Preserving A Legacy

Rukmini Varma was born in 1940 into one of its most ancient royal houses. Titled Her Highness Bharani Tirunal Rukmini Bayi Tampuran, Fourth Princess of Travancore, she is the great great granddaughter of Raja Ravi Varma, a master painter, venerated to this day as the Father of Modern Art in India. Now at the age of 76, Rukmini Varma, after a hiatus of 25 long years, has finally emerged from her shell to join art promoter and gallerist Gitanjali Maini in establishing the Raja Ravi Varma Heritage Foundation.

Some of Raja Ravi Varma’s most fabulous works adorned the palace walls where Rukmini Varma grew up. Her grandmother, the Maharani, was a patron of many artists whose creations, from portraits and landscapes to mural paintings and dramatic scenes from the great epics, were an ever-present inspiration. But what captured Rukmini’s attention most were the hard-bound, tastefully produced annual catalogues of major galleries from across Europe that her grandmother collected. The works of baroque masters like Rembrandt, Rubens, and Caravaggio fascinated her, and while she was still a child she began to experiment with colour.

On her sixth birthday, Rukmini received her first full set of brushes and paint from her uncle, who observed her growing interest in this direction and ordered a complete kit from Mumbai. Her grandmother, noticing her general inclination towards the arts, appointed dance and music instructors, and in the years to come Rukmini mastered such forms as Bharatanatyam, Mohiniattam, Kathak, and more.

“For the first two decades of my life painting largely took a backseat as school and college in Bangalore intervened, followed by marriage and children—all by the time I was 21,” relates the grand old lady. She kept her artistic interests alive, however, and recalls how she would recreate scenes from Greek mythology, painting Venus, Aphrodite, Paris and other characters. Her grandmother supported her a great deal, advising her, when she was in her teens, that she should exhibit her work in due course and strive for perfection in her paintings.