Raja Ravi Varma’s “Yashoda and Krishna” Sells for $17.9 Million, Setting a New Auction Record for Indian Painting
A late 19th-century canvas by Indian painter Raja Ravi Varma (1848–1906) has reset the top end of the market for Indian art. Varma’s “Yashoda and Krishna” (ca. 1890s) sold for ₹1.67 billion rupees ($17.9 million) at a Saffronart auction in Delhi on April 1, establishing a new record for the most expensive painting by an Indian artist at auction. The buyer was Cyrus Poonawalla, the pharmaceutical billionaire and founder of the Serum Institute of India. (The reported total includes fees.)
The painting’s appeal is immediate and quietly theatrical: Krishna, the Hindu deity, clings to his foster mother, Yashoda, as she milks a cow. Varma stages the scene with domestic clarity — the sheen of fabric, the glint of jewelry, the animal’s calm presence — while giving the child Krishna a small golden cup and an expression that reads as playful, slightly impatient, and unmistakably alive.
Varma is widely regarded as a foundational figure in modern Indian painting, celebrated for bringing academic realism to subjects drawn from Hindu epics, including the Mahabharata and Ramayana. During his lifetime, he achieved international recognition, winning an award at the 1873 Vienna Exhibition and later receiving two gold medals at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago — milestones that helped cement his reputation beyond the subcontinent.
In a statement about “Yashoda and Krishna,” The Ravi Varma Heritage Foundation described the artist’s achievement as a careful equilibrium between devotion and everyday intimacy: “Varma’s genius lies in this very balance: the sacred rendered through the familiar,” the foundation wrote, pointing to the work’s tactile attention to “the textures of silk, the gleam of jewelry, the softness of skin, and the gentle stillness of the cow.”
The new result dramatically surpasses Varma’s previous auction high. In 2023, another painting depicting the same mother-and-child motif, “Yashoda Krishna” (n.d.), sold for $4.5 million at Pundole’s auction house in Mumbai.
The record also reshapes a fast-evolving hierarchy at the top of the Indian art market. Before this week’s sale, the benchmark for the most expensive Indian painting at auction belonged to Indian artist M.F. Husain (1915–2011): his “Untitled (Gram Yatra)” (1954) achieved $13.75 million at Christie’s New York in March 2025. Prior to that, the record was held by Hungarian Indian painter Amrita Sher-Gil (1913–1941), whose “The Story Teller” (1937) sold for $7.4 million at Saffronart in Mumbai in September 2023.
Varma’s market is shaped not only by demand but also by regulation. He is one of just nine artists designated “national art treasures” under India’s Indian Art and Antiquities Act of 1972, a status that restricts works by these artists from traveling overseas. The list includes Rabindranath Tagore, Abanindranath Tagore, Gaganendranath Tagore, Amrita Sher-Gil, Jamini Roy, Nandalal Bose, Nicholas Roerich, and Sailoz Mookherjea.
With “Yashoda and Krishna” now at $17.9 million, the sale signals both the depth of domestic collecting power and the continued centrality of Varma’s imagery — devotional, intimate, and meticulously observed — to the story the Indian art market is telling about itself.
