It was first practiced by a group of specialized scroll painters known as the patuas in the vicinity of the Kalighat Kali Temple in Kolkata (formerly Calcutta), in the present Indian state of West Bengal.
The paintings depicted mythological stories, figures of Hindu gods and goddesses, as well as scenes from everyday life and society,[1][2] thereby recording a socio-cultural landscape which was undergoing a series of transitions during the 19th and early 20th century,[3] when the Kalighat pat reached its pinnacle.
[4]Moreover, it was by the early 19th century that Calcutta evolved as an economic centre driven by the commercial activities generated by the British and other European settlers which attracted immigrants looking for employment opportunities.
[1] Now, after having migrated to the Kalighat region, these artists, faced with the challenge to speed up their pace of production, and under the influence of different art forms around them, substituted their usual long linear, narrative style with single frames of chouko (square) pat showing one or two figures, they also eliminated unnecessary details, left the background plain and simple, and used a basic color palette, thereby evolving in due course of time the intrinsic features of the Kalighat genre.
[5] This "basic imperative of producing pictures cheaply, quickly, and in vast numbers to cater to the growing market of the city"[6] served as the major motivation behind the changes in form and format of these paintings as has been pointed out by scholars from W.G.
[7] These artists would set up stalls and their settlements around the main shrine of Kali, and along the ghat of the Buriganga, also known as the Adi Ganga, referring to a canal which diverges from the Ganges.
Not just with the local inhabitants and pilgrims, these paintings which were “perfect" and "easily portable and concise enough”[2] were carried back home as ‘oriental’ or ‘exotic’ souvenirs by foreign travelers, colonial masters and Europeans who visited the city during this time.
[5] The method of drawing was simple yet meticulous, every stage definite and clearly defined, and the entire creative endeavour was managed by the family unit,[1] similar to an assembly line production system.
Art collector Ajit Ghose, who provided one of the earliest descriptions of these paintings, noted: "The drawing is made with one long bold sweep of the brush in which not the faintest suspicion of even a momentary indecision, not the slightest tremor, can be detected.
Often the line takes in the whole figure in such a way that it defies you to say where the artist's brush first touched the paper or where it finished the work..." Ghose, who was impressed by the "exquisite freshness and spontaneity of conception and execution" of these paintings, compared them to Chinese calligraphy.
[13] During this period, the British were strengthening their hold over the Indian territory, transforming themselves from merchants to the monarchs of the land, and this entailed a rapid Europeanisation of city's culture, intellectual sphere, and modes of life.
Pilgrims often bought these artworks as souvenirs, so Hindu gods and goddesses where a major theme: Shiva, as Panchanan, or with Parvati, perched on Nandi or dancing with Sati's lifeless corpse; Lakshmi, either as Gajalakshmi, or in her usual form; Chandi as Durga, and Kamalakameni as Mahishasuramardini.
Other deities such as Kartikeya, Ganesha, Saraswati, etc., and Vaishnava, the various incarnations of Vishnu, scenes from his childhood days in Vrindavan, images of Radha, Balarama, and even Chaitanya Mahaprabhu populated these artworks.
[1] Maxwell Sommerville [de], a Philadelphian publisher who travelled through Africa, the Middle East, Thailand, Europe, India and Burma from the 1860s onwards, observed the mystical traditions of these places, and collected artifacts, among which were 57 Kalighat paintings, almost all of which depicted Hindu gods and goddesses.
[7] However, the Kalighat school would later be subjected to criticism for this very appropriate depiction of religious themes and figures, particularly from nationalist artists, collectors and elites, such as cultural anthropologist Gurusaday Dutt, who couldn't locate the Indianness, or the emotional and spiritual authenticity in these paintings.
Domestic pets, fishes such as rui, shol, etc., and even birds, prawns and lobsters were represented by the Kalighat artists, probably influenced by the Mughal and contemporary British painters.
In fact, "events of burning interest, social oddities and idiosyncracies, follies and foibles of people, and hypocrisies and meanness-these never escaped the Kalighat painters",[9] who were extremely "keen observers of life, with a grim sense of humour",[16] and often depicted the social evils and immoralities practiced by the wealthy zamindars and the flamboyant babus in the form of repulsive caricatures that would caution the ordinary citizens from indulging in such pleasures.
[16] The Kalighat artists critiqued the rising 'babu culture' of the late eighteenth century by caricaturing upper-class, westernised, pretentious Bengali men in their typical style of the dhoti, pleated and held in one hand, while chewing betel leaves or smoking the hookah, their hair nicely oiled as they were shown flirting with a courtesan.
[1] Shyamakanta Banerjee, who earned his fame during the 1890s for wrestling with tigers in the circus ring, captured the imagination of these artists and found his way into the chouko pats, where his heroic and brave deeds were often represented.
Anuja Mukherjee notes: "Bibi sometimes being a wife or a prostitute who was aggressively sexual, dominating and most importantly deviant matches the profile of the image of a deity [Kali] who facilitated the formation of the Kalighat style of paintings.
[17] One of the reasons the Kalighat school faced negative sensationalism was because the "new woman", educated and supposed to fit into the social norms, didn't live up to her image in these paintings.
Archer noted the use of folio-sized paper-base instead of traditional cloth; the use of watercolour in rendering the background plain and simple so as to focus on the central figure more prominently; the depiction of urban themes; the particular method of shading, which later Jyotindra Jain explained as bold chiaroscuro and the starting phase of highlighting three dimensional figures;[5] and how some artists signed their works following the Western model of claiming authorship — to reach his conclusion.
"[19] Archer pointed out how the Kalighat painters adopted the particular style of shading, left the background blank, and used watercolours, after European paintings reached the bazaars of Calcutta and were being sold there during the late eighteenth century.
[20] Simple backgrounds existed prior to colonial rule, and can be spotted in the Bhagavata manuscripts of the seventeenth-century, the eighteenth century Ramacharitmanas scripts, scroll paintings, and Rajput art.
[23] In fact, these artists were very much the outsiders, and their art documented perhaps for the first time, the initial instances of deteriorating influence of the British rule on Indian life, society and culture.
These cheap chromolithographs annihilated the hand-crafted school, paralysed the production, and extinguished the artistic skill and creative impulse of the painters and they started migrating to other employment sectors, or back to the villages from which their ancestors had come.
Dey states: “When German traders found that these pictures had a very great sale throughout the country—for they were sold in thousands all over India—they imitated them and sent back glazed and coloured lithographed copies which flooded the country and drowned the original hand-painted pictures.”[9] Unable to face the challenges of the machine-made productions, which were cheaper than their hand-made drawings and paintings, the children of these artists abandoned the practice and took up other professions.
[11] Today the painting is no longer practiced as it was done in the past, though in some rural pockets of Bengal, particularly in Medinipur and Birbhum, the tradition is kept alive by contemporary artists such as Anwar Chitrakar who continue the use of organic dyes, like the 19th century patuas, to depict a mixture of secular and religious themes.
Roy's language of nationalism was the exact preservation of the idyllic rural image, starkly in contrast to the migrated artisans who witnessed their immediate surroundings and reflected them on their pats.
[7] Stella Kramrisch has defended the inclusion of these paintings in the Philadelphia Museum’s collection, in her exhibition Unknown India, by drawing successful parallels between Kalighat and major modernist painters.