It is difficult for the modern audience to appreciate the allure of a photograph when stood against a painting. To the accustomed eye, a painting takes years of dedication and an insurmountable amount of skill. But a photograph? Just a click.
Yet, the circumstances of 1902 were very different when both the legendary painter Raja Ravi Verma and celebrated photographer Raja Deen Dayal vied for the attention of the Nizam of Hyderabad, and much to Verma’s chagrin the latter’s work was preferred.
Verma had visited the Nizam on Dayal’s invitation and was of opinion that his host had not put in enough effort to promote his cause, and thus concluded, was jealous of him. While the comparison between the two might seem absurd to the readers of today, the functioning of a bellow camera of the 1900s demanded as deft a hand as did the brush.
Despite the difference in medium, the work of both the artists had a similar flavour. The celebrated author and art conservator Rupika Chawla opines, that Dayal brought to photography what Verma had brought to paintings, the elegant depiction of opulence and grandeur in lifelike documentation.
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