Rumale Chennabasaviah was fortunate to live in Bengaluru when it was truly a Garden City. He took delight in wandering around the city and capturing the beauty of nature through his exquisite water colour paintings. A true believer in Gandhi’s principles, he lived a simple life and worked selflessly in many roles.
Text: Arvind Krishnaswamy
Can one person be a freedom fighter, artist, politician, social worker and a newspaper editor?
Yes, Rumale Chennabasaviah was all of the above at various times of his life but he is perhaps best remembered as the painter who captured the glory of the Garden City on his canvas. He was born to Rumale Karibasappa and Gowramma on September 10, 1910, which happened to be the auspicious day of Ganesh Chaturthi. The Rumale family was wealthy, respected members of the Lingayat community in Doddaballapur, about 40 kilometers from Bengaluru. His parents were devout and self respecting but simple minded. They instilled discipline but at the same time were very affectionate with their four children. Rumale Karibasappa was an agriculturist who grew a variety of crops like betel nut and coconut. It is said that the family name Rumale came because of the way many generations of men tied their cloth head covering in a grand, colourful way. The Rumale family was benevolent, always ready to give money or help to people or organizations that needed it. Rumale Rudrappa’s choultry in Doddaballapur was available free to everyone, whether they were rich or poor.
Rumale Chennabasaviah was interested in nature and drawing from a very early age. He sketched everything around him including copying artwork in his textbooks. Portraits of gods in the home were copied and coloured. At school, other students were always asking him to draw pictures for them. Rumale Chennabasaviah studied at the Wesleyan Mission High School in Bengaluru, but quit studies after two years of high school. He continued his art education intermittently over the next few years. He joined Kala Mandira, the state’s first private art school founded in 1919 by A.N. Subba Rao, completed Higher Arts exams in painting at Madras and studied art (oil painting) at the Chamarajendra Technical Institute at Mysore in 1934.
In 1927, Rumale Chennabasaviah met Mahatma Gandhi who was resting at Nandi Hills on his doctor’s advice. This meeting was the trigger for his involvement in the Indian freedom struggle between 1930 and 1947. Under the leadership of Prof K Sampathgiri Rao, he took part in the Ankola Salt Satyagraha. He was jailed during the freedom struggle in many places including Bengaluru Central Jail and Ahmednagar where Jawaharlal Nehru was his co-prisoner in 1940. During his time in prison, he continued drawing and sketching when it was possible. In 1924, Dr. Narayan Subbarao Hardikar founded Seva Dal, an organisation to train dedicated, disciplined, devoted youths for the freedom and service of the country. Rumale Chennabasaviah was one of the people who was instrumental in spreading the movement and he became its organising secretary.
After independence, Rumale Chennabasaviah was selected as a member of the advisory committee for development of cottage industries in 1949. He was nominated member of the Mysore Legislative Council for 2 terms from 1952 to 1960 along with other famous personalities like Gubbi Veeranna, T Chowdaiah and Gorur Ramaswamy Iyengar. Kengal Hanumantaiah took his help to organise an exhibition of fine arts and crafts as part of the historic AICC session held at Cubbon Park between 12th and 22nd of July 1951. A rare collection of artwork by more than 50 artists including his own work was displayed in the fair. He was always willing to support social causes and during the 1950s, he was also the chief organiser of the free eye operation camps of the famous Dr M C Modi, who used to perform as many as 270 operations in a single day.
However, due to his multifarious activities, Rumale Chennabasaviah was able to devote only part of his time. His artwork was displayed in a few exhibitions, art fairs and one man shows and gained appreciation. In 1962, at the age of 52, he decided to focus only on art. He used part of his home in Rajajinagar for his art shows and called it “Kala Kuteera”. In 1973, it was converted into Rumale Art Gallery, the first private art gallery in Bengaluru and was inaugurated by renowned painter Svetoslav Roerich and his wife Devika Rani. He would hold his one man painting shows here but had no other regular source of income. He even donated his legislator’s pension to poor people. Due to this, he struggled to repay the loan taken to start the gallery. What a contrast if you can think of the wealth accumulated by any two-term politician of today! He remained a bachelor, like many of the painters of his time.
Rumale was a calm, soft spoken, respectful and patient person. He was always willing to help other artists. For example, he introduced fellow artist H S Inamti to Kengal Hanumantaiah and the Chief Minister bought many of Inamti’s paintings for his home and for presenting them to foreign dignitaries visiting the state.
Rumale Chennabasaviah eagerly anticipated the arrival of Spring when the trees and flowers bloomed. He would select places and go there early in the morning at sunrise to capture the natural beauty on his canvas. Though he mainly used water colours, he was equally adept at oil painting. Some days he would finish 2 or 3 paintings and at other times take a whole week or even a month for just one artwork. He would patiently go to the same place at the same time every day until the painting was completed. He paid a lot of attention to the drawing before starting the painting.
Rumale Chennabasaviah had a Direct Method and a Wet Method in water colour painting. He directly mixed diluted colours on a sheet of Whatman paper. In order to get the right tonal value (lightness or darkness of colour) he did multiple colour washes in layers after the previous layer had dried. In the Wet method also known as Wet-on-wet technique, he first did the drawing and then started painting on the following day after thoroughly wetting the paper. He would stick the wet paper to a board and keep it horizontal on his lap while painting. The colours were allowed to dry in the first stage and followed by multiple stages of Direct (dry) method. He believed that there were no hard and fast rules in painting and the artist could change or adopt new methods as per his expertise.
Oil painting took much longer and he had to build up the painting layer by layer, waiting for each layer to be completely dry before starting the next one. He preferred to follow the Direct method, which required more concentration and effort but had the potential to yield good results. Rumale Chennabasaviah also used scraping with a blade or painting knife to get the required texture or to remove thin highlights – for example on blades of grass.
All the materials needed for painting such as paper, brushes, colours were bought from famous companies abroad. It was expensive in Indian rupees along with taxes and customs duty but he did not compromise.
Rumale Chennabasaviah’s work was recognised and appreciated over the years. On January 24, 1965, at the dedication of the Sharavathi hydroelectric plant, Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastry presented a painting of Jog Falls by Rumale Chennabasavaiah to the American ambassador Chester Bowles. Chester Bowles wrote a note of thanks and had the painting hung in the lobby of the US Embassy in New Delhi. When the state of Mysore celebrated 10 years of its formation, an exhibition of Rumale’s paintings was organised for 10 days starting November 7, 1966. Several awards were bestowed upon him including Kolkata Academy of Fine Arts prize in 1935 and 1946, Karnataka Lalithakala Academy award in 1972 and Rajyotsava Award in 1983.
Rumale Chennabasaviah was an ardent devotee of Sri Tapasviji Maharaj and Sri Shivabalayogi. He donated a part of his family land and collected funds to construct a small ashram for Sri Shivabalayogi.
In 1984, Government of Karnataka asked Rumale Chennabasaviah to paint 51 images of Cauvery river in a span of 5 years. He had completed about a dozen but he died in an autorickshaw accident on February 5, 1988, when he was coming back from Lalbagh after a spot painting visit.
