Kalighat Paintings

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Kalighat Paintings

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Kalighat Paintings from the collection of

Victoria and Albert Museum, London and

Victoria Memorial Hall, Kolkata

Edited by Suhashini Sinha and Professor C. Panda

V&A Publishing in association with Mapin Publishing

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First published in India in 2011 by Mapin Publishing Pvt. Ltd 502 Paritosh, Near Darpana Academy Usmanpura Riverside, Ahmedabad 380013 T: 91 79 40 228 228 • F: 91 79 40 228 201 E: mapin@mapinpub.com • www.mapinpub.com in association with V&A Publishing Victoria and Albert Museum Cromwell Road London SW7 2RL T: 44 (0)20 7942 2000 www.vandabooks.com Simultaneously published in the United States of America in 2011 by Grantha Corporation 77 Daniele Drive, Hidden Meadows Ocean Township, NJ 07712 E: mapin@mapinpub.com Text © authors Images © V&A, VMH (as listed)

Page 1 A woman preparing for the night, cat. no. 46 Pages 2–3 A woman holding a sitar, cat. no. 79 Page 7 Brahma, cat. no. 7 Page 8–9 The Jagannatha trio: Balbhadra, Subhadra and Jagannatha, cat. no. 12

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All rights reserved under international copyright conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording or any other information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

Distribution North America Antique Collectors’ Club East Works, 116 Pleasant Street Suite 18, Easthampton, MA 01027 USA T: 1 800 252 5231 • F: 1 413 529 0862 E: info@antiquecc.com www.antiquecollectorsclub.com United Kingdom, Europe, Australia & New Zealand Macmillan Distribution (MDL) Brunel Road Houndmills, Basingstoke, RG21 6XS T: 44 (0) 1256 302692 • F: 44 (0) 1256 812558 E: orders@macmillan.co.uk www.macmillandistribution.co.uk Southeast Asia Paragon Asia Co. Ltd 687 Taksin Road, Bukkalo, Thonburi Bangkok 10600 Thailand T: 66 2877 7755 • F: 66 2468 9636 E: info@paragonasia.com Rest of the world Mapin Publishing Pvt. Ltd

ISBN: 978-81-89995-66-9 (Mapin) ISBN: 978-1-935677-21-5 (Grantha) ISBN: 978-1-851-77665-8 (V&A) LCCN: 2011938820 Copyeditor: Vinutha Mallya/Mapin Editorial Designer: Shilpa Bisht/Mapin Design Studio Art Direction & Production: Paulomi Shah/ Mapin Design Studio Processed at Reproscan, Mumbai Printed in China by PWGS

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CONTENTS

Foreword Jawhar Sircar, Secretary, Ministry of Culture, Government of India

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Martin Roth, Director, Victoria and Albert Museum

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Introduction

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Essays 1.

Kalighat Paintings in the V&A Collection Suhashini Sinha

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2.

Kalighat Paintings at Victoria Memorial Hall Piyasi Bharasa

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3.

Kalam Patua: From the Interstices of the City Jyotindra Jain

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4.

Materials and Techniques of Kalighat Paintings Michael J. Wheeler and Dr Lucia Burgio

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Catalogue 1.

Religious Subjects Gods and Goddesses

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Scenes from the life of Krishna

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Scenes from the Epics: The Ramayana and The Mahabharata

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2.

Social Commentaries, Proverbs and Animals

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3.

British and European Influence

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4.

The Tarakeshwar Affair

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5.

Named Artists and the End of the Century

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6.

Kalighat Themes in Different Media

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7.

Contemporary Kalighat Painting

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Bibliography

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Acknowledgements

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FOREWORD Jawhar Sircar, Secretary, Ministry of Culture, Government of India

‘Kalighat Paintings’ is a joint exhibition of Kalighat paintings organised by the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) and Victoria Memorial Hall (VMH), with contributions by contemporary artists.

The exhibition and accompanying publication will allow the public to view these vibrant collections displayed together for the first time in the city in which they were originally created.

The subsequent tour will give audiences all over India the chance to admire the creativity and talent of Kolkata’s urban artists in producing such breathtakingly simple yet elegant art.

The exhibition is divided into eight sections, spanning the hundred-year period of the genre and covering the various themes depicted in the paintings, from religious subjects to social satires and commentaries. To show the enduring appeal of Kalighat paintings into the twenty-first century, the exhibition’s final section displays contemporary works by artists from Medinipur and Birbhum.

I would like to thank Sir Mark Jones, former Director, V&A, for his enthusiasm and collaboration and Martin Roth, for his continued support. I would also like to thank Suhashini Sinha, Mike Wheeler, Ann Hayhoe and Caroline Bulloch of the V&A as well as Professor C. Panda, Piyasi Bharasa and the team at the VMH. The Ministry of Culture is pleased and proud to support this exhibition collaboration between the V&A and VMH and we hope that this will facilitate more and varied exchanges between our two countries in the future.

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FOREWORD Martin Roth, Director, V&A

The exhibition ‘Kalighat Paintings’ and this generously illustrated accompanying catalogue are the results of an idea formed some eighteen months ago, of a collaborative touring exhibition between the V&A, London, and The Victoria Memorial Hall, Kolkata. Both the V&A and the VMH hold culturally, academically and aesthetically important collections of Kalighat paintings, many of which have never been displayed or published in the public domain.

Kalighat paintings were created in Kolkata as popular urban art for the masses. Although historically they circulated within the social milieu of nineteenth-century Kolkata, their universal appeal went much further, inspiring the later works of Indian and European twentieth-century artists. It is this fact that makes Kalighat paintings interesting to look at comparatively, through the format of the exhibition.

The Kalighat patuas (painters) produced these works for the market and to make a living.

They were unconcerned about their reputation in decades to come, or whether people would remember them. Indeed the works themselves were painted for the most part on cheap mill-made paper, which did not last long in Kolkata’s humid climate. Over the course of the nineteenth century, Kalighat paintings were collected by various interested parties, ranging from Missionary schools and travelling collectors to Western tourists in India looking for a souvenir.

The exhibition catalogue tells the stories behind two notable collectors for the V&A: John Lockwood Kipling, father of the author Rudyard Kipling, and W.G. Archer, Keeper of the Indian Section at the V&A (1949–1959). Both Kipling and Archer, active in India during the 1870s and 1930s respectively, helped to build strong foundations for the Kalighat paintings collection, as well as in adding considerably to the V&A’s holdings of wider Indian art. The Kipling collection was given to the V&A by Rudyard Kipling in 1914, while

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W.G. Archer donated items from his own collection during the 1950s as well as through acquiring for the museum in his capacity as Keeper.

As part of the research for the exhibition, scientific pigment analysis on eight of the V&A Kalighat paintings in the V&A collections was undertaken, the first of its kind. The results, published here, enrich our understanding of the patuas’ craft and technique.

We would like to extend our particular thanks to Professor C. Panda, Secretary and Curator, VMH; to Piyasi Bharasa, Education and Exhibitions Officer, VMH; and to the rest of the staff at the VMH for their co-operation and dedication in making this touring exhibition and publication possible. Thanks also go to Prof. Rajeev Lochan, Director, National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi; Mr Sabyasachi Mukherjee, Director, CSMVS, Mumbai; and Dr A. Nagendra Reddy, Director, Salarjung Museum, Hyderabad, for their support and enthusiasm during the tour.

We are grateful to the British Council India for their ongoing support, particularly with the public programme and educational activities associated with the exhibition.

This collaboration has provided a perfect opportunity to strengthen the friendship between our two institutions. This is the second exhibition project between the V&A and an Indian institution, building on our successful past experiences. I hope we can continue to lay strong foundations for future collaborations between our two institutions, and for further partnerships between museums in India and the UK.

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Kalighat Paintings An Introduction

The ‘Kalighat Paintings’ exhibition—at Victoria Memorial Hall, Kolkata, from 16 October 2011 to 11 December 2011—and tour aims to display some of the known, and previously exhibited, Kalighat paintings of the V&A collection, alongside a number of unpublished and previously unseen works.

The exhibition has been an international collaboration—where, alongside the V&A’s collection, paintings from Victoria Memorial Hall (VMH) in Kolkata will also be shown. The exhibition offers an opportunity to learn more about the VMH collection, which provides a fascinating comparison to the collection of the V&A, particularly in terms of medium and subject matter.

In order to contrast old and new traditions of Kalighat painting, the exhibition includes the work of five contemporary artists. Rural painters of scrolls and Kalighat paintings (patuas), whose ancestors set up stalls around the vicinity of the Kali temple, are now going back to the work of past generations to look for inspiration.

This companion volume to the exhibition is not only a catalogue of paintings, but it also lends context to the painting style with the help of supporting essays by well-known scholars.

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The four essays included here focus on different aspects of the collection, and on the creation of both historic and contemporary Kalighat paintings. The first two essays, while describing the V&A and VMH collections, also highlight some of the important collectors responsible for acquiring the Kalighat paintings for those museums, and highlights important comparisons between the collections of the two museums. In his essay on materials and techniques of Kalighat painting, Mike Wheeler, Senior Paper Conservator at the V&A, presents the results of the first-ever pigment analysis of Kalighat painting, done on a sample set from the V&A collection.

Professor Jyotindra Jain’s contribution on Kalam Patua gives us an insight into the process that the modern patua goes through to create contemporary Kalighat paintings. Five of Kalam Patua’s contemporary works will be shown in ‘Kalighat Paintings’ and are published for the first time, in this catalogue.

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Kalighat painting today The practice of Kalighat painting continues in the villages of Bengal, being handed down through the generations in a way that renews the traditions of the early twentieth century.

The areas surrounding the Kalighat temple are no longer home to the patua families or the communities that once made a living from their art. Rural patuas, though, are keeping the tradition alive along with scroll painting, in the districts surrounding Kolkata.

Of the contemporary artists whose works are included in ‘Kalighat Paintings’ , four live in the village of Naya in Medinipur district. A small settlement there is known as the ‘patua village’, as each family is either of patuas, or is connected to the tradition of patachitra. The contemporary artists, like their nineteenth-century ancestors, take the title of ‘Chitrakar’ or ‘Patua’ indicating their status as belonging to the artists’ caste. Today’s patuas affiliate themselves with neither Hindu nor Muslim religions, using both Hindu and Islamic first names, and they observe festivals and customs of both religions. The contemporary Kalighat paintings they create focus on secular themes and current events as well as a mixture of religious depictions, executed in a modern style.

Contemporary artist Ranjit Chitrakar and his sons paint religious and secular scenes similar to the historic forms. They use a varied colour palette, made from organic materials. Anwar and Uttam Chitrakar create Kalighat paintings depicting modern subjects. Anwar began painting patachitra at the age of 11 or 12, and has been producing Kalighat paintings periodically for the past 18 years, while Uttam has spent the last eight years practising his art. In the past, both men have experienced economic difficulties in continuing to work as practising artists, leading them to take up alternative occupations during intervening years.

The women in the community also paint, often helping to prepare colours and to draw outlines for detailed works, while simultaneously carrying out household tasks. Some of the women have branched out to new media—painting patachitra designs on T-shirts and greetings cards—as a form of self employment. In the last ten years, a number of organisations have been set up in Kolkata, to support rural arts and crafts,1 and are helping patua families to promote their work to a wide range of audiences.

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Contemporary Kalighat paintings are now being collected by private collectors, museums and galleries; displayed in exhibitions and fairs; used in art workshops; and displayed in public spaces around India. The scope of such promotional activity is now widening beyond India’s borders, and beginning to permeate the international art world, facilitating an even wider understanding of the life and work of the patua, and through them, the story of Kolkata’s most urban art tradition. ‘banglanatak.com’ is an example of an organisation that promotes the work of rural patuas practising both Kalighat and scroll painting, through events, workshops and tours.

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Kalighat Paintings in the V&A Collection Suhashini Sinha

The V&A holds the largest collection of Kalighat paintings in the world. The collection, which numbers about 645 watercolour drawings and paintings (pat in Bengali), also includes line drawings and hand-coloured lithographs. The majority of the works are 45cm x 27cm, similar to standard A3 paper size. The collection also contains 295 smaller, postcard-sized Kalighat paintings—roughly 13cm x 8cm (cat.no.78). It is an excellent resource for studying the development of the Kalighat genre. Created and collected over a period of 100 years from the 1830s to the 1930s, the resulting works vary in style, quality of workmanship, colour, composition and subject matter.

Origins of Kalighat Painting According to legend, Lord Shiva, the god of dance and destruction, was deep in meditation on Mount Kailasha when he received the news of the death of his consort, Sati, an avatar of Kali. He wandered for days with her body draped across his shoulders and his inconsolable grief threatened to ruin the earth. Lord Vishnu, the Preserver, was called upon to intervene. To relieve Shiva’s burden, he shattered Sati’s body into 51 pieces.

The little toe of Sati’s right foot was said to have fallen at the site by the River Hooghly, from whence began the association of the region with Kali. By the late 1690s, when it became a part of the city of Kolkata, it was already well known as the sacred realm of Kali or ‘Kalikshetra’. The moorings (ghat) on the bank of the Hooghly were familiar to pilgrims as ‘Kalighat’ and there was perhaps an early version of a temple at the spot, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The present temple was completed in 1809, incorporating traditional Bengali architecture of the eight-roofed or athchala design.1

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In 1742, there was a wide road leading to the temple. Other developments such as the clearance of the jungle in the Maidan area of Kolkata and the expansion of settlements around Bhawanipur and Alipur, all helped make access to the shrine easier for pilgrims.2 By the early nineteenth century, the temple was a popular destination for local people, pilgrims and interested European visitors. The popularity and fame of the goddess Kali have been directly linked to the growth and development of the city’s infrastructure.

As Kolkata began to shape into a busy and thriving industrial harbour city with a burgeoning population, waves of migrants began to arrive in the city looking for new opportunities.

Among them were artisans, craftsmen and painters from various parts of India. They found areas of the city in which to settle and work, often inspired by their interaction with each

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other, creating a melting pot of traditions, languages and artistic ideas. Kalighat, with its daily hordes of pilgrims, would have provided a haven of opportunity for local artists and craftsmen to produce and sell small, cheap religious souvenirs. The kumor (potter) and sutradhar (carpenter) artisans were among the first to capitalise on this new market.

Soon after them came the patuas, who migrated to the city from the rural districts of West Bengal. Affiliating themselves with the Chitrakar (Sanskrit for ‘artist’) caste, they were defined by their occupation as artists who earned their living by making images in three and two dimensions. In the villages, patuas had traditionally painted long narrative stories on scrolls of handmade paper often over 20 feet in length, known as patachitra. The scrolls were painted with tempera, a thicker, more opaque pigment, on joined-up sections known as pattas, giving rise to the name ‘patua’. Each section told a segment of the story.

The patuas would wander from village to village, unrolling the scroll one section at a time and singing the stories to a captive audience.

The urban audiences at Kalighat were mobile, with transient interests. Influenced by the different art forms around them, and due to the need to work quickly, the patuas abandoned their linear narrative style in favour of single pictures involving one or two figures. The backgrounds were left plain, all non-essential details were eliminated, and basic combinations of colours were used. This simple exercise in paring down composition, line and colour, created the key characteristics of the Kalighat genre and enabled the patuas to rapidly increase their productivity. They were helped by the benefits of the industrial revolution in Britain. Factory-made watercolours from Britain were being imported into Kolkata for the first time, and the patuas took full advantage of these cheaper materials, avoiding the laborious process of grinding up pigments by hand. Mill-made paper was also available, and although thin and flimsy, it allowed the patuas to create multiple works of a standard size to hang vertically in their huts. As the nineteenth century progressed, each successive generation of patuas at Kalighat added to the work of their predecessors, adapting and altering the styles and subject matter to suit their changing environment.

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Paintings in the V&A’s Kalighat collection dating between the 1830s and the 1850s mainly show the whole pantheon of Hindu gods and goddesses, scenes from the life of Krishna and depictions of episodes from the popular Hindu epics, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. These religious themes continued to be represented until the turn of the twentieth century. The impact on the patuas of Kolkata’s rapidly changing urban society in the nineteenth century is clear when looking at the secular themes depicted during the later periods. Western theatrical performances, photography and art were establishing themselves as valid forms of expression and the patuas made full use of the new ideas these presented in their paintings. The rise of the ‘babu culture’ has been discussed at length by previous scholars; 3 amused by the Western affectations of the Bengali nouveau riche and rising middle classes, a satirical caricature emerged from the patuas’ brush, of a foppish male figure, complete with a mix of Bengali and Western attributes and

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It is not known exactly when or where he collected the works that are now in the V&A’s collections, although Rudyard Kipling mentions ‘a collection made some 25 years ago’.8 During the late 1870s, J.L. Kipling travelled around India, learning about its art, architecture, culture and traditions. He gained in-depth knowledge on the country and managed to visit many historic sites. A series of his drawings made in pencil and in pen-and-ink, which were created in the early 1870s and now part of the V&A collection, show local people engaged in everyday occupations, such as planting seed, carving wood and trading in the market.9 During the winter months, he was often summoned to the government headquarters in Kolkata and towards the end of 1876 made a series of journeys to the city in connection with the forthcoming Imperial Assemblage, held in Delhi in January 1877.10 It seems likely that during these and other visits between the 1870s and 1890s, Kipling acquired paintings from the stalls around the Kalighat temple.

Rudyard Kipling’s letter to the V&A dated 15 July 1917 shows that he was delighted to give his father’s collection such a reputable home: “…A large number of the series are [vividly] coloured pictures of gods in their various incarnations and I should think that the whole might be of some ethnological use or interest in your museum… It is contained in a large scrapbook which I should be very glad to present to the Indian Section of the V&A Museum.”11 Visually, the Kipling collection falls into four groups, of which a selection is displayed in ‘Kalighat Paintings’. The largest group (V&A accession nos IM.2:61–1917 to IM.2:85– 1917) is characterised by a palette of mainly red, blue, green and yellow. IM.2:86–1917, the only secular-themed painting in the collection, shows a scene from the Tarakeshwar Affair of 1873 (cat. no. 59).12 The third group in the Kipling set shows similar colours as the first, but the figures have been more loosely drawn. The final group has been painted in brown and red, with bold black brush strokes and a pale yellow background.

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The majority of the works display a liberal use of metallic decoration on the main figures.

The pigment used was an alloy of tin, polished to make it shine and look like silver.

Hindu deities, in shrines and temples, are usually bedecked in shining gold and brocaded clothing to heighten their appeal. The stalls that surround the Kalighat temple today offer the pilgrim a dazzling array of brightly coloured devotional prints and glittering bangles as well as plastic souvenirs embellished with gold and silver paint.13 W.G. Archer and Mukul Chandra Dey W.G. Archer became Keeper of the Indian Section at the V&A in 1949. In his ten-year tenure as keeper, he oversaw the acquisition of 90 Kalighat paintings from different sources and covering a range of quality, style and subject matter, into the V&A collection, adding significantly to the museum’s holdings.

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As a young man, Archer had studied Hindi, Indian History and Law at the School of Oriental Studies (now SOAS), London, and he was later posted to the provinces of Bihar and Orissa in 1931 as a member of the Indian Civil Service.14 Before leaving for India, Archer had seen two Kalighat paintings on display at the V&A and he detected certain qualities in the style that he believed may have inspired twentieth-century modern artists from India and Europe. On a visit to Kolkata in 1932, he met the graphic artist and writer Mukul Chandra Dey, who shared this view. A student of Santiniketan during the early twentieth century, Mukul Chandra Dey was a great collector of Indian art, and had amassed a large collection of Kalighat paintings. In 1932, when Dey wrote about the patua community of Kalighat, he became one of the first academics to give importance to the artists as well as to the painting style. He lamented that the patuas had almost disappeared from Kalighat by this point, driven out by the rapid advance of the printing press and lithography.

“These pictures have now entirely vanished. The artist craftsmen are nearly all dead and their children have taken up other business… The old art is gone for ever—the pictures are finding their last asylum in museums and art collections as things of beauty which we cannot let die.”15 Dey saw the work of the patuas as a ‘very important item of Bengal’s culture, which is really the pride of our country’. He realised that his collection might not remain intact after his death, and was keen to preserve it. Archer purchased 18 Kalighat paintings from Dey, of which he gave six to the V&A in 1952, and listed them in his comprehensive catalogue, published in 1953 and 1971. The other 12 were given to the British Library and have been listed by Archer’s wife, Mildred Archer, in her catalogue of popular paintings, published in 1977.

Fig. 1.4 Brahma, cat. no. 7

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Both Dey and Archer approached some artists and their families directly, to acquire works.

The Ghosh brothers, Nibaran Chandra and Kali Charan, and later their relation Kanai Lal Ghosh, were active patuas at Kalighat around 1900. The brothers had migrated from the 24 Paraganas district to Kalighat, and set up their painting business there. They specifically focussed on pat painting and not on incorporating the simultaneous practice of modelling and painting clay images, which many other patua families did. Nibaran Chandra and Kali Charan continued to produce pats until the 1930s, when they died aged 97 and 95 respectively. The Ghosh brothers had set up their stalls beside the Kalighat temple, surrounded by their contemporaries at the time. Several other stalls were spread over the nearby lanes.16 The V&A collection contains 24 works acquired from the Ghosh family alone. Of those, six were purchased directly from the brothers by Dey in 1920, and were later obtained by Archer from him in 1932. Archer acquired the other 18 from the descendants of the Ghosh brothers, and these have been acknowledged by the family as being painted by the brothers themselves.

Dating the V&A Collection The dating of Kalighat paintings has always been a tricky issue, due to the varying nature of the works, and the lack of concrete evidence to link them to a specific chronological point.

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Fig. 1.5 The Mahant meets Elokeshi at the shrine, cat. no. 59

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The only paintings we can date with certainty are the ones for which we have a fixed provenance—i.e. received from the artists or their families (such as the Ghosh brothers’ paintings at the V&A) or those known to have been displayed in an exhibition, for example at the London International Exhibition of 1871, or such as those in the British Library (nos Add.Or. 891–907).17 Sometimes, historical events will give us a terminus post quem—a date after which they must have been created. The paintings depicting the Tarakeshwar Affair, for example, have to date from at least 1873, when the events took place.

Archer, in his 1971 catalogue of the V&A collection, provided what was, at the time, accepted as the definitive chronology for the Kalighat painting genre. It was a revised version from his earlier publication of 1953, and some remaining errors were pointed out and discussed at length by later scholars, most notably by Jyotindra Jain in 1999.18 Archer based the chronology of paintings on the stylistic variations found in groups of the pats in the V&A collection, and compared some with similar works in other collections.

In many cases, he extrapolated dates of production by working backwards from a known acquisition date. However, this method of dating must be treated with extreme caution.

The Kalighat patuas were working in parallel with each other. The essential features of the Kalighat style—large figures, bold lines, blank backgrounds, bright colours, use of layering to show volume, metallic decoration on clothes and jewellery, standard factorymade paper—had all come into being by the 1840s, or perhaps even earlier.19 The patua families built upon these characteristics, overlapping their styles and workmanship at different times, over the next 70 years, and created myriad visual variations. Market forces and popular demand would have determined the kind of paintings that were produced at any one time.

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Perhaps the easiest way to view the chronological span of the collection is to think of it in three broad phases: 1. Dating from 1800 to 1850, this set encapsulates the origins of the genre, and the formation of the essential Kalighat characteristics as mentioned above.

2. Dated between 1850 and 1890, this set depicts many variations between style, composition and colour.

3. Dates from 1900 to 1930, and shows the end of the tradition, charting a move towards a more minimal look, and a diversification of products by the patuas, in an attempt to keep the tradition alive.

Religious and mythological iconography continues as predominant subject themes throughout the 100-year period of the painting genre. Secular themes such as depictions of courtesans, social satires and commentaries on Kolkata life are seen more in the second and third phases.

Kalighat Painting in the twentieth century The practice of Kalighat painting began to die out during the early decades of the twentieth century. The advance of mass lithographic printing in Kolkata increased the demand for

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cheap, commercially produced images and soon signalled an end to the patuas’ trade of hand-painted art.

The V&A collection contains three lithographic colour prints dating from the 1930s, printed at Kansaripara Art Studio in Kolkata. They show scenes from everyday life, depicting courtesans playing the violin and seated holding roses and hookahs.20 These subjects were directly adopted from the patuas’ earlier watercolour paintings and as the practice of printing became more widespread, the patuas found the market for Kalighat painting waning. Many patua families found themselves facing no option but to leave the city and head back to the rural districts from where their ancestors had come, or to look for other avenues of employment.

The appeal and influence of Kalighat paintings continued to be felt by later modern artists from Europe and Asia, long after the Kalighat painting tradition had died out in Kolkata.

The Indian artist Jamini Roy (1887–1972) turned to Kalighat pat as a source of influence for his early works. The decisive lines and curved forms inspired him to copy some of the popular themes, as well as create his own adaptations.21 The French artist Fernand Léger, associated with the Cubism movement, was also said to have taken inspiration from Kalighat paintings, having possibly come into contact with the style as a result of works brought back to France by missionaries working in Bengal; the French enclave of Chandannagar was only 25 miles away from Kalighat.22 The V&A’s world class Kalighat painting collection continues to be a valuable source of information on the genre, providing a variety and depth of comparative material. The resurgence of interest in Kalighat painting during the later part of the twentieth century, and now into the twenty-first century, has allowed the public to rediscover the history behind this unique art form once again.

NOTES

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Pal 1990, p. 2 Pal 1990, p. 2 Jain 1999, pp. 138–146 Knizkova 1975, pp. 113, 114 The Gurusaday Museum has a catalogue of their Kalighat collections: Chakravarti, S. (ed.) Kalighat Paintings in Gurusaday Museum, 2001. An interesting critique of Kalighat painting as seen by Gurusaday Dutt, the founder of the Gurusaday Museum, can be found in his collected writings: Dutt, 1990. The collections of the Indian Museum were published by B.N. Mukherjee in 1987.

Physick 1982, pp. 119, 120 Ankers 1988, p. 51 V&A Archive Rohatgi and Partlett 2008, pp. 322–325 Ankers 1988, p. 57

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13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22

V&A Archive This was a historical event that took place in 1873 in Kolkata, involving an affair between a Hindu priest and a married woman in the village of Tarakeshwar. This catalogue includes many Kalighat paintings detailing the story, which have been shown in the exhibition.

Jain 1999, pp. 190–191 Archer, M. 1977, pp. 4, 5 Dey 1932 Ghosh 1967, pp. 16, 17 Archer, M. 1977, pp. 147, 148 Jain 1999, pp. 149–164 Jain 1999, p. 152 V&A: IS.47–1952; IS.48–1952 and IS.50–1968 Harn Museum of Art (1997: 2–4) Archer, W.G. 1971, p. 17 and fig. 85

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Kalam Patua From the Interstices of the City Jyotindra Jain

Kalighat painting stemmed from the changing world of nineteenth-century Kolkata, where traditional techniques of painting, iconographies and art practices in general co-mingled with Mughal court culture, Sanskrit drama, the proscenium stage, and swiftly churned out images from photo studios and lithographic presses in the fast growing urban centre, transforming folk art into popular genres.

Somewhere in this eclectic cultural scenario, and with the introduction of new translucent watercolours and the exposure to Western academic shading, the Kalighat artists evolved the illusion of the three dimensional that led the contour itself to become a simplified and compact version of elaborate chiaroscuro—the hallmark of the Kalighat idiom.

The rise of a new and powerful mode of visual expression came about in the mid- to late nineteenth century, influenced by wider social movements, changing lifestyles and Western influences. A new imagery now occupied the centre stage of Bengali literature, theatre and visual arts of the period, and Kalighat painting became its clearest incarnation. Now the artists expanded the menagerie of their earlier sacred image to include those of foppish babus, trendy bibis, dimwit dandies and seductive courtesans. The Kalighat painters also keenly observed theatre heroines and actresses, contemporary social scandals, European prints that were flooding the market and the background scenery of photo studios, the peculiar carte-de-visite posturing and gesturing of the sitter, as they conceptualized new contemporary images.

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It is remarkable that, when in most parts of India comparatively closed and repetitive artistic conventions had brought about a certain degree of stagnancy, for historical reasons in Bengal there was more openness about the adoption and articulation of contemporary visual imagery within the inherited idioms of painting. Besides the Kalighat painters, the rural patuas—the traditional scroll painters and reciters of Hindu mythological stories1— had already begun, by the mid twentieth century, to bring into their orbit the accounts of contemporary social phenomena such as After Independence: the coming of cinema to Bengal.2 Soon after the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in 1984, a whole range of painted scrolls depicting the event were produced by the patuas. These became popular not only with the patuas’ rural audiences, but a new demand for them emerged in the urban centres. The painted scrolls began to shift their location from the rural performative contexts, to urban exhibitory spaces. This change of market has recently encouraged a large number of patuas to create narrative scrolls depicting several contemporary events

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and disasters such as the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 and the Asian tsunami of 2004. One of the most talented and innovative artists to emerge from the broad new culture of Bengal folk artists’ open response to contemporary ‘visual construction of the social’ is Kalam Patua.

Kalam Patua, hailing from the lineage of traditional scroll painting, frequented the megacity of Kolkata as a boy. He subsequently brought into his paintings images depicting the ironies of life of migrant workers from the periphery of the city, as well as those of the hybrid lifestyle of the newly rich middle class.

Kalam belongs to the patua community of painters and storytellers of Bengal. He was born in 1962 in the Murshidabad district of West Bengal. By the time that Kalam entered adulthood, the tradition of the picture show was on the wane. Nevertheless, Kalam learnt the art of painting narrative scrolls from his uncle, Baidyanath Patua. At 16, he painted goru-pat—a scroll depicting a didactic Hindu legend connected with cow worship popular in Murshidabad and Birbhum, which was acquired by a professional picture showman called Jafar Chitrakar. This brought Kalam the much-coveted recognition as a talented artist within his own community. Subsequently, he painted and sold scrolls depicting Krishnalila, Hara-Gauri, Manasa and Chaitanya to village storytellers. A major transition occurred in his painterly life in 1990 when the Alliance Française, the French Cultural Centre in Kolkata, commissioned two scrolls based on the theme of the French Revolution, for which they supplied a script. He immensely enjoyed interpreting new themes from history and went on to paint several scrolls related to contemporary issues such as dowry deaths and communal violence within the format and conventions of scroll paintings. This phase of his work opened up new possibilities of pictorial expression related to contemporary social issues.

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Around 1995, Kalam wandered into the Gurusaday Museum near Kolkata, where he saw original Kalighat paintings for the first time. He was deeply enchanted by this art form (also practiced by some of his ancestors in the nineteenth century) on account of its simple but more expressive rendering, and its treatment of contemporary urban themes. He stated once, “I began to practice Kalighat drawing for hours and months until I could delineate a requisite line or a curve in an unfaltering, single brush stroke as was done in that idiom. I was so fascinated by the scenes of urban life in Calcutta in these paintings, as rendered by my ancestors, that I thought of further pursuing the direction to depict the contemporary social life around me through this very effective medium.”

In 1997, I met Kalam at the Crafts Museum in New Delhi, when he showed me some of his Kalighat drawing exercises done on handmade paper. I could see that though he had acquired a high level of proficiency in the Kalighat idiom, the surface of handmade paper was obstructing the flow of his line. I was then working on a book on Kalighat painting 3 and had seen more than a thousand paintings in international collections. I told Kalam that the mill-made paper used by his ancestors came close to the present-day newsprint paper

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available in the paper market of Delhi. On account of its absorptive quality, the paper allowed full control over the swift application of pigment as required by the genre. Kalam acquired a large stock of this paper and found it to be the most suitable surface to work upon.

Working as postmaster at Chandpara Post Office in West Bengal, Kalam began to supplement his income by producing fine copies of old Kalighat paintings, which became highly popular among the art collectors of Delhi and Kolkata. Nevertheless, his desire to explore the language of simple but expressive forms, over which he had acquired mastery, and to address new themes from the changing urban environment persisted. Kolkata was the epicentre for the traditional myths and legends of the patua tradition, but the city had also embraced the transforming social norms of contemporary India.

Kalam embraced this dichotomy in his work. In a remarkable painting entitled Nectar of her Body (fig. 3.1), Kalam brilliantly evokes the traditional myth of a nayika, heroine, popular in Sanskrit literature and temple sculpture, who is conceived in the painting as a woman drying her hair after a bath while the hamsa bird catches in its beak the drops of water as they fall from her wet hair, mistaking them for a rain of pearls (according to the myth, the hamsa nourishes itself on a diet of pearls).

Fig. 3.1 Nectar of her Body, 2003, watercolour on paper, 40 x 48cm, private collection, New Delhi

Kalam turns the popular myth into a metaphor relocating it in the modern urban space suffused with references to the male gaze, body and sexuality. In Nectar of her Body, the standing figure of the woman combing her hair, imitating the mythical nayika, is located in an urban bathroom fitted with a shower, towel-rod and curtains. A bald, pot-bellied, middleaged man is shown squatting on the floor, lustily receiving in his palm in the manner of drinking, the drops of water falling from her long hair. While re-staging the ancient myth in a contemporary middle-class urban space, Kalam evokes mixed iconic references of gender, voyeurism and sexuality emanating from the city’s visual culture, and typical of the traditional Kalighat idiom—folded theatre-like curtains; bold and candid women; and meek, diminutive and lascivious men engaged in stalking women—combined with the technique of graded tones of colour that enhance volume and rotundity and, thereby, sensuality.

Kalam’s Enchantress (fig. 3.2) is a variation on the theme of Nectar of her Body, both in its iconographic and thematic concept. The painting alludes to the popular Kalighat subject of the ‘Sheepish Man’, a meek male, leashed like a dog and being drawn by a woman, connected to a group of myths related to an enchantress who, through her magical powers, converts a man into a sheep during the day and a bull during the night, for her pleasure.

Kalam transports the enchantress on to his canvas, from the Kalighat painting, here as a musician, to lure a lustful, old, balding, spectacled, consumerist man with a body of an ithyphallic bull, a mobile phone dangling from his neck.

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Fig. 3.2 Enchantress, 2004, watercolour on paper, 38 x 30cm, collection: Arjun Sawhney, New Delhi

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The traditional Kalighat painting has predominantly been a genre of body-oriented works.

The painter’s technique, of evoking an illusion of volume by graded tones of colour and speedily executed sweeps and curves, endowed the female figure with a heightened sense

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Fig. 3.3 Krishna Came too Early, 2003, watercolour on paper, 37 x 50cm, collection: Mamta Singhania, New Delhi

Fig. 3.4 Ladies’ Tailor, 2004, watercolour on paper, 54 x 44cm, collection: Jyotindra Jain, New Delhi

of tangible sensuality. The female as goddess or divine consort as well as courtesan or actress was a highly embodied subject in Kalighat painting.

In another painting, he situates a motif from the Radha and Krishna legend traditionally depicted in Rajasthani miniature painting, in the space of modern, urban middle-class life.

Radha, while awaiting Krishna, is looking into a mirror held by her maid, as she puts on her make-up. At this moment, Radha notices Krishna’s image reflected in the mirror, as he has already arrived and has been watching her from behind a grove. Kalam, in his painting Krishna Came too Early (fig. 3.3) transports this Radha–Krishna iconography into a modern Kolkata home. He shows a middle-class woman dressed in a sleeveless blouse and a sensuously draped sari, engaged in her make-up, when she notices in the mirror her boyfriend, wearing shades over his eyes, and waiting in a fancy red car outside the window.

Interestingly, there are several references in the folk literature of nineteenth-century Bengal about pleasure trips of the rich, in boats on the River Hooghly, in which nautch girls were taken along. Sexual liberties taken with the girls are narrated in terms of the Radha–Krishna amour. The perennial theme of Radha and Krishna acts as popular metaphor in Indian cinema too, enacted through dozens of songs, operating on a dual axis of the Radha– Krishna liaison and the present-day urban love affair between a man and a woman.

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In Kalam’s Ladies’ Tailor (fig. 3.4), the traditional Kalighat goddess, or courtesan, incarnates as a middle-class woman, who has to find her way in the everyday suburbs or back lanes of the mega-city. The piercing gaze of the tailor taking her measurements is not returned by the woman, who stands firm, but resigned to her predicament, used to such unceasing transgressions in the daily life of the city.

Barber Shop (fig. 3.5) is a fine example of the characterization of a Brahmin, preposterously sitting in a barber’s chair, raising his arm to let the barber shave his armpit. The fair-skinned

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Fig. 4.4 Detail of Two Sepoys Fighting (cat. no. 53) showing use of indigo on Prussian blue for shading and volume purposes on trousers Fig. 4.3 Unfinished Sketches of Man & Woman, cat. no. 75

Fig. 4.5 Detail of A lady holding a peacock (cat. no. 43) showing the use of tin to mimic silver jewellery

In the city, the patuas became the makers and painters of terracotta images, which were produced as souvenirs for pilgrims visiting the Kalighat temple (fig. 4.2). A limited range of pigments were used in the painting of these clay images, and often these appear to be modern, inorganic pigments, such as chrome yellow, or derivatives of iron oxide, and occasionally powdered mica.

A close examination of Kalighat paintings in both the V&A and the National Museum of Wales has revealed that the majority of the paintings were copied by hand, with the main figures outlined in pencil. ‘…the base colour was swiftly applied in broad wet strokes’ (as can be seen in the V&A painting Unfinished Painting of Man & Woman, fig. 4.3). ‘A darker hue was added to obtain the sculptural volume [fig. 4.4] in the most skilful hands this was applied before the base coat was dry to prevent tidemarks. Silver ornamentation was added last of all using a paint made from colloidal tin [fig. 4.5]’.3 Lithographic printed outlines were used for later examples, and were found on a number of paintings in the V&A collection when examined by the authors (see fig. 4; cat. no. 1, detail).

By the end of the nineteenth century, woodcuts which were hand-coloured became popular and could be rapidly produced in larger quantities. These woodcut images were hand-coloured with transparent paints and inks, which allowed the printed image underneath to be clearly seen. Two of the Kalighat images sampled during pigment analysis are good examples of this type. The bold, printed outline depicting Krishna steals the gopis’ clothes (cat. no. 81) was embellished with washes of pale red and turquoise transparent colours (fig. 4.7). The background is further enhanced with a very faint wash of a pale yellow dye, which is possibly Indian yellow, as it fluoresced strongly under ultraviolet light (fig. 4.8). Hand holding Freshwater Prawns (cat. no. 82) is also an example of a hand-coloured woodcut print, dated c.1890.

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Fig. 4.6 Detail of Kali (cat. no. 1).

This painting was not part of the group of nine works selected for analysis but it shows very clearly the lithographic printed outlines

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An examination of two of the earliest Kalighat images selected for analysis—A Woman Selling Fish (cat. no. 45) and Two Sepoys Fighting (cat. no. 53)—has revealed that preliminary marks were made with pencil on the paper, before the application of the main areas of colour (fig. 4.9). Presumably, this was done to help with the accurate placement of colour, and this

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supports the idea that the painters worked in a production line, passing a painting from one to another. A studio of four or five artists could produce several hundred images in a day by this method; one person applying a colour each before passing the painting onto the next artist. The master artist would add the final touches to details such as the faces, and apply paint made from powdered tin mixed with a binding medium of gum Arabic (gum acacia, made from the sap of the acacia tree). It is unclear if stencils were ever used to facilitate the accurate placement of colour on the paper. So far, the authors have not found any evidence to support this theory, although the close similarity of different paintings indicates that the process of painting was highly developed. Pattern books of stock images of popular subjects were used to guide the painters. An example of such a book can be found in the collection of the Gurusaday Museum in Kolkata (GM 480-1). Occasionally, it is possible to find several different versions of the same image albeit with slight variations in colour or tonality. However, in most cases the colours are applied without any obvious mixing or modulation.

Printing did not develop in northern India until the last quarter of the eighteenth century.

It had begun earlier in the south, where the Portuguese had set up a printing press in 1556 for missionary purposes.4 In north India, under the British, printing first developed for administrative and scholarly purposes. Lithography reached India in the first quarter of the nineteenth century and by the mid nineteenth century several presses had been established.

Between the 1840s and 1860s, the Kalighat patuas sometimes adopted lithography of a very simple and rapid kind to produce outlines of main figures as a means of speeding production. A faint outline was printed and the main subject was then painted by hand. Yet they also continued to use free-hand copying until the beginning of the twentieth century.

Woodcuts were a far more popular method of reproduction, since the materials were cheap and readily available. The technique was used for the mass production of book illustrations and cheap pictures which villagers or city dwellers could pin up in their houses—a development contemporaneous with, and parallel to, Kalighat painting. Like Kalighat paintings, the subject matters of the woodcuts were chiefly religious. Most popular of all were the pictures of Krishna, his childhood adventures, and his life with Radha and the milkmaids.

Fig. 4.7 Overall view of Krishna steals the gopis’ clothes (cat. no. 81)

Fig. 4.8 Ultraviolet photograph of Krishna steals the gopis’ clothes (cat. no. 81)

Scientific analysis of pigments The nine paintings chosen for analysis during the recent study at the V&A were selected because they span the nineteenth and early twentieth century, and include two examples of hand-coloured woodcuts. The choice was made in order to have a comprehensive selection of all the colours and hues visible to the naked eye. These nine paintings were chosen by the V&A curator of the ‘Kalighat Paintings’ exhibition in consultation with the conservation department staff and other curatorial specialists at the V&A. The methods chosen for the scientific analysis of the paintings were non-destructive and non-intrusive, therefore ensuring that no sampling was needed.

The paintings were preliminarily analysed by X-ray fluorescence (XRF), which provided a detailed map of the chemical elements present in each coloured area. Ultraviolet

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Fig. 4.9 Detail of A woman selling fish (cat. no. 45) showing preliminary pencil marks

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photography of the painting was also done, and finally the Raman microscopy analysis of the paintings was undertaken. The latter technique provided the unambiguous molecular fingerprint of most of the colours analysed.5, 6 The Raman microscopy analysis of the paintings, together with the results obtained by XRF, has revealed that the majority of the paints were made from inorganic pigments, although organic colourants such as indigo were also detected. Evidence of several organic dyes could also be found, although no conclusive identification could be achieved due to their very high fluorescence. A synopsis of the Raman and XRF results is shown in tables 1 and 2:

Date

Cat. No. 45 A Woman Selling Fish

Cat. No. 53 Two Sepoys Fighting

Cat. No. 43 Cat. No. 58 A Lady holding The meeting a Peacock between Elokeshi and the Mahant at the Tarakeshwar temple

1800–1850

1860–1870

1865–1870

c.1875

Cat. No. 82 Hand holding Freshwater prawns

Cat. No. 60 The Mahant and Elokeshi share a hookah and paan

Cat. No. 81 Krishna steals the gopis’ clothes

Cat. No. 72 Krishna and Yashoda

Cat. No. 41 A lobster prawn and three catfish

1880–1890

c.1890

c.1890

c.1900

c.1940

8 9 8 9 (paper and

Table 1: Synopsis of pigment identification by Raman microscopy 9 9 9 9 (paper)

9 9 9 9 (paper)

9 9 9 9 (paper)

9 9 9 9 (paper)

8 8 8 9 (paper)

9 9 9 8

8 8 8 9 (paper)

9 9 9 8

Indigo

9 9 9

8 8 8

9 9 8

8 9 8

8 9 8

Red dye

9 9 8 8

9 9 8

Organic dyes

9 9 9 8

Red dye

Stained paper Red dye Yellow dye

Yellow dye Red dye

Stained Paper Red dye (yellow) Red dye

8 8 8 8 8 8

Cr, Pb Pb Fe Fe

8 8 8 8 8 8

Cr, Pb Pb Fe

8

8 8

Fe

Ba*

Ba*

8

8

8

Zn*

Chrome Yellow Red Lead Prussian Blue Ultramarine Blue Hematite Carbon

painting)

9 9 8

Table 2: Synopsis of XRF results and their possible interpretation

Hematite

Cr, Pb Pb Fe Fe

Cr, Pb Pb Fe Fe

Cr, Pb Pb Fe Fe

Cr, Pb Pb Fe Fe

Metallic Tin

9

9

9

9

Barium white

Ba (green area)

Zinc white

Zn*

Ba* Ba* (green, white (green area) and pink areas) Zn* Zn*

Chrome Yellow Red Lead Prussian Blue

Ba (green area)

Zn*

9 Ba (green area)

Zn*

Pb

8

Cr=chromium; Pb=Lead; Zn=Zinc, Fe=Iron; Ba=Barium *determined to be in background paper (trace)

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Yellow pigments Indian yellow, chrome yellow and one or more organic yellow dyes were present in the paintings examined. Indian yellow (magnesium euxanthate, C19H16O11Mg·5 H2O)7, was used extensively in India by miniature painters from the sixteenth century onwards, but was not found on any of the paintings analysed, except perhaps on one of the woodcuts (Krishna steals the gopis’ clothes, cat. no. 81). No spectrum from Raman microscopy could be obtained from this woodcut, but the appearance of the yellow wash, and its marked fluorescence under UV illumination, are good circumstantial evidence that a diluted wash of Indian yellow was indeed used. This is probably because it was a relatively expensive pigment that required considerable skill in preparation in order to obtain the pure colour.

The mass produced nature of the Kalighat images dictated a different set of priorities, as it was vital that the paints used were cheap and readily available in order to keep down the cost of the finished product.

Another yellow pigment, chrome yellow (lead(II) chromate, PbCrO4)8, was used far more widely, and was identified on six of the paintings examined. Its relatively low cost and high opacity made it very suitable for painting the bold images that are synonymous with the Kalighat tradition. Chrome yellow was available in Europe from the beginning of the nineteenth century onwards, so it seems likely that it was imported into India shortly after this date. It offered a good alternative to arsenic-based pigments like Orpiment, being fairly lightfast and also having high tinting strength, and excellent opacity. Chrome yellow was also occasionally mixed with Prussian blue9 to obtain what is sometimes known as ‘chrome green’. The particles of chrome yellow seen in all the paintings are very small and finely divided. Unfortunately, due to the fact that chrome yellow was used as a pigment from the early nineteenth century, its presence in the paintings cannot be used to help in dating them.

Blue pigments Of the paintings analysed, three blue materials were unambiguously identified by Raman microscopy: Prussian blue, lazurite and indigo.

Indigo, an organic dyestuff (C16H10N2O2 ),10,11 would have been readily available to artists in Bengal, but was used comparatively sparingly in the group of paintings studied, and confined mainly to areas of shading on the two paintings attributed to the first half of the nineteenth century. Due to its relative transparency, indigo lent itself to being used as a glazing colour, as can be seen in the picture of Two Sepoys Fighting (cat. no. 53), where it has been used to delineate areas of shading on the jacket of one man and on the trousers of another (fig. 4.4). The presence of indigo cannot be used to date any of these paintings,

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Prussian blue, the earliest of the modern synthetic colours and produced commercially in Europe since about 1720, has been used extensively in six of the nine paintings sampled in this study. It seems likely that Prussian blue was chosen due to its high tinting strength, relative opacity and availability in Kolkata.

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as it has been identified on Indian palm leaf paintings from the twelfth century onwards, and was also widely used by miniature painters and by the scroll painters of rural Bengal.

The Raman spectrum of lazurite was also detected in most of the paintings. The spectrum alone cannot reveal if the pigment is synthetic ultramarine blue, or if it came from the natural semi-precious stone lapis lazuli.12 However, the particles seen in this study are very small (approx. 1–3µm across), of uniform colour and round shape. This suggests an artificial method of preparation rather than mechanical grinding of the natural mineral. This pigment was only found as an optical whitener for the paper and not as a pigment/colour in its own right. Only in one case is there some evidence that small amounts of it may have been used as a proper blue pigment (the body of the prawn in Hand holding Freshwater Prawns, cat. no. 82). Assuming that the artificial pigment was used, its first date of manufacture, 1828, becomes the earliest date for all the paintings that contain lazurite.

Red and orange pigments Red lead and hematite were identified among the red and orange materials on the paintings.

A dark red and a crimson colour could not be identified and are believed to be organic dyes.

Red lead (lead tetroxide, Pb3O4), was conclusively identified on seven out of nine of the paintings analysed at the V&A. It was cheap, readily available as a primer for metals, and gave a pleasing orange-red colour with high opacity. Red lead was part of the traditional palette of miniature painters from the Mughal period onwards, and was produced by synthetic means in India since ancient times.13,14 Lead’s use was gradually discontinued from the second half of the twentieth century. Because of this, its presence cannot be used to help with the date of the paintings.

Closer inspection of the painting Two Sepoys Fighting reveals that this is the only painting exhibiting extensive degradation—an area of uneven grey-black discolouration on the jacket of the figure on the left, which was definitely not part of the original artists intention (fig. 4.10). The presence of lead-based pigments on the jacket suggests that the dark material is a black lead degradation product, such as lead(IV) oxide or lead sulfide, although no Raman spectrum could be obtained from those areas except that of the underlying red lead. The distribution and the shape of the darkened areas suggest that a white pigment such as lead white might have been used to paint the stripes on the jacket, indicating the gold brocade of the uniform. This has now turned black, possibly as a result of exposure to pollution,15 or as a result of being stored in close proximity to other paintings with significant areas of sulphur containing pigments.

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Fig. 4.10 Detail of discoloured area of red lead on jacket of left hand figure of Two Sepoys Fighting (cat. no. 53)

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Very small particles of hematite (iron oxide, Fe3O4) were identified frequently in the paintings.

Their uniform appearance and small particle size suggests a synthetic origin (Mars reds, as synthetic samples of hematite were often called, were widely used during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries), although it cannot be excluded that a natural sample of hematite was ground very finely and used here.

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Carbon black was also detected by Raman microscopy. As it was used since antiquity, it cannot be used to date the paintings. The black pigment used for these works were traditionally made by burning the husks of coconut shells. As both iron oxide pigments and carbon black were used since prehistoric times, their presence cannot be used to date the paintings. Modern patuas use carbon black, collected from car exhaust pipes, mixed with a binding medium.

Metallic tin was identified on five of the nine paintings. Tin has been used in Indian painting of various different schools from the eighteenth century onwards, often as a substitute for silver. It is also occasionally used to depict water or a reflection in a mirror. Unlike silver, tin is not prone to tarnishing, is readily available throughout India, and is quickly and easily made into a satisfactory paint compared with gold or silver prepared from metallic leaf (shell gold/ silver). It is also comparatively cheap to produce and is attractive to the viewer. Kalighat artists used tin extensively to embellish their paintings and to replicate the surface effects of jewels and pearls. This can be clearly seen on closer inspection of A lady holding a peacock (cat. no. 43), as the jewellery around the neck of the woman depicts, is composed of thick applications of a paint made from tin (fig. 4.5).

No true green was used in this set of paintings, but rather a mixture of Prussian blue and a diluted organic dye, which did not yield any Raman spectrum.

The analysis of the paintings by X-ray fluorescence (XRF) uncovered the widespread use of a barium-containing material and a zinc-based one, not necessarily used together. This suggests the presence of barium white (barium sulphate, BaSO4) and zinc white (ZnO).

Where zinc and barium were detected together, the nineteenth-century pigment lithopone (a mixture of barium sulfate and zinc sulfide) could also be present.16 If lithopone is present, the painting it was used on must date from the 1870s, the first date of manufacture of the pigment. Barium sulfate exists as a mineral (barite), but it was not produced synthetically nor widely used as a pigment until the beginning of the nineteenth century.

Zinc oxide was not used as a white pigment until the end of the eighteenth century.

Unfortunately, no Raman spectrum of barium- or zinc-containing pigments was collected as zinc white is a very poor Raman scatterer.

The following pigments were identified by Raman microscopy: Prussian blue, indigo, ultramarine blue, chrome yellow, hematite, red lead and carbon.

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Conclusions

A few of the colours present on the paintings did not yield any Raman spectra and gave rise to very high fluorescence. These include a transparent yellow wash, a green, a deep red, a purple and two types of pink materials. It is unclear if at least some of these compounds are of natural origin (organic dyes). Some or all of them may be part of the group of synthetic

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dyes that were developed from the middle of the nineteenth century in Europe. What is certain is that none of them is a twentieth-century azo compound which are all known to give very good Raman spectra.

No crucial date markers were discovered on any of the paintings, although some modern materials do confirm a nineteenth-century production date for some of the paintings. No twentieth-century pigments, such as titanium white or phthalocyanine blue or green, were detected either.

NOTES 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Sarkar and Mackay 2005, pp. 135–142 See http://www.banglanatak.com for more details on modern patuas’ colour preparations.

Sarkar and Mackay 1999 Archer, M. 1977, pp. 159–162 Bell, Clark and Gibbs 1997, pp. 2159–2179 Burgio and Clark 2001, pp. 1491–1521 Baer, Joel, Feller and Indictor 1986, pp. 17–36 Feller 1986, pp. 187–204 Fitzhugh 1997, pp. 191–217

10 11 12 13 14 15 16

Fitzhugh 1997, pp. 81–107 Indigo was possibly also used in wider Indian artwork.

Roy 1993, pp. 37–66 Feller 1986, pp. 109–139 Lazaro 2005 Smith, Derbyshire and Clark 2002, pp. 47, 250–256 Eastaugh, Walsh, Chaplin and Siddall 2004

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CATALOGUE

Kalighat 43-57.indd 43

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1

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Religious Subjects GODS AND GODDESSES 1. Kali c.1860s Watercolour on paper over lithographed outline, with tin detail V&A, IS.3–1955

2. Kali trampling on her husband Shiva c.1860s Watercolour on paper over lithographed outline, with tin detail V&A, IS.78–1959

The image of Kali was the main type of pat (painting) that was sold as a pilgrim souvenir at the stalls around the temple at Kalighat. This composition of the Kali image (cat. no. 1) reflects the appearance of the main deity that is actually worshipped inside the temple.

Her necklace of severed heads has been printed in lithographic outline and then hand painted. The image encapsulates the main characteristics of the Kalighat genre: bright colours, bold outlines, and a simple and striking visual image.

A contrasting depiction, again with a lithographed outline, shows Kali standing on her husband Shiva (cat. no. 2).

Lithographic outlines were sometimes used in the mid 1800s to speed up the production of the most popular subject themes. The patuas used the printed outline as a rough guide, elaborating the composition with their own detail.

3. Ganesha c.1830–1850 Watercolour on paper, with tin detail V&A, IS.208–1950 Seated on a triangular stool, with his rat, his vahana (vehicle), below, this became the classic Kalighat image of Ganesha throughout the 19th century and was copied many times. The early patuas (painters) experimented with variations of light and dark, to show volume and shadow on different parts of the body, as can be seen on his folded legs and outstretched arms.

Furniture in Kalighat paintings was always shown in a minimal way; the third leg of the stool has not been shown here, but is assumed to be in place.

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2

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3

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4. Shiva Mahadeva c.1850–1890 Watercolour on paper, with tin detail VMH, R9295

5. Shiva and Parvati on the bull Nandi c.1830–1850 Watercolour on paper, with tin detail V&A, IS.204–1950 When Shiva and Parvati are shown together, they tend to be depicted in scenes of quiet domesticity; eating food together or, as here, riding Shiva’s bull Nandi. Shiva is often painted as an ascetic, with a tiger-skin loin cloth and with snakes entwined in his hair. Parvati is depicted as the gentle wife.

The patuas would have begun to make use of imported British watercolours around the early to mid 1800s, allowing them to experiment with vibrant colours such as the blue used for the Nandi figure. A melted form of tin was used to emphasise metallic decoration on textiles or jewellery.

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6. Shiva Panchanana (‘Shiva the Five Faced’) c.1860s Watercolour on paper, with tin detail V&A, IS.463–1950

7. Brahma c.1860s Watercolour on paper, with tin detail V&A, IM.2:85–1917 From the J. Lockwood Kipling Collection

There are two conventions for painting multiple heads and faces shown in these two pats. Shiva Panchanana, the five-faced god, controls the five senses and five directions (cat. no. 6). In order to represent this fully, he has been depicted with five distinct heads, each with individual sets of facial features.

For the figure of four-headed Brahma, the patua has painted four faces, but used a popular device of painting a continuous chain of five eyes, rather than four pairs of eyes (cat. no. 7). This creates a clever optical illusion, while making the central figure easier to paint, and possibly less time consuming.

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8. Durga Mahishasuramardini c.1860s Watercolour over lithographed outline, with tin detail V&A, IS.80–1959

Fig. 5.1 Durga Mahishasuramardini c.1860s Watercolour on paper, with tin detail V&A, IM.2: 79–1917 From the J. Lockwood Kipling Collection

This form of Durga is the most potent, and held in reverence by Bengalis, and would have been instantly popular with a pilgrim audience. The iconography is identical to that seen in ivory figure groups from Murshidabad, West Bengal. The ivory carvers of Berhampur, Murshidabad district, were active in the mid to late 1800s in carving figure groups on this theme. Many such figures ended up in Kolkata’s markets, as close artistic and commercial links existed between the two places. Clay images of Goddess Durga in the same composition would be produced during the Durga Puja festival by the kumors (potters) in the north of the city. The patuas would probably have been involved in painting the clay images in readiness for the festivities, alongside creating two-dimensional works of the same subject.

In comparison with Cat. No. 8, this painting shows the same composition of Durga, but it is painted freehand with large bold blocks of colour and thicker lines, without the use of a lithographic outline.

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9. Vishnu Sleeping on the Serpent Ananta c.1880s Watercolour on paper, with white detail V&A, IS.567–1950

10. Vishnu as the dwarf Vamana c.1880s Watercolour on paper, with white detail V&A, IS.603–1950

Both of these paintings (cat. no. 9 and 10) come from a series in the V&A collection that utilises a very different colour palette when compared to other Kalighat examples. This particular group of patuas was using a combination of blues, greens and greys to create muted backgrounds and dark skin tones, contrasting with the clothing and details painted in bright shades of red and yellow. This painting shows Vishnu resting on the coils of the serpent Ananta during a rest between periods of creation. The figures make an interesting composition; the entire width of the page is filled with snake coils, with the rearing head of the snake using the height of the page, to draw attention away from the rather small figure of Vishnu.

Other paintings in the V&A collection show Vishnu as Vamana, conquering Bali, the demon king who had acquired dominion over three worlds. This painting, however, concentrates on the main figure of Vamana as the fifth incarnation of Vishnu, disguised as a short Brahmin holding a wooden umbrella. It is not quite known why the patuas decided to fill in the backgrounds of these particular works, especially as this would have increased the overall production time while waiting for the page to dry before adding detail and figures. The use of thick white paint in place of the usual metallic pigment for decoration is emphasised in the neck adornments.

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“With a number of hitherto unpublished

works from the rare collection of London’s Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) and Kolkata’s Victoria Memorial Hall, the illustrated volume of Kalighat Paintings comes as a treasure trove for art lovers ” —Nikhil Agarwal, Financial Chronicle

ART

Kalighat Paintings

Edited by Suhashini Sinha and Professor C. Panda 112 pages, 153 colour illustrations 8.27 x 9.65” (245 x 210 mm), Flexicover ISBN: 978-81-89995-66-9 (Mapin) ISBN: 978-1-935677-21-5 (Grantha) ₹995 | $25 | £14.99 2011 • World rights