Ravi Varma's rise on the Indian art scene was meteoric. From the end of the 1870s until his death in 1906, at the age of 58, he was the best known and most sought after painter in India. But his fall from grace was as dramatic as his rise.

Rupika Chawla's new book Raja Ravi Varma: Painter of Colonial India is an insightful, pleasurable, and important contribution to our knowing the celebrated painter both as an individual artist and as an artistic enterprise.