In There Comes Papa, how is the Analysis discussed?
The painting depicts Raja Ravi Varma's daughter holding her child in the central frame. Both characters, as well as the dog, look out from the frame towards an approaching figure.
The painting gathers the viewer's focus and evokes investment through participation, while showing elements of Ravi Varma's imagination and European influence. For example, the dog — an animal regarded in Indian culture to be unclean — correlates to the European idea of domesticity. The figure of his daughter, believed to be modeled from a photograph, is dressed as was typical for an upper-class Nair, but the woman's stance is evocative of European styles.Social and cultural historian G.Arunima describes how the painting could evoke many themes to the viewer. For some, the painting represents combined Eastern and Western artistic technique. For others the painting simply depicts an upper-class Nair woman in a domestic Kerala setting. According to Arunima, for the audience of the late nineteenth century, the scene carries more meaning. The absent but approaching father (who the audience would not know was approaching without reading the title) represents the Nair matrilineal system. The nuclear family depicted acts as a call for the end of matrilineality.
Critic Niharika Dinkar notes: "With the dog on her right, it is clearly a bourgeois offshoot of contemporary Victorian images of the expectant mother waiting for the father to complete the picture of the small, happy nuclear family. The central figure in the painting was Ravi Varma’s own daughter, someone whose own life was spent within the traditional tharavad, yet she is represented here as an icon for the new family ideal."The absence of male figures in Raja Ravi Varma's paintings are significant. The behavior between men and women were distant and formal. As part of the matrilineal system, fathers were usually insignificant to the larger household and had little emotional connection to their wife or kids. Varma's inclusion of women yearning for their husbands signified a new emotional investment between spouses.
Kerala matrilineal domesticity nuclear family Nair Raja Ravi Varma Indian culture