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Raja Ravi Varma’s 19th century painting Yashoda and Krishna has been bought for €15.3 million (17.9 million dollars) to become the most expensive piece of Indian art to be sold at auction.
The luminous oil-on-canvas depiction of an infant Krishna and his foster mother Yashoda set a new record at a Delhi auction last week. Its value far exceeded pre-auction estimates which topped around €11 million.
The sale smashes the previous record set by Indian painter and director M.F. Husain’s Untitled (Gram Yatra), which was bought for nearly €12 million ($13.8 million) last year at Christie’s New York.
The painting was bought by Indian billionaire and businessman Cyrus S. Poonawalla at the auction organised by Mumbai-based auction house Saffronart.
“This national treasure deserves to be made available for public viewing periodically, and it will be my endeavour to facilitate this going forward,” Poonawalla told The Hindu.
People who want to see the work for themselves however will have to visit India as Varma’s artworks are classified as “non-exportable” and “national art treasures” by the Indian government, which means they are national heritage and cannot leave the country without authorisation.
Art market milestone
Born in the south Indian coastal state of Kerala in 1848, Varma was one of the pioneers of Indian modern art and is often credited with popularising oil painting in India. His work largely focused on portraiture and mythological painting.
Yashoda and Krishna was painted in the 1890s, at the height of his career, and interprets the theme of maternal love-– “a subject strongly embedded in Indian culture and devotional sentiment,” according to Saffronart.
The painting captures a scene of Yashoda milking a cow while the infant Krishna approaches her, asking her for milk — a recurring image in Indian visual history. The rich colours, minimal yet intricately detailed ornaments, and calibrated restraint make up a composition that is widely considered to be “one of the artist’s most accomplished works.”
“Great art has a way of reaffirming its timeless value,” president and co-founder of Saffronart Minal Vazirani said. “[The sale of Varma’s painting] is not just a milestone for the market, but a powerful reminder of the enduring cultural and emotional resonance of Indian art”.
The sale has triggered positive reactions online, with one user on X commenting, “Art market’s wild, but this? Next-level energy.”
But some feel that this sale has been a long time coming: “honestly the fact that Raja Ravi Varma paintings are just NOW hitting these numbers is wild,” another user said on X. “Does anyone else feel like Indian art is massively undervalued globally or is it just me?”