D Geeta Kapur 23 For an overall idea see, Mildred and W G Archer, Indian Painting for the British 1770-1880, Oxford University Press, London, 1955, plates, and Mildred Archer, Company Drawings in the India Office Library, Her Majesty's Stationery Service, London, 1972, plates 24 See the work of Abanmdranath Tagore and his Calcutta circle 25 Both Krishna Chaitanya (op at, p 8) and Venniyoor (op cit, p 56) confirm the belief that Ravi Varma would have seen Padmanabhapuram and Mattenchen paintings of the sixteenth-eighteenth cen tunes Transactions between the Courts of Tanjore and Travancore in matters of culture and especially painting are well known so that the more iconic paintings from the seventeenth-nineteenth centuries (see Jaya Appasamy, Tanjavur Paintings of the Maratha Period/ Abhmav Pub, Delhi, 1980) and the popular paintings on glass during the eighteenth-nineteenth centuries which 79 spread across the present Tamil Nadu, Kamataka, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh and Kerala (see Jaya Appasamy, Indian Paintings on Glass, Indian Council for Cultural Relations, Delhi, 1980), as well as the hybrid but sprightly drawings of the Company School from the Tanjore region (see, Mildred Archer, Indian Paintings for the British) would have been familiar, indeed, part of the immediate milieu for Ravi Varma 26 The performing arts (Thullal and Kathakali) favoured literalism and the concrete image In the interpretation of a metaphonc image like elephant-gaited (dantigamini) already a little ungainly and recherche, the elaborate and repeated gestural mimesis of Kathakali is not content to suggest the slow, swinging gait but brings before you the prodigious animal with trunk swaying, fan-like ears waving' Krishna Chaitanya, op cit, p 8 27 'If the Sanskntic acculturation of Kerala was extensive, it is very essential to remember that it was not the lyricism of Vedic poetry or of Valmiki's epic that moulded hterary sensibility and creation so much as the neoclassicism of later epochs, the Kavyas written according to the prescriptions of Dandm who went all our for literalism, concrete imagery, exhaustive delineation instead of allusion and suggestion, the systematic description from head to foot (kesadipada) instead of the sensuous silhouette of the feminine figure In Sanskntic neoclassicism, the form and style of the panegyrics of kings (narasamsa) had annexed the description of the gods even in hymns and for the obvious reason that the Puranic stones about the exploits of gods were modelled on the valorous deeds of kmgs Likewise, the literary manner of the descriptions of woman in her various moods (nayika lore) had been uninhibitedly extended to the hymns about goddesses Theie was a landslide of this tradition in Kerala ' See Knshna Chaitanya, op at, p 7 'The broad-hipped, full-bosomed figure is the preferred type in the neoclassical Sanskrit poetry that influenced Kerala's tradition and it is the ample feminine figure that dominates text after text in Manipravalam (a language tissue rich in Sanskrit words selected for their fifteenth century and paying homage to numerous beautiful courtesans During Ravi Varma's penod, m fact till only one generation back, it would have been impossible to find a cultured person m Kerala who did not know many of these poems by heart/ See Krishna Chaitanya, op at, p 9 28 The paintings were sent to the International Exhibition under the auspices of the World Columbian Commission constituted by the American Government There is a vivid description, in itself worth pursuing, of the subject-matter of these paintings, in Venniyoor (op at, p 31) There were two paintings of Kerala women of the upper caste, two paintings of Muslim women or rather women from the Muslim courts, one of a Parsi bnde and another of a Maratha girl with her domestic deity There was a painting of the gypsies of South India as well as of a cloistered daughter-in-law of a Tamil Brahmin household and an Ayyangar lady The Bombay Singer is the conventional nautch girl repeatedly portray ed in contemporary Company School pain tings of the eighteenth and nineteenth centimes The paintings were sent with a commentary which spelt out this self-taught artisfs motivation to paint the major soaal types of his country so as to show to the Amencan public the charm and sophistication of the apparel of Indian woman Not only were all ten paintings accepted but won him two medals, each one accompanied with a diploma and atation One of the diplomas said, "the senes of ten paintings in oil colours by Ravi Varma, court painter to several presidencies in India, is of much ethnological value ' (italics mine)' They go on to mention how well the faces of high caste ladies, costumes of ceremonial life, and current fashions are painted, not to speak of the paintings' truth to nature m form and colour Quoted in Venniyoor, op at, p 32 29 This is m 1880 and 1894 On both occasions he makes a virtual pilgrimage, or is it more the Numbers 17-18