He got training from court painter "Alagiri Naidu", who was he?

Question

Accepted Answer

The correct option is 3: Raja Ravi Verma
Raja Ravi Verma (1848–1906) is the correct answer. As a member of the aristocratic family of Kilimanoor in the Travancore princely state (modern-day Kerala), Ravi Varma was a protégé of Maharaja Ayilyam Thirunal and received his early formal education and artistic training within the royal court. The court painter, Alagiri Naidu, was a Madurai-based artist known for his mastery of traditional South Indian watercolor painting, particularly the Mysore style. Ravi Varma’s exposure to and instruction from Naidu at the palace in Trivandrum was foundational, teaching him indigenous art techniques which he later fused with European academic realism, a synthesis that defined his pioneering style of art.

The incorrect option is 1: Rabindranath Tagore
Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) was a highly celebrated Bengali polymath, a poet, writer, and Nobel Laureate, who was primarily self-taught in painting. He began painting late in his life, in his sixties, and his style was modernist, characterized by rhythmic, often expressionistic forms that evolved from cross-outs and doodles in his manuscripts. Tagore's training was not in the traditional manner of court patronage, and he had no association with the Travancore court or the South Indian painter Alagiri Naidu.

The incorrect option is 2: E. V. Havell
E. V. Havell (1861–1934) was an English art historian and administrator, not an Indian painter. He held a position as the Principal of the Government School of Art in Calcutta. Havell is historically significant for actively discouraging Western academic art education in India and championing the revival of native Indian art, thus becoming a key ideological leader of the Bengal School of Art. His role was as a British educator and proponent of swadeshi art, entirely separate from any training under a South Indian court painter.

The incorrect option is 4: Nandlal Bose
Nandlal Bose (1882–1966) was a prominent figure in the nationalist Bengal School of Art and was a disciple of Abanindranath Tagore. His formal art training took place in Calcutta, where he became renowned for his technical mastery of the *wash* technique and his thematic focus on Indian history and mythology in the Bengal School style. Bose's career was centered in Bengal and later Santiniketan, placing him geographically and stylistically distant from the traditional court art of Travancore and a painter like Alagiri Naidu.