Kalighat Pat Painting: A signature of unique tradition

Due to the declining of the tardy medieval benefaction classification, ensuing from
the prologue of neo land tenure agreement under the Cornwallis rule, the bucolic
crafts gone astray and their claim in the rural zones of the Bengal and the artists
were in disorder. At the same time, grand deal was chief to the enlargement of port-
centric urban conurbation like Calcutta (Kolkata), particularly from the last decade of
the eighteenth century.
It is unneeded to say, assorted kinds of resident collaborators of colonial trade were
the most basic capital gathering settlers of the city in those days, they were rapidly
followed by truant landlords of rural lands. Some came from amid both the groups
almost immediately became the first situate of real-estate proprietors and urban
renters in the rising city of regal expropriation.
These first situates were not the first settlers of the metropolis. The imposing trade
as well as the requirement of hard-wearing skill building of the native settlers
necessitated the incidence of throng of experienced and inexpert wage based
labourers. Even though several of them remained itinerant immigrants from
countryside areas roughly, a few of them, the skilled artisans became the base level
citizens of the city. The skilled artisans needed to adjust their skills to provide to new
hassles of the neo-urbanites. They had to study associated skills to undertake new
resources and methods. Artists skilled in carving and etching were erudite print-
taking on paper in order to make themselves commendable of newly developed
printing and publishing trade.
Historically, the origin, growth and moulder of Kalighat pat painting institution, need
to be observed in this standpoint. The record of the school of art, however, is a
deprived catalogue of its artistic connotation. Till then, the visual worth of the
Kalighat pat painting increased with the awareness of its history. The history,
though, is mainly hypothetical as very little of the paintings, by themselves, can
barely be used as papers in substantiation.

The native groups of clay-idol makers and pat (canvas made of cotton clothes)
painters, belonging mostly to kumbhakar and sutradhar castes, transmigrated from
Midnapore, and established their home in a place which later became the
Patuapara locality in the Kalighat region of south Kolkata, in the commencement of
the nineteenth century. The augmented claims for souvenirs were the major
inducement for the refugee idol makers and pat painters. Recognizing admired
demand they initiated producing tiny clay idols and painted iconic images of well-
liked Hindu Gods and Goddesses primarily following the Shaivasm and
Shaktasm. By the next decade of the Kalighat patuas started producing numerous
of these low level paintings on paper to be singled out up by pilgrims and ordinary
visitors.
The inevitability of producing painting in volume at rapid rate led the patuas to
become accustomed with a large industrial alteration. The Kalighat painters switched
to man-made paper as hold up, from cloth and handmade paper pasted on cotton
cloth that the rural patuas did. Secondly, as an alternative of vegetable and mineral
pigments seasoned by vegetable glue, the Kalighat patuas underway uses artificial
water-colours and inks along with bristles, instead of using cloth dabbers.


Nevertheless, of more historical significance, are the paintings with secular non-
ritualistic subject matter. In these they exposed themselves to be further than ritual
artefacts. In the course of visual ballads of contemporary procedures and figurative
demonstration of human errors by surrogating human images by the metaphors of
beings like birds, cats and fishes.
These artisans had to make-up multiple metaphorical and other similes, on flat
surface without taking alternative of any eye-canvassing tactic; they faced the
redoubtable chore of conjugating a painting. This they attained by haul aging the
pace, of the curved line drawings which outlined every image, incessantly through
the whole art. In the history of Kalighat, scores of internal evidence of the
Tarakeswar Mahanta and Elokeshi event were found, on which scores of pats were
painted in Kalighat. At par with the growth, first of physical printmaking with the help
of wood block printing and lithography made its position, and then from the second
decade through perfunctory replica, the requirement for hand painted pats declined
radically. By the end of thirties the demand desiccated up completely, leading to the
downfall of the age old Kalighat pat folklore.
Kalighat pat practice differed from the conventional pat painting of rural Bengal, did
not show the path to the appearance of the in secured individual artist, with personal
thematic concerns. The themes and visuals of the Kalighat patuas, till the end,
remained in community domination.
The postmodern artists of Kalighat, bewildered the modern Bengal maverick artists
like Jamini Roy, Nandalal, Abanindranath, Nirode Mazumdar and Paritosh Sen so
much, that they tailored elements from the Kalighat pat tradition and salvaged their
art from being imitative of European art and revivalist Indian painting.