Description

Raja Ravi Varma was one of the earliest pioneers of the modernist, figurative idiom. Working during the late 19th century, he made scores of paintings of Indian Gods and Goddesses.In 1894 he started a printing press in Mumbai and later shifted it to Malavli near Lonavala, Maharashtra in 1899. The oleographs produced by the press were mostly of Hindu gods and goddesses in scenes adapted mainly from the Mahabharata, the Ramayana and the Puranas. These oleographs were very popular and continued to be printed for many years.

Anant Shivaji Desai was an Indian businessman from the erstwhile Sawantvadi State in British India. He established himself as a publisher in Bombay, selling prints of Raja Ravi Varma's paintings. After Varma's death in 1906 Desai acquired the rights to the Baroda and Mysore collections, publishing them until 1945, when the original Ravi Varma Press firm went out of business.