Famous Indian Paintings and Their Stories: The Masterpieces and the Painters Behind Them

Famous Indian paintings and painters span more than 1,500 years, from the Buddhist murals of Ajanta and the jewel-like Mughal and Rajput miniatures to Raja Ravi Varma's oil paintings of goddesses and heroines, Abanindranath Tagore's Bharat Mata and Amrita Sher-Gil's quiet portraits of Indian women. If you only remember a handful, make it Ravi Varma's Shakuntala, the Kishangarh miniature Bani Thani, Abanindranath's Bharat Mata and Sher-Gil's Three Girls.

This guide tells the story behind each famous painting in plain language. It explains how to recognise the main styles and answers the questions people most often ask. It ends with practical advice on choosing a painting for your home or as a gift. Read it from top to bottom like a short history of Indian art, or jump straight to the section you need.

What's in this guide

• A quick list of famous Indian paintings and painters
• Ajanta: the oldest masterpiece
• Mughal miniatures
• Rajput miniatures and Bani Thani
• Raja Ravi Varma's most famous paintings
• The Bengal School and the freedom movement
• Amrita Sher-Gil
• Modern masters after independence
• Folk and tribal painting traditions
• Famous Indian paintings of women
• The most valuable Indian paintings ever sold
• Buying famous Indian paintings, and the "PDF" question
• How to choose a painting for your home
• Our picks and quick answers

Famous Indian paintings and painters at a glance

Short on time? Here are the names you should know for famous Indian paintings and their painters, in rough historical order:

• Bodhisattva Padmapani: unknown artist, Ajanta Cave 1, late 5th century
• Akbar's Hamzanama: Mughal court artists, c. 1562–1577
• Jahangir Preferring a Sufi Shaikh to Kings: Bichitr, c. 1615–1618
• Bani Thani: attributed to Nihal Chand, Kishangarh, c. 1750
• Galaxy of Musicians: Raja Ravi Varma, 1889
• There Comes Papa: Raja Ravi Varma, 1893
• Shakuntala: Raja Ravi Varma, usually dated 1898
• Hamsa Damayanti: Raja Ravi Varma, 1899
• Yashoda and Krishna: Raja Ravi Varma, 1890s
• Bharat Mata: Abanindranath Tagore, 1905
• Three Girls: Amrita Sher-Gil, 1935
• Bride's Toilet and The Story Teller: Amrita Sher-Gil, 1937
• Haripura Posters: Nandalal Bose, 1938
• Untitled (Gram Yatra): M.F. Husain, 1954

Famous Indian painting artists' names

These are the painters you will meet again and again in textbooks, quizzes and auction news:

• Raja Ravi Varma (1848–1906): the father of popular Indian art. He painted gods, epics and heroines in oils.
• Abanindranath Tagore (1871–1951): led the Bengal School and painted Bharat Mata.
• Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941): the Nobel-winning poet, who became a remarkable painter late in life.
• Nandalal Bose (1882–1966): student of Abanindranath and creator of the Haripura Posters.
• Jamini Roy (1887–1972): turned to Bengal's folk traditions, with bold lines and earthy colours.
• Amrita Sher-Gil (1913–1941): pioneer of modern Indian painting.
• M.F. Husain (died 2011): famous for his horses and his record-breaking Gram Yatra.
• S.H. Raza (1922–2016): known for the Bindu, the dot at the heart of his abstract paintings.
• F.N. Souza (1924–2002), V.S. Gaitonde (died 2001) and Tyeb Mehta: modern masters whose works now sell for many crores.
• Bichitr and Nihal Chand: court painters of the Mughal and Kishangarh courts. Their small paintings rank among the greatest in Indian art.

The oldest masterpiece: Bodhisattva Padmapani at Ajanta

India's painting story begins on rock walls. The Ajanta Caves in Maharashtra are about thirty Buddhist monasteries and prayer halls cut into a horseshoe-shaped cliff. Monks and artists decorated them over several centuries, roughly between 200 BCE and 650 CE. Most of the paintings tell stories from the life of the Buddha and his past lives, the Jataka tales. UNESCO listed the caves as a World Heritage Site in 1983.

The most famous single image is Bodhisattva Padmapani, painted in Cave 1 by an unknown artist. Padmapani is another name for Avalokiteshvara, the bodhisattva of compassion. He holds a lotus flower and looks gently downward, with almond-shaped eyes, arched brows and a slender, swaying figure. Britannica dates the mural to the late 5th century. A few textbooks place it in the late 6th century, so you may see either date.

Why does it matter? Its delicate outlines and calm expression were a new kind of realism for Indian painting at the time. The graceful figures of Ajanta went on to influence Buddhist art across India and Southeast Asia. Centuries later they inspired modern painters too, Amrita Sher-Gil among them.

Mughal miniatures: emperors, epics and astonishing detail

The word "miniature" can mislead. Some Mughal paintings are tiny, but the name really refers to the fine, close detail painted with brushes that sometimes held only a few hairs. These works mix Persian technique with Indian colour and observation. They were usually made for albums and illustrated books.

Akbar's Hamzanama

Babur, the first Mughal emperor, reportedly dismissed the adventures of Amir Hamza as a far-fetched tall tale. His grandson Akbar loved them. Around 1562 the young emperor ordered an illustrated Hamzanama. It was a vast project of about 1,400 large paintings, most on cotton cloth, each roughly 69 × 54 cm, bound in 14 volumes. Great painters such as Daswanth and Basawan worked on it, and the bold, action-filled scenes helped give birth to the Mughal style.

Only a small fraction survives today. Estimates range from just over a hundred to under two hundred pages, now scattered around the world. One famous account says that after Nadir Shah sacked Delhi in 1739, the Mughal emperor Muhammad Shah begged for just one treasure back: the Hamzanama.

Jahangir Preferring a Sufi Shaikh to Kings

Painted by Bichitr around 1615–1618, this is one of the most celebrated Mughal paintings ever made. Emperor Jahangir sits on an hourglass throne, his head ringed by a blazing golden halo, and hands a book to a white-bearded Sufi saint. Below wait an Ottoman ruler (historians still debate exactly who he is) and King James I of England. At the bottom left is the artist himself, holding up a painting.

The message is clever. Jahangir values spiritual wisdom above worldly kings, and the hourglass hints at the hope that his reign would last a thousand years. Bichitr's self-portrait shows how highly painters were respected at Jahangir's court.

How to spot a Mughal painting: look for realistic faces, often in profile, gold everywhere, decorated borders, court scenes, portraits and nature studies of birds and animals.

Rajput and Pahari miniatures: Bani Thani, the "Mona Lisa of India"

While the Mughals painted history and portraits, the Hindu courts of Rajasthan and the Himalayan foothills painted devotion and romance. Radha and Krishna appear everywhere, along with scenes from the Bhagavata Purana, the Gita Govinda and Ragamala paintings that turn musical modes into pictures. The Pahari schools, such as Kangra in Himachal Pradesh, are known for soft colours and lyrical landscapes.

The most famous Rajput image of all is Bani Thani, from the small kingdom of Kishangarh. It is usually dated to around 1750 and attributed to the court painter Nihal Chand. The real Bani Thani was a singer and poet at the court of Raja Sawant Singh, who ruled from 1748 to 1764 and was himself a devoted poet. Tradition holds that Sawant Singh and Bani Thani were the models for Nihal Chand's paintings of Krishna and Radha.

Her face is unforgettable: a sharp profile, long lotus-shaped eyes curving up toward the temple, arched brows, a pointed chin and a faint smile. That mysterious smile earned the painting its nickname, the "Mona Lisa of India". It became the ideal of beauty for later Kishangarh painting and appeared on an Indian postage stamp in 1973.

Raja Ravi Varma's famous paintings: how gods came into every Indian home

If one painter defines "famous Indian paintings" for most families, it is Raja Ravi Varma. He was born on 29 April 1848 at Kilimanoor in the old state of Travancore, now in Kerala, and died on 2 October 1906. He learned oil painting, which was still new in India, and combined European realism with Indian stories. His gods and heroines look like real people, dressed in real saris and set in real landscapes.

His greatest gift to India may have been his printing press. In 1894 he set up a lithographic press in Bombay; sources mention both Ghatkopar and Girgaum. It moved to Malavli, near Lonavala, in 1899. Its first colour print, the Birth of Shakuntala, was released in July 1894 and advertised at six rupees. Prints of Lakshmi and Saraswati soon followed.

For the first time, ordinary families could afford beautiful pictures of their gods. Ravi Varma's images shaped calendar art, film posters and the way millions of Indians still picture their deities. Most prints were made after his death. The press ran for decades until a fire destroyed the factory in 1972.

Shakuntala (1898)

This is probably the single most recognised Indian painting. The story of Shakuntala appears in the Mahabharata, and the poet Kalidasa made it immortal in his play Abhijnanashakuntalam. In Ravi Varma's scene, Shakuntala walks through the forest with her friends. She stops and pretends to pull a thorn from her foot, but really she is turning back for one more look at King Dushyanta, whom she has just fallen in love with. Her friends see straight through the excuse.

It is a tiny, very human moment of shyness and longing, and that is why people love it. The painting is usually dated 1898, though some older references give an earlier date. You can hang this scene at home with our print of Raja Ravi Varma's Shakuntala Removing a Thorn from Her Foot.

Galaxy of Musicians (1889)

Painted for the Maharaja of Mysore, this canvas gathers women from different parts of India, each in her own regional dress and jewellery and each playing a traditional instrument. A Nair woman holds a veena, a Marathi woman stands at the centre and a Muslim courtesan sits at the right. It works as a celebration of music and of India's variety at the same time.

There Comes Papa (1893)

A rare everyday scene from an artist best known for mythology. A mother holds her small son, and both look out of the frame toward an approaching father, while the family dog looks too. Ravi Varma's eldest daughter, Mahaprabha, posed with her infant son for it. It was one of ten paintings he sent to the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893.

Hamsa Damayanti (1899)

Another love story from the Mahabharata. Princess Damayanti leans against a pillar and listens to a swan, the messenger carrying news of King Nala, the man she will marry. The soft light, the swan's pose and Damayanti's dreamy face make it one of his most loved works.

Goddess Lakshmi and Saraswati

These two goddesses were among the very first prints from Ravi Varma's press. That is a big reason his versions became the images families keep in their puja rooms today. Raja Ravi Varma's Goddess Lakshmi shows the goddess of prosperity with the lotus that is her symbol, and it is a natural choice around Diwali. Raja Ravi Varma's Saraswati shows the goddess of learning and music with her veena. Many families choose it for a study or a child's room.

Yashoda and Krishna: India's most expensive painting

On 1 April 2026, Ravi Varma's tender Yashoda and Krishna from the 1890s sold at auction for ₹167.2 crore, about $17.9 million. That made it the most expensive Indian painting ever sold at auction. It beat the previous record of about ₹118 crore, set by M.F. Husain in 2025. Before this sale, Ravi Varma's own auction record was about $4.5 million.

The painting shows Krishna's foster mother Yashoda with the young god, one of the warmest mother-and-child images in Indian art. Our framed print of Raja Ravi Varma's Yashoda and Krishna brings the same scene home at a tiny fraction of that price.

Epic scenes: Krishna, Rama and Radha

Ravi Varma also painted dramatic moments from the epics. In the Mahabharata, Krishna goes to the Kaurava court as a peace envoy before the great war, and Duryodhana arrogantly refuses him. That tense meeting is the subject of Raja Ravi Varma's Krishna's Embassy to Duryodhana.

From the Ramayana comes Rama Threatens Varuna. When the ocean refuses to make way for Rama's army, Rama raises his bow in anger, and the sea god rises from the waves to plead with him.

For something gentler, Raja Ravi Varma's Radha and Krishna captures the divine couple whose love inspired painters from Kishangarh to Kerala.

The Bengal School and the freedom movement

By 1900 some Indian artists felt that Ravi Varma's European oil style was not "Indian" enough. In Calcutta, a new movement looked back to Ajanta, Mughal and Rajput painting for inspiration. It became known as the Bengal School, and it grew up alongside the freedom struggle.

Bharat Mata by Abanindranath Tagore (1905)

Abanindranath Tagore, nephew of Rabindranath, painted Bharat Mata in 1905, the year of the Partition of Bengal and the Swadeshi movement. It is a small watercolour, only about 27 × 15 cm. It was first called Banga Mata, "Mother Bengal", and the name Bharat Mata came later as the image spread across the country.

She is a calm young woman in a saffron sari, rather like a Vaishnava nun, with four arms. In her hands she holds a book, sheaves of paddy, a white cloth and a garland, which together suggest learning, food, clothing and spiritual strength. White lotuses lie at her feet. It is one of the earliest paintings to give the idea of "Mother India" a human face, and for a short time an enlarged banner of it was used to collect donations for the Swadeshi cause. It is also a fine example of the soft, hazy "wash" technique that Abanindranath made famous.

Rabindranath Tagore, the painter

Most people know Rabindranath Tagore as a poet and the composer of India's national anthem. Fewer know he became a serious painter in his sixties. Sources differ slightly on his exact age, but most put the start around 1928. It began with doodles that turned crossed-out words in his manuscripts into strange shapes and creatures. Between 1928 and 1940 he made more than 2,000 paintings and drawings: moody faces, dusky landscapes and fantastical birds and animals. He never gave them titles, and his first exhibition was held in Paris in 1930.

Nandalal Bose and the Haripura Posters (1938)

Nandalal Bose, Abanindranath's student, became the most important teacher of the next generation. In February 1938, Mahatma Gandhi asked him to decorate the 51st session of the Indian National Congress at Haripura, a village in Gujarat. Bose painted a series of bold, simple posters of everyday village India: potters, drummers, spinners, farmers and musicians. They celebrated the dignity of rural life that Gandhi believed in. Bose also made a famous 1930 linocut of Gandhi on the Dandi March.

Jamini Roy

Jamini Roy trained as an academic painter, then turned his back on that style. He drew instead on Bengal's folk art, including the Kalighat paintings, with thick outlines, flat colours and earthy pigments. His mothers, Krishnas and village figures look simple, but their strength made him one of the best-loved Indian modernists.

Amrita Sher-Gil: the woman who reinvented Indian painting

Amrita Sher-Gil lived only 28 years. She was born in Budapest on 30 January 1913 to a Sikh father and a Hungarian mother, and died in Lahore on 5 December 1941. In that short life she changed Indian art. She trained in Paris and could have stayed a successful European painter. Instead she returned to India in late 1934, determined to paint Indian life as she saw it.

Three Girls (1935)

This was her first major painting after coming home. Three young women sit close together, one in green and two in deep red, saying nothing. Their faces seem to hold a future they cannot control. There is no background story, only mood, colour and quiet tension. It won a gold medal at the Bombay Art Society's annual exhibition in 1937.

Bride's Toilet and the South Indian trilogy (1937)

In 1937 Sher-Gil toured South India and visited the Ajanta Caves. The experience transformed her style. She painted three famous works, Bride's Toilet, Brahmacharis and South Indian Villagers Going to Market, known together as her South Indian trilogy. In Bride's Toilet, women and children gather around a young bride whose palms are covered in mehndi. The mood is tender but strangely melancholy.

That same year she painted The Story Teller, which sold for ₹61.8 crore in 2023 and was briefly India's most expensive painting. Sher-Gil's works in India are classed as national art treasures and cannot be exported.

Modern masters after independence

In 1947, the year of independence, a group of young Bombay artists formed the Progressive Artists' Group. They wanted art that was modern, bold and international, yet unmistakably Indian.

• M.F. Husain co-founded the group and became India's most famous modern painter, known for galloping horses and vivid colour. His 1954 canvas Untitled (Gram Yatra), "village pilgrimage", is nearly 14 feet long and made of 13 scenes of rural life: women milking cows, grinding grain, raising children. It stayed largely unseen for about 70 years. In March 2025 it sold for about $13.8 million (roughly ₹118 crore), setting a record that stood until Ravi Varma's sale in 2026.
• S.H. Raza spent much of his life in France. His Bindu paintings use a single dark dot, the seed of creation in Indian thought, as the centre of glowing geometric worlds.
• F.N. Souza painted fierce, expressive heads and landscapes. His Houses in Hampstead sold for $7.5 million in London in October 2025.
• V.S. Gaitonde made luminous, meditative abstracts. One of his untitled 1970 works sold for ₹67.08 crore in September 2025.
• Tyeb Mehta's Trussed Bull sold for ₹61.8 crore in April 2025, matching Sher-Gil's The Story Teller.

Folk and tribal paintings: India's living traditions

Not every famous Indian painting hangs in a gallery. Some of the country's most recognisable styles come from villages and forest communities. They are painted on walls, cloth and paper, and passed from generation to generation. Several now carry a Geographical Indication (GI) tag, which protects the name for artists from the region of origin.

• Madhubani (Mithila), Bihar: traditionally painted by women on the walls of homes for weddings and festivals. It is known for double outlines, dense patterns and natural colours. It received a GI tag in 2007, and its masters include Padma awardees Sita Devi, Ganga Devi and Jagdamba Devi.
• Warli, Maharashtra: white figures made of circles, triangles and lines on a mud-coloured background, showing farming, dancing and village life. It was registered as a GI in 2014.
• Pattachitra, Odisha and Bengal: the name joins patta (cloth) and chitra (picture). It is painted on prepared cloth, often with stories of Lord Jagannath and the epics, in rich colours and fine detail.
• Kalighat, Kolkata: born in the 19th century around the Kalighat temple. Migrant artists made quick, bold watercolours of gods and witty scenes of city life.
• Gond, Madhya Pradesh: animals, trees and deities built from dots and dashes in bright colours.
• Tanjore, Tamil Nadu: devotional panels decorated with gold leaf and set with stones.
• Phad, Rajasthan, and Kalamkari, Andhra Pradesh: long painted scrolls and hand-painted textiles that tell stories in pictures.

Famous Indian paintings of women

Women are at the heart of Indian painting, painted as goddesses, heroines, mothers and real people. If you are searching for famous Indian paintings of women, these are the ones to know:

• Shakuntala, Hamsa Damayanti and Galaxy of Musicians by Raja Ravi Varma: idealised, graceful women from epics and from across India
• There Comes Papa by Raja Ravi Varma: a loving mother at home
• Bani Thani by Nihal Chand: the Kishangarh ideal of beauty
• Bharat Mata by Abanindranath Tagore: the nation imagined as a mother
• Three Girls and Bride's Toilet by Amrita Sher-Gil: real women, thoughtful and often sad
• Goddess Lakshmi and Saraswati by Raja Ravi Varma: the divine feminine as prosperity and wisdom

Notice the contrast. Ravi Varma painted women as beautiful heroines from stories. Sher-Gil painted ordinary women as people with inner lives, quietly thinking and waiting. Both visions matter, and many people like to hang one of each.

World famous Indian paintings: the most valuable ever sold

Indian art has broken record after record since 2023. Auction prices change quickly, so treat this as a snapshot from news reports up to late 2026:

1. Yashoda and Krishna, Raja Ravi Varma: ₹167.2 crore (about $17.9 million), April 2026
2. Untitled (Gram Yatra), M.F. Husain: about ₹118 crore ($13.8 million), March 2025
3. A classical Indian miniature of a cheetah: £10.2 million (about $13.6 million), London, October 2025, a record for a classical Indian painting
4. Untitled (1970), V.S. Gaitonde: ₹67.08 crore, September 2025
5. The Story Teller, Amrita Sher-Gil (2023) and Trussed Bull, Tyeb Mehta (2025): ₹61.8 crore each

The top of the list tells you something. A painting made in the 1890s for ordinary Indian devotion has become the most valuable Indian artwork of all. Ravi Varma's images belong to everyone, which is exactly why they mean so much.

Famous Indian paintings for sale: can you own one?

The originals of almost every painting in this guide are in public institutions or private collections. When one does come up for sale, it costs crores. Some, including works by Amrita Sher-Gil and Rabindranath Tagore, cannot legally leave India at all.

For most of us, the way to live with a famous painting is a good reproduction. Here is what separates a good print from a poor one:

• A clean, restored image: old paintings collect dirt, cracks and yellowed varnish. Careful restoration of the digital file brings back the original colours without inventing details.
• High resolution: a sharp file means faces, jewellery and borders stay crisp even at larger sizes.
• Quality materials: proper canvas or art paper and a sturdy frame keep the print looking good for years.
• An honest source: reputable sellers print only public-domain works, or works they have a licence for.

At MrigArt, we print great artwork paintings as framed posters and canvases, with free delivery across India. Not sure which format suits your wall? Our guide to canvas prints versus framed posters explains the difference.

Is there a famous Indian paintings PDF?

Many people search for a "famous Indian paintings PDF" for school projects, quizzes or competitive exams. You can save this page as a PDF from your browser's print menu: the quick list and the painter list near the top work well as a revision sheet.

If you want to reuse the images themselves, copyright matters. In India, copyright in a painting generally lasts for the artist's lifetime plus 60 years. In practice:

• Free to reproduce (public domain): ancient and anonymous works such as Ajanta, Mughal and Rajput miniatures, and painters who died in 1965 or earlier. That includes Raja Ravi Varma, Abanindranath Tagore, Rabindranath Tagore and Amrita Sher-Gil.
• Still under copyright: Nandalal Bose (died 1966), Jamini Roy, M.F. Husain, S.H. Raza, F.N. Souza, V.S. Gaitonde, Tyeb Mehta and other later artists. You can view and study their work, but you cannot sell copies without permission.

How to choose a famous Indian painting for your home

A famous painting is more than decoration. It gives you a story to tell guests, and a quiet reminder of something you value. Here is how to choose well.

Choose by room

• Living room: a large, dramatic epic scene such as Krishna's Embassy to Duryodhana starts conversations. A colourful, crowded composition works well on a big wall.
• Puja room or prayer corner: Goddess Lakshmi and Saraswati are traditional choices. Vastu suggests the north-east as the best direction for a home shrine. Treat this as tradition and personal preference, not a rule.
• Study or children's room: Saraswati, goddess of learning and music, is worshipped at Vasant Panchami, and many families believe her image encourages focus.
• Bedroom: Radha and Krishna or Shakuntala bring softness and romance.
• Family spaces and nurseries: Yashoda and Krishna is a warm mother-and-child scene.

Choose by occasion

• Diwali: this year Lakshmi Puja falls on 8 November 2026. Goddess Lakshmi is the classic choice, and Rama Threatens Varuna fits the Ramayana spirit of the festival. Our Diwali gift ideas guide has more.
• Weddings and anniversaries: Radha and Krishna, or Shakuntala, celebrate love.
• Housewarmings: Lakshmi for prosperity, or a calm landscape or still life if you prefer something non-religious.
• New babies and new parents: Yashoda and Krishna.
• Teachers, students and musicians: Saraswati.

A few practical tips

• Hang it at eye level. Most people hang art too high. The centre of the painting should sit roughly where a standing person's eyes fall.
• Think about light. Keep prints out of strong direct sunlight to protect the colours.
• Match the mood, not just the colours. A gentle scene suits a bedroom. A bold, busy one can anchor a living room.
• Tell the story. Tuck a note with the painting's story into a gift. It turns a nice present into a memorable one.

Our picks

• Shakuntala Removing a Thorn from Her Foot, Raja Ravi Varma: perhaps the most famous Indian painting of all, a perfect romantic gift.
• Goddess Lakshmi, Raja Ravi Varma: one of the first prints from Ravi Varma's press, and a natural choice for Diwali.
• Saraswati, Raja Ravi Varma: the goddess of learning for a study, a music room or a student's desk.
• Yashoda and Krishna, Raja Ravi Varma: the scene behind India's most expensive painting, full of motherly love.
• Krishna's Embassy to Duryodhana, Raja Ravi Varma: a powerful Mahabharata moment for a big living-room wall.
• Radha and Krishna, Raja Ravi Varma: timeless devotion for newlyweds or a bedroom.

Questions people ask

Which is the most famous Indian painting?

No single painting holds the title, but Raja Ravi Varma's Shakuntala is probably the most widely recognised. Close behind are the Kishangarh miniature Bani Thani, Abanindranath Tagore's Bharat Mata, Amrita Sher-Gil's Three Girls and the Ajanta mural of Bodhisattva Padmapani.

Who is the most famous painter of India?

Raja Ravi Varma (1848–1906) is the best-known name, because his prints reached millions of homes. Amrita Sher-Gil, Abanindranath Tagore and M.F. Husain are also among India's most celebrated painters.

Which painting is called the Mona Lisa of India?

Bani Thani, a Kishangarh miniature from around 1750 attributed to Nihal Chand. Her profile, lotus-shaped eyes and faint, mysterious smile earned the comparison.

What is the most expensive Indian painting?

Raja Ravi Varma's Yashoda and Krishna, which sold for ₹167.2 crore (about $17.9 million) at auction on 1 April 2026. The previous record was M.F. Husain's Untitled (Gram Yatra) at about ₹118 crore in 2025.

Who painted Bharat Mata?

Abanindranath Tagore painted Bharat Mata in 1905 during the Swadeshi movement. It was first titled Banga Mata, "Mother Bengal".

Can I legally buy prints of Raja Ravi Varma's paintings?

Yes. Ravi Varma died in 1906, so his paintings are in the public domain in India and can be freely reproduced.

Shop the art in this guide

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Sources

• Ravi Varma, Encyclopaedia Britannica
• Amrita Sher-Gil, Encyclopaedia Britannica
• Bodhisattva Padmapani, Encyclopaedia Britannica
• Bharat Mata (painting)), Wikipedia
• Vaccine billionaire buys $17.9m Raja Ravi Varma, setting new record for Indian painting at auction, The Art Newspaper