Everyday Life in the Patas of Kalighat
Everyday Life in the Patas of Kalighat
A.K.M. Khademul Haque
Assistant Professor
Department of Islamic History and Culture
University Of Dhaka
The word Pata (pronounced as ‘pot’) means picture in general, but it is particularly ascribed as a kind of picture painted on cloth. Since the mythical age, a community of artisans in rural Bengal used to make a kind of painted scroll depicting a series of stories and earn their livelihood showing them in public as well as narrating the story. The community is called Patua and the scroll they carry is called Pata. But the Patas of Kalighat means a different, distinctive variety of art-idiom. It is associated with a class of paintings and drawings on paper, produced in the vicinity of the famous temple of Goddess Kali in the outskirts of Kolkata during the nineteenth and early twentieth century.
Ever since late T.N. Mukherjee wrote about this ‘inferior type of paintings sold at prices ranging from one pice to 4 pice or one anna – each’ (Mukherjee, T.N., 1886) – much has been spoken about it. Mukherjee’s apprehension that it was an inferior art-craft did not stand long; rather, soon it attracted attention not only from art-critiques, but also from historians, sociologists and anthropologists. Scholars like W.G. Archer (1951, 1962 and 1971), Ajit Ghosh (1926), G.S. Dutta (1932a, 1932b, and 1933), S. Sengupta (1973), Prodyot Ghosh (1963 and 1967), Jyotindra Jain (1998 and 1999) and Amita Ray (1998) have made significant contributions in the study of Kalighat Patas. Researches have been done on the origins, growth and development of Kalighat Patas, on the sources of the pictorial vocabulary presented by the artists of Kalighat, and even on the anthropological antecedences of the painters as well. But it is such a huge phenomena, that there is still scope for new researches. This paper intends to examine the social and historical context of this art-style and the messages found in it about the everyday life-style in
A.K.M. Khademul Haque
Assistant Professor
Department of Islamic History and Culture
University Of Dhaka
The word Pata (pronounced as ‘pot’) means picture in general, but it is particularly ascribed as a kind of picture painted on cloth. Since the mythical age, a community of artisans in rural Bengal used to make a kind of painted scroll depicting a series of stories and earn their livelihood showing them in public as well as narrating the story. The community is called Patua and the scroll they carry is called Pata. But the Patas of Kalighat means a different, distinctive variety of art-idiom. It is associated with a class of paintings and drawings on paper, produced in the vicinity of the famous temple of Goddess Kali in the outskirts of Kolkata during the nineteenth and early twentieth century.
Ever since late T.N. Mukherjee wrote about this ‘inferior type of paintings sold at prices ranging from one pice to 4 pice or one anna – each’ (Mukherjee, T.N., 1886) – much has been spoken about it. Mukherjee’s apprehension that it was an inferior art-craft did not stand long; rather, soon it attracted attention not only from art-critiques, but also from historians, sociologists and anthropologists. Scholars like W.G. Archer (1951, 1962 and 1971), Ajit Ghosh (1926), G.S. Dutta (1932a, 1932b, and 1933), S. Sengupta (1973), Prodyot Ghosh (1963 and 1967), Jyotindra Jain (1998 and 1999) and Amita Ray (1998) have made significant contributions in the study of Kalighat Patas. Researches have been done on the origins, growth and development of Kalighat Patas, on the sources of the pictorial vocabulary presented by the artists of Kalighat, and even on the anthropological antecedences of the painters as well. But it is such a huge phenomena, that there is still scope for new researches. This paper intends to examine the social and historical context of this art-style and the messages found in it about the everyday life-style in