What kind of life did the painter — whose buxom, doe-eyed ladies survived for long as the ideal of Indian beauty till FTV came and changed everything— lead? However surprising it may sound, Raja Ravi Varma — who was famously denounced by the nationalists for using expensive Western art material and for adopting European techniques — did not have an easy life. As a high-caste Brahmin, he was prevented from travelling overseas which was his ambition. So he became an itinerant painter journeying the length and breadth of India, making colourful portraits of the country’s elites. These and other facts are revealed by Rupika Chawla in her RAJA RAVI VARMA: PAINTER OF COLONIAL INDIA (Mapin, Rs 3,950). On the left is Judith, a favourite subject of Western painters from Caravaggio to Klimt. Compared to the drama in Caravaggio’s depiction of this Biblical heroine, Varma’s Judith looks strangely immobile, and is more like the Pre-Raphaelite beauties. In the middle are Varma’s Saraswati and its oleograph bearing an advertisement for the Society of Chemical Industry. The Raja and Rani of Kurupam are on the right.