Oleograph

An oleograph is a type of chromolithograph — a print built up from multiple stone or metal plates, each applying one colour — finished and varnished to mimic the surface sheen and brushwork of an oil painting. The technique became central to Indian art history through Raja Ravi Varma, who in 1894 established the Ravi Varma Fine Art Lithographic Press near Bombay specifically to mass-produce oleographic prints of his mythological and portrait paintings. This made his gods and goddesses — Lakshmi, Saraswati, and scenes from the Mahabharata — affordable and ubiquitous across Indian homes for the first time, effectively inventing the mass visual vocabulary of modern Hindu iconography and making Ravi Varma arguably India's first artist to reach a truly popular, cross-class audience through reproduction.