The first nepo baby of India’s art scene

As auction prices for Ravi Varma go through the roof, his son Rama Varma is finding new collectors and appreciation

- Manu S. Pillai

A painting of Shakuntala in Dushyanta's court; (below) a self-portrait by Rama Varma.

In 1907, barely a year after the death of the celebrated Raja Ravi Varma, the press in Madras was all praise for another artist with the same last name.

‘As much as “the people of this country” were in mourning for Ravi Varma, The Patriot observed, it was a source of “genuine pleasure” that he left behind an heir who “even while so young,” had demonstrated “brilliant possibilities with his inherited brush.” Some years later, The Hindu would speak of this other Varma as displaying “the same perfect drawing, the same wealth of imagination, and the same profusion of colour” in his canvases as his acclaimed father. “The Mantle of Ravi Varma,” it was added, had “surely”—if also somewhat predictably—“fallen” on the son. Yet another silky newspaper profile would proclaim the younger Varma “an artist of considerable achievement and great promise”, particularly in painting mythological works of the type that had won his father fame