Raja Ravi Varma was widely praised for his ability to merge the Western academic painting style with Indian themes. In the 1870s, as he began creating narrative paintings, he drew inspiration from India’s classical heritage—drawing upon the epics, Puranas, and Kalidasa’s plays. His first major work featuring Shakuntala, Shakuntala Patralekhan (Shakuntala Writing a Love Letter to Dushyanta), was painted for the 1876 Madras exhibition. The painting, which depicted Shakuntala lying on the forest floor in a yellow sari, surrounded by her friends and animal companions, won a gold medal and garnered widespread acclaim. It was immediately purchased by the Duke of Buckingham, then Governor of Madras. Though the location of the original painting remains unknown, it was widely reproduced in books and lithographs, including the 1903 publication Ravi Varma: The Indian Artist. Given the colonial fascination with the Abhijnanasakuntalam narrative at the time, Varma was encouraged to create multiple renditions of Shakuntala. His later works included Shakuntala (1888, Maharaja Fatehsingh Museum, Baroda), Shakuntala (1898, Government Museum, Madras), and Shakuntala Looking for Dushyanta (1898, Shri Chitra Art Gallery, Trivandrum). One of his Shakuntala paintings was even selected as the frontispiece for Monier-Williams' 1887 edition of Kalidasa’s play.[10] His most famous painting, Shakuntala Looking for Dushyanta captures the moment when she feigns removing a thorn from her foot while actually glancing back to see if Dushyanta notices her.[11]

Varma’s works were equally admired by Orientalists and Indian nationalists. In 1895, Varma’s first lithographic print, The Birth of Shakuntala, won the "Best Lithograph" prize at the Bombay Art Society’s annual exhibition. The choice of this subject was highly symbolic; by this time, Shakuntala had come to represent an idealized vision of Indian womanhood. Within the context of colonial modernity, her birth was seen not just as the emergence of India’s ancestral matriarch but also as a metaphorical rebirth of the ideal Hindu woman—an embodiment of the virtues that both Orientalists and Indian nationalists sought to define in the image of the "modern" Indian woman.[10]