Itihasas mention that Lord Shiva received news of the death of his consort, Sati, an avatar of the goddess Kali when he was deep in meditation on Mount Kailasha. He wandered for days in inconsolable grief with her body draped across his shoulders. He then threatened to ruin the earth. Because of which Lord Vishnu intervened 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 of the Hooghly River due to which the area became associated with the goddess Kali. By the 1690s it was already known as the sacred realm of Kali or Kalikshetra and had also become a part of Calcutta. The moorings or the ghat on the bank of the Hooghly River was known as Kalighat, and there was perhaps a temple there by the 17th and 18th centuries. Calcutta at that time was rapidly expanding.
Due to commerce generated by the British and other European settlers who lived in the southern part of the city, many of the artisans and craftsmen started arriving at the Kalighat area looking for new opportunities to capitalise on the market by selling cheap religious souvenirs to the visitors. Most of them were from 24 Parganas and Midnapore. They set up stalls outside the Temple.
Among these were the Patuas, members of an artisan community from West Bengal. They traditionally painted long narrative stories known as patachitra, often over 20 feet in length. Each section was known as a pat and the artists, therefore, became known as patuas. They would travel from village to village, unrolling a section of the scroll at a time and singing and performing the stories to their audiences. The first mention of such a group appears in Brahma Vaivarta Purana, a thirteenth-century Sanskrit text. Over time, the patuas abandoned their linear, narrative style in favour of single pictures involving one or two figures to ensure that they don’t consume more time of production. All non-essential details were removed, the backgrounds were left plain without any detailing and basic combinations of colours were used. This turned out to be the key characteristics of the Kalighat genre.
Kalighat paintings were produced with a variety of water-based, opaque colours like blue, indigo, red, green, yellow, carbon black etc. on papers. Few of these colours were made of indigenous ingredients like yellow was produced from the turmeric root, blue was made from petals of Aparajita flower, and black was produced from a common shoot by burning an oil lamp under a pot. Colloidal tin was extensively used to embellish their paintings and to replicate the surface effects of jewels and pearls. Later on, imported factory-made watercolours were available from Britain and patuas took full advantage of these cheaper materials, avoiding the use of home-made colours.
According to Mukul Dey, the method of drawing was very simple and a family affair. He described, “One artist would, in the beginning, copy in pencil the outline from an original model sketch, and another would do the modelling, depicting the flesh and muscles in lighter and darker shades. Then a third member of the family would put in the proper colours in different parts of the body and the background, and last of all the outlines and finish would be done in lamp black. They would generally mix these colours with water and gum and mold them on a round stone with a granite muller. Thus, a living picture would be drawn most simply and easily as a sort of conjoint family work”. [1]
The themes in Kalighat paintings had a wide variety and were mostly of two types – Oriental and Occidental. The Oriental Kalighat paintings depict the pantheon of Hindu Gods and Goddess, religious illustrating both Hindus and Muslims tales. Some of the most popular motifs were of Radha-Krishna, Rama-Sita, goddess Lakshmi, etc. Whereas, the Occidental variety featured secular and civil themes like crime against women, depictions of the freedom struggle, women’s education and other themes that common people could relate to. They also portrayed several scenes of animals like cat, birds, fishes like Rui, Shol etc. which might be an influence of Mughal as well as contemporary British artists. Besides being an art form, Indian designers have widened their scope by seeking inspiration from this genre and creating some of the most unusual motifs on a saree.
Kalighat paintings lost their essence in the early twentieth century as the German traders imitated them. The machine-made productions of these pictures were sold way cheaper than the original artworks, and the subsequent generations were forced to change vocations. Now the traditional pictures are found in museums and the collections of a few art lovers.
Today, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London has the single largest collection of Kalighat paintings which include watercolour drawings, line drawings and hand-coloured lithographs. In Bengal, small collections of Kalighat paintings are at Victoria Memorial Hall, the Indian Museum, Gurusaday Museum and Kala Bhavan in Shantiniketan.
Suhasini Sinha has chronologically categorised the rise and fall of Kalighat paintings into three broad phases:
Phase I: Dated between 1800 and 1850, which attributes the origins of the genre, and the formation of essential Kalighat Characteristics.
Phase II: Dated between 1850 and 1890, this set depicts many variations between style, composition and colour and has attained its peak in its class.
Phase III: Dates from 1900 to 1930, which shows the end of the tradition with the infiltration of cheap lithographs. [2]
[1] Dey, ‘The Painters of Kalighat.’
[2] Sinha and Panda, Kalighat Paintings.
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