On an evening in 1988 on Kengal Hanumanthaiah road near Lalbagh, Bengaluru, a man met with a fatal accident after colliding with a bus while boarding an auto. The man who succumbed was a freedom fighter, two-time MLC, editor of a popular daily and renowned painter — Rumale Channabasavaiah.
Rumale’s oeuvre captures the romantic sense of flora and foliage of Bangalore from the 1960s to 1980s. He captured the essence of the city’s beautiful landscape, highlighting the gulmohars, tabebuias and jacaranda juxtaposed with public buildings and parks.
What stands out in Rumale’s work are his brush strokes and thick impasto. His watercolour work on a large canvas, the bold colour combination and his signature style of using his palette knife earned him the title ‘Van Gogh of India’.
While his earlier paintings revolved around realism, the transition from then on was constant. By the 1980s, his work was firmly situated in modernism with highlights of impressionism and the abstract. He worked with bright colours and bold strokes. He is believed to have never mixed colours on the palette but directly on the canvas.
One can almost feel the thick impasto used to form petals, leaves and flowers on a vast canvas. The texture, bold colours and forms are striking. In a few of his paintings of Cubbon Park, he uses simultaneous contrasts — with dark colours highlighting the shadows and flowers brought out by bright reds. The sky, in his world of landscapes, is full of drama and enigma.
Life and times
Born in 1910 in Doddaballapur, Rumale studied at Kalamandir for a year in 1929. In 1931, he went to Mysore’s Chamarajendra Technical Institute, where he obtained training in oil painting and watercolours. His art education took an abrupt turn as he joined the freedom struggle, choosing it over a life as an artist. Even though Mahatma Gandhi advised him to pursue the arts in parallel, Rumale chose to do one thing at a time. He even took part in Salt Satyagraha and dedicated his next 30 years to public life.
Eventually, after his public life wound down, Rumale dedicated his energy to the pursuit of art. As a painter, he picked up the brush at the age of 52. Making up for lost time, Rumale was able to create a vast collection of 120 watercolours and oil paints. They include landscapes, seascapes, still life and portraits.
His zeal to travel and capture the world took him to various parts of the state, putting on canvas the fast-changing landscape of Karnataka. He was even commissioned by the state to document the dam project which would inundate several villages.
Rumale carried his bulky painting kit, climbing up hills and crossing rivers. He documented the birth of River Kaveri and her journey, pilgrim sites like Talakaveri and Kudala Sangama and historical sites.
His watercolour work in Colombo is also a standout.
It was a common sight in the 1960s and 1980s to see a lean man with salt and pepper hair with a big canvas mounted in front of public buildings or under a lush canopy in Lalbagh and Cubbon Park. This inspired many onlookers and a few even went on to become professional painters.
Rumale would search for the perfect spot and visit multiple times to study the play of light and shadows on the scene as a whole. When satisfied, he would return with his canvas, brushes, pallet knife, Winsor and Newton watercolours or oil paints and his foldable wooden chair. At times, he would spend weeks on a single painting.
A perfectionist, he would not paint if the light was slightly different and would instead come back to the spot until he finished the piece.
He particularly took inspiration from the flowering plants and trees in Rajajinagar and his neighbourhood. His Gandhian philosophy made a statement in his work.
Rumale was awarded the Karnataka Rajyotsava award and the Karnataka Lalit Kala Academy. Justice Khosla and T P Issar found in their works an echo of Vincent Van Gogh. V K Gokak, a renowned literateur, called him the painter laureate of the trees of Bengaluru.
Opened in 1973, the Rumale Art Gallery in Rajajinagar houses rosewood-framed paintings of the artist's work. Some of his paintings are also in the powerhouse of the state, Vidhana Soudha. One can see his paint brushes, imported paints and belongings along with his awards and accords at the gallery. Even on his last day, minutes before the unfortunate accident, he was returning from Lalbagh after a recce for his next painting.