era”.

While the Bonhams catalogue and the current one states that the painting depicts the Maharaja of Travancore and his brother Ayilyam Tirunal receiving the Duke, historian Manu S Pillai, author of Ivory Throne : Chronicles of the House of Travancore, asserts this is a mistake. “This is based on the identification of the plumpish man behind Visakham Tirunal as his brother Ayilyam Tirunal. In reality, Ayilyam was already dead by this time, and the man is the Dewan. So it is Maharajah receiving the Duke himself with his minister and court, and not ‘Maharaja with brother’. Ayilyam Tirunal died in May 1880 and the Duke visited in October,” he points out.

According to biographers Erwin Neumayer and Christine Schelberger, Grenville was keen to meet the famed artist on his visit to Travancore, but this made the Maharaja jealous and this visit “ultimately turned out to be disastrous for Ravi Varma”. While hierarchy was strictly observed in Kerala, the Duke who met Ravi Varma in the presence of the king, asked him to sit with them, which totally went against protocol.

While Ravi Varma declined the offer to sit, the alternate option taken by the Duke was no better. He and the painter remained standing while talking, forcibly prompting the king to do the same.

Manu notes Visakham Tirunal’s antipathy towards Ravi Varma started before the Duke’s visit; that just seemed to seal the painter’s fate. “The maharajah saw Ravi Varma as his late brother's partisan, and according to EMJ Venniyur's book, Ravi Varma's studio in the palace had been closed after Visakham Tirunal's succession,” he says. So, there was no studio for the Duke to visit. Instead, Ravi Varma brought some paintings to the meeting which exacerbated matters.

The invitation to sit which went against protocol custom and then, the Duke treating Ravi Varma as an equal and his decision to stand, making it awkward for everyone, “hastened Ravi Varma's departure from Trivandrum and Travancore, and led to his subsequent travels to Baroda, Mysore, and other parts of India,” says Manu.

The painting is a “one-of-its-kind work by Ravi Varma,” notes Thrissur-based artist and researcher Kavitha Balakrishnan, who says, “He used to do portraiture and depict Puranic stories in a history-like context, but while he has done still life study portraits, he has not done contemporary political depictions. This is like a photographic portrayal, like a company painting which the company’s officers used to do.”

While Kavitha says it is difficult to peg the work as a Ravi Varma, as it is very varied from his usual work, Rishiraj Sethi, Mumbai-based art promoter, points out that an artist works across a series of subjects, styles and techniques during his formative years, before he settles on his signature style and subject. “Hence one cannot draw any conclusion on the authenticity of an artwork simply because a work is different from his other works,” he says.

Sethi notes that the auction is a rare, and probably first of its kind event in the country, with such a large collection from one collector coming under the hammer, and he says, “It is high time that we developed standards and practices for authenticating Indian art, given the high values involved. After more than 20 years of auctioning art in India, the time has come to relook at the current framework of "subjective assessments" and bringing in greater objectivity, before someone can cast a doubt on a work’s authenticity.”

He says there was a dispute a few years ago over the authenticity of a Ravi Varma painting, purchased by philanthropist and art collector Kiran Nadar, where she cast doubt about the authenticity of the work, but the Karnataka High Court ruled that, "A fact-finding authority has to be positive in its findings. He cannot leave it open for somebody to imagine his findings with regard to authenticity of the subject of painting. A suspicion or a doubt can never partake in character of a proof in a court of law. The respondents have failed to prove with regard to the fraud or forgery and [the expert report] do not in any way prove that the subject painting is not authentic, this Tribunal holds that the subject painting is genuine and answers the description in terms of the catalogue.”

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