The fragrance persists. In 1906 when Raja Ravi Varma died, he left behind a large body of works scattered all over India in palaces and private collections. Today, these works are considered so valuable that there is litigation among the family members to inherit them. Even paintings remotely resembling his style and subject matters are passed on to collectors with untrained eyes as originals with a high margin of profit.

In spite of several attempts at "entombment", the resurrection of Ravi Varma has been one of the recurring events of art. Even I, with my strong loyalty to Santiniketan and my teachers, am unable to resist the fascinating qualities of Ravi Varma although I find it difficult to define them in academic terms.

One important fact is that Ravi Varma effectively bridges the two centuries, signifying two periods. Since his career started in the later half of the 19th century, he fulfilled the historical necessity of transition from tradition to modernity. Here the word modernity should not be read as the modern art movements of Europe. It is a kind of visual revolution, which was required in the changing social structure of the country.

In the earlier period, art activities were confined either to the court or religious rites and ceremonies and the artists, artisans and craftsmen co-existed in society. But the position of the artists changed with the emergence of a new elite class which acquired western education and competed for administrative jobs, cultivating a new taste of patronage of art and culture from their foreign rulers.

Even the ever growing political consciousness for a "free India" was nurtured by these enlightened citizens who in spite of their ardent admiration for European culture took great pride in their own heritage. Ravi Varma's art fulfilled the aspirations of this class.

Ravi Varma was not trained in any academic school with the result his understanding of European art was rather naive. Although he had training in the Tanjore traditional painting under his uncle, he opted to paint in oil, a medium which stands for status symbol even today.

He understood the immense potential of the medium not only for portraits like other artists of his time, but ventured other possibilities, specially to illustrate Indian mythology bereft of complicated iconographic rules. Thus he became the middleman to transmit our mythology simplifying the rigidities and complexities of its canons. His images of gods and goddesses were formed in his mind after constant reading and listening to Indian classics and epics. He represented them in his paintings as frozen moments of literary descriptions like Shakuntala stealing a glance at Dushyanta, pretending to remove a thorn from her feet. Even though he borrowed his vocabulary from European art, his language acquired a distinct south Indian flavour as if an educated south Indian was narrating the Indian stories in English with south Indian accent.

Of course, for the purists this usage of a foreign language must have been rather banal. But if one thinks of the period when Ravi Varma adapted western realism, one may realise that it was no more a crime committed than using the borrowed individualistic styles of Gauguin, Picasso, Matisse or Bacon in later days. Perhaps he was pioneering a new movement similar to early novels in Indian languages which were modelled on the works of Walter Scott and Charles Dickens. The only argument could be that Ravi Varma was not following the styles of his own contemporaries in the West -- the post-impressionists.

When the company schools in different parts of India were struggling for survival in the fastly changing society by laboriously adapting European elements, Ravi Varma easily established his superior position as a professional artist, defying all taboos attached to the profession in spite of hailing from a royal family. Thus he paved the way for the existence of a community of artists which could practise with individual styles and signatures.

Ravi Varma was a visionary and a modern man. He understood the need to adapt a new methodology of marketing technique for propagating his art. Born in a small princely state he looked for a larger audience and patronage. Thus, he set out to travel all over India in order to interact with a wider audience and patrons. In this process he evolved a national style by combining various regional elements like costumes, jewellery, facial features, etc.

This became the frame work for a popular visual culture which penetrated into every sphere of Indian life, somewhat like the Bollywood films and till now no artist or art movement has made any dent in it. His portraits of politicians and other historical figures were immediately accepted by the leaders of the nationalist movements. His illustrations of Ramayana and Mahabharata became the standard visual representation of the classics replacing the traditional miniatures and wall paintings. The style of Ravi Varma became so popular that in the early part of the century if a novelist wanted to describe the beauty of his heroine he had only to write one sentence, "She looked as if she had stepped out of a Ravi Varma canvas".

His decision to use litho-printing and to set up a press to produce thousands of copies of oleographs to sell to the common people was a radical way to popularise art. From theatre drops to mythological dramas and films, from Amar Chitra Katha to TV serials, from cinema banners to political cut-outs, the ancestry could be traced back to Ravi Varma's paintings.

It is true that Ravi Varma exploited the popular taste; his mythological scenes were also theatrical. But in spite of all these drawbacks his images had validity and could hold together both the refinements of a classicist and the clumsiness of a popular artist. His paintings were always vibrant with tactile qualities both in terms of colours and textures.

But above all, it was only Ravi Varma who could imbue a rare kind of beauty and grace to his characters that made his paintings stand above the works of all other artists who opted for European realism both in his time to the present day.

A.Rramachandran is a Delhi-based painter and teacher of art.