There Comes Papa
His daughter and grandson, waiting at the door.
- Artist
- Raja Ravi Varma
- Date
- 1893
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Where it is
- Kowdiar Palace
A young woman in white stands holding a baby on her hip. Both look to the left at someone we cannot see; so does the small dog at her feet. Behind them are a bed, a chair draped in red and a dark wall.
The woman is Ravi Varma’s daughter Mahaprabha and the baby is her son, Marthanda Varma. The title tells the rest: the father is coming. Historians have read the picture against the Nair matrilineal household, in which fathers usually stood at the edge of family life; here the family turns towards him.
The painting went to Chicago in 1893 in a series called The Life of Native Peoples, shown at the World’s Columbian Exposition in the ethnography section rather than among the fine arts. Her stance is European; her dress is that of an upper-class Nair woman.
.jpg){kind=link}