After seeing Mysore art in a gallery, one man has spent his whole life collecting and conserving it

In general, youthful birthday indulgences involve cake, candles and party hats. This was not the case for Mysuru resident RG Singh who, in 1987, spent his 20th birthday gift money on acquiring his very first artwork from a framer’s shop – a Mysore-style painting. “The brittle board smelt of ancient dust,” he recalled later in an essay. “I got it packed between two hardboard sheets, delicately balanced it on my Chetak scooter and took it home.”

Almost four decades on, Singh’s collection of Mysore paintings has culminated in the city’s Ramsingh Museum, a vast collection of 600 paintings. Built on Singh’s decades-long enthusiasm for amassing and conserving examples of a specific artistic form from across 200 years, the museum is not just a synoptic view of a distinctive regional style. In it can also be found a glimpse of what collecting historical art can mean.

On a mild Mysuru evening, I meet Singh and the museum’s curator HS Dharmendra Raghu as part of a group tour “by appointment” (the museum, though free, is not open to walk-in visitors.) The second-generation proprietor of a handicrafts business, Singh is also the honorary secretary of Ramsons Kala Pratishtana, an arts trust established in 1995 by his father...

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