LAKSHMI OLEOGRAPH – RAJA RAVI VARMA

This beautiful Oleograph of Goddess Lakshmi is of one of Raja Ravi Varma’s paintings. It was Raja Ravi Varma who started painting Hindu deities with appropriate bodies, features and ornaments. Lakshmi is the Hindu goddess of good fortune and wealth. She is the wife of Lord Vishnu and she was born out of churning of the ocean (Samudra manthan). As per popular Hindu iconography, Lakshmi is depicted wearing a red saree sitting or standing on a red lotus and is carrying a  lotus in one or both the hands. This particular print of Lakshmi is one of the most popular prints of Raja Ravi Varma.

Oleography or Chromolithography is a unique technique used for making colour prints. This particular technique evolved from Lithography – which is basically a method of printing using a stone.

The method of Oleography uses multiple stones - a separate stone for each colour and included printing one colour over another. It was widely used for commercial purposes and was the most popular method for colour printing till the end of the 19th century. Oleo in Latin means Oil. This technique used oil that gave the prints better quality. It is a chemical process based on rejection of oil by water. Depending on the number of colours present in the picture, skilled workers took months to complete a single Oleograph.  In the 19th century, Oleographs became so popular in the United States that the Era was named as ‘Chromo Civilisation’. They were widely used everywhere – children’s books, advertising art, posters, labels etc.

While Oleographs started losing their popularity by the end of the 19th century in the West, they started becoming popular in India. This can be completely attributed to India’s first modern artist, Raja Ravi Varma. To make Oleographs of his paintings in large number so as to make them accessible to the common people as well, he opened a press in Mumbai – The Ravi Varma Lithographic Press. The first picture printed at Ravi Varma’s press was the ‘The birth of Shakuntala’. This press produced a large number of Oleographs of Raja Ravi Varma’s most famous paintings, before being sold to his German printing technician.