“Sir Tanjore Madhava Rao” by Edouard Lanteri

[Victorian Web Home —> Visual Arts —> Sculpture —> Edouard Lanteri]

Sir Tanjore Madhava Rao

Edouard Lanteri (with Raja Ravi Varma)

1892

Bronze

Lifesize or slightly greater

Statue Junction, Trivandrum (Thiruvananthapuram)

Kerala, India

Source: Travancore State Manual, following p. 556.

This is the earlier of two bronze statues standing outside Trivandrum's Secretariat building. If it has more of a Western feel to it than the other, that is not at all surprising. [Commentary continues below; mouse over the text for links.]

Scanned image and text by Jacqueline Banerjee.

[You may use this image without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you link your document to this URL in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in a print one.]

Secretariat, Trivandrum, with the statue of Dalawa Velu Thampi

The other statue, which looks outwards from the grounds of Trivandrum's Secretariat building, is post-Independence. It is a likeness of the early Prime Minister (Dalawa) Velu Thampi (1765-1809), who fought against the British — he was, in short, an early Freedom Fighter.” by contrast, this one, which faces it at a busy intersection (Statue Junction), is a Raj-era likeness of Sir Tanjore Madhava Rao, the enlightened and reforming Dewan of Travancore.

Coming into Trivandrum's history just after the events of 1857, Sir Tanjore transformed the state from 1858-1872, before moving on after a disagreement with the Maharaja. He died in 1891. From its very making, this statue was naturally more of a blend of East and West: although it was the work of Lanteri, he was helped in modelling and casting it by the Indian artist Raja Ravi Varma (Varma 305). Notice that he is shown wearing the order of the Star of India. For a long time the town's only statue, this is the one that gave both the junction, and Statue Road which leads off it, their names.

Bibliography

Travancore State Manual. Trivandrum: Travancore Government, 1906. Internet Archive. Contributed by Harvard University. Web. 28 April 2019.

Varma, C. Raja Raja. Raja Ravi Varma, Portrait of an Artist: The Diary of C. Raja Raja Varma.. Ed. Erwin Neumayer and Christine Schelberger. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.

Created 29 April 2019