Raja Ravi Varma the greatest painter from India was a class of his own. Born to a royal family he showed great interest in painting in his earlier years. He was born in Kilimanoor in the southern side of Kerala. The house threw up a great many scholars, poets and artists, including, among others, Vidwan Koil Tampuran, author of the famous Kathakali work Ravana Vijayam, Raja Raja Varma, who painted after the Tanjore style, and Uma Amba Bai Tampuratty, who, composed Parvati Swayamvaram, a work for the Tullal dance.

As a young boy Ravi Varma used to adorn his walls with paintings of animals and birds, there was no formal education given to him he was taught Malayalam and Sanskrit at home. His uncle taught him to draw recognizing the talent he had in him. Ravi Varma was brought to the Travancore capital in 1862, to participate in the royal swayamvaram ceremony, where the bride chooses her groom from an array of young princes. He was thirteen when Raja Raja Varma enumerated the accomplishments of his nephew. The Maharaja sat unmoved and when the audience was over, he made the cryptic observation that the boy was a shade too dark for the choice. Uncle Raja Raja Varma however, recognized the immense talent in Ravi Varma, and following his nephew's rejection at the swayamvaram, was bent on projecting his amazing talent to its fullest possible extent, to demonstrate that he was a cut above the rest.

In May, 1862 Ravi Varma was taken to Thiruvananthapuram where he was to stay and learn oil painting. Ayilyam Thirunal took great personal interest in nurturing Ravi Varma's talent. He exposed him to the famous paintings of Italian painters. He was able to throw open the window to the world of painting to the young mind, although he himself had not learnt painting. This sort of training for Ravi Varma lasted for about nine years. There are few in the history of world painting that have acquired such a felicity with a medium with so little training.  There was only one person in Travancore who knew the technique of oil painting - Ramaswamy Naicker of Madura. Ravi Varma once approached him to illustrate certain aspects of oil painting, Naicker, recognizing a potential rival in him, refused to help. This rejection strengthened Varma's resolve to become an oil painter of greater repute. There was another painter in the capital, other than Naicker, who knew the method of using oil paints. That was Naicker's student, Arumugham Pillai. He wanted to help Ravi Varma, but could not do it without the consent of his teacher. He would sneak into where Raja Ravi Varma stayed at nightfall to share his knowledge with Ravi Varma. Before the oil paints were brought for him from Madras, Ravi Varma has been painting with the indigenous paints that his uncle Raja Raja Varma prepared from leaves, flowers, bark and soil.

Ravi Varma's working method was an art in itself. He would take up the brush at the crack of dawn. It was as if he was waiting for the dawn to start the work. Brother Raja Raja Varma would be there too. These years, Ravi Varma was deeply interested in listening to the music of veterans, to watch Kathakali, to go through the manuscripts preserved or left over in ancient families and to listen to the interpretations of dramatic scenes from the epics. Ayilyam Thirunal presented the highest honour of Veerasringhala to Ravi Varma for his portraits of the king and his wife. This was for the first time a Veerasringhala was presented for painting. This honour to Ravi Varma made Naicker envious. Visakham Thirunal, the crown prince, too, was unhappy because he was at loggerhead with the ruler. In 1873, the Madras Governor, Lord Hobart, organized an international art show. Ravi Varma painted a typical Kerala beauty and went to Madras to participate in the competition.

He took two pictures to Madras, along with a letter from the King addressed to Dewan Bahadur, R.Raghunatha requesting him to take care of his stay in Madras. Dewan Bahadur acted as interpreter to Varma who did not know English at that time. Besides Malayalam, he knew Sanskrit and Tamil. Later he learnt Hindi, Marathi, Gujarathi, English and German through the interaction with people and through the extensive traveling that he did.

The way Ravi Varma worked was very interesting. He spent a lot of time in painting portraits. While he was busy painting, anyone was free to enter the studio and converse with him. He would be chewing pan, inhaling a pinch of snuff and wiping his nose with the tip of his dhoti, before taking up his brush. There would be people from different classes, in the studio, watching him paint, and he would ask for their opinion on the painting, making changed according to the suggestions that were genuine. He was never an obscurantist who indulged in the malpractices of his times, like untouchability. He was a very moral person, upright in his conduct, compassionate and generous to a fault, and absolutely incorruptible.

The year 1903 is also memorable as the year of the publication of his first biography "Ravi Varma, the Indian Artist". It is a small book with a brief account of his life and twenty-three monochrome reproductions of his paintings. There is no mention of the author, but all available evidence indicates that Ramanand Chatterjee wrote the text. The book was printed and published by the Allahabad Press. Apart from straight portraits, Ravi Varma also painted portraits based on faded photographs. He also painted duplicates. The portraits always emerged livelier and more real than the photographs he based them on; the duplicates were as perfect as one another. Though the artist's immense popularity lay in the third category, the first two types of works prove his merit as an exceedingly sensitive and competent artist. No other Indian painter, till today, has been able to supersede Ravi Varma in portraiture in the oil medium. He could add an extraordinary grace to the sitter's personality as if adding fragrance to the flower. He could also capture minute details like different shades of complexion, individual facial expressions and even textures of different fabrics, rendering a rare tactile quality never achieved in India before, or after.  

The death of Ravi Varma brought an end to one of the most glorious era in the history of Indian painting. The beauty of the paintings of Ravi Varma still stands the test of time and has won many admirers in India and abroad.