B N Mukherjee Indian Museum, Calcutta

The name "Kalighat Pata" (pata is pronounced as pot) is applied to a class of paintings and drawings on paper produced by a group of artists called patuas in the neighbourhood of the famous Kali Temple at Kalighat, now a part of Calcutta, in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The art activities of these patuas shares some common technical and stylist characteristics, developed into an industry turning out a great number of pictures to meet popular demand of pilgrims and others. The artists selected as their themes for delineation popular Hindu deities, incarnations and saints, epic and puranic anecdotes, historical events and incidents from daily life.	Kali - 1889
Krishna 1889	Though the exact date of the beginning of the activities of the patuas cannot be determined, it must have been well before 1888 when T N Mukherjee noticed the sale of a great number of paintings at Kalighat. So it is not impossible that the art activities commenced after the erection of the Kalighat temple in and by about the second quarter of the 19th century. The activities of the patuas as a creative group are considered to have ended around 1930, though a few of them survived till about the 60s. On the whole, the Kalighat style flourished and declined during the British rule in Calcutta, the cultural metropolis of India.
The name pata associated with the relevent products of Kalighat suggests that their conceptual origin can be traced to the paintings of patas (or "pieces of cloth") well known in ancient and medieval India. The term, originally perhaps denoting "cloth" was also considered to mean "a painted piece of cloth" and "a picture". Of the two recorded varieties of patas, namely the scroll and the square, the Kalighat patas belong to the latter variety. Each of them depict one single event or theme unlike the scroll patas dealing with several events or themes relating to one broad subject.
Shiva 1889	The Kalighat artists initially came to the Kalighat area from different areas of the districts of 24 parganas and Midnapore. The attraction for the poor artists was the readily available customers (including pilgrims) in the vicinity of Kalighat temple, which was also developing into a business centre. Many of these artists, were not only rich in their skills but also well versed in the pata tradition of rural Bengal and at least sometimes also in certain classical traits (like shading). They were capable of creating carefully executed pictures of high quality; but increasing commercial necessities would have demanded of them quickly made products. This seems to have actually happened in Kalighat.
The selection of themes of daily life or social and religious events as well as of gods and goddesses as subjects for depiction was also known in early indian art. In addition to the traditional objects, the pictures show people even clad in European dresses -- because the artist, a man in society, cannot spontaenously ignore contemporary social events and people. The Kalighat painters used to draw figures with their faces generally to front or three quarters to front. The main reasons for changing the practice of presenting faces in profile which was popular in the past were perhaps ritualistic and commmercial. The gods and goddesses depicted in Kalighat patas were generally worshipped in households and the devotee would not like the object of worship to being turning away from him or her !!	Sri Chaitanya 1889
Chaitanya & Nityananda 1889	This demand would oblige the painters to replace "faces in profile by faces (giving) full or three quarters in view". The practice, once adopted, continued to be used in depicting various other non religious themes, as it gave the viewers the full (frontal) view of the the subject of the painting. Thus ritualistic and commercial reasons were more responsible than 'urban sophistication' for effecting the relevent change. The physiognomical details of the human and divine figures in the Kalighat paintings often have remarkable similarities with those of clay dolls and teracotta figures in temple sculptures of rural West Bengal of the late medieval or early modern age.
The characteristics of the Kalighat art idiom do not reveal any foreign influence, but the foreign impact may be discernible in the socio-economic condition that helped fashion the Kalighat style of drawing and painting. The importance of Kalighat as a centre of pilgrimage grew with the expansion of the metropolis of Calcutta under the British administration in the 19th century. It would have been natural for the pilgrims, poor as well as rich, to want to take back from the market at Kalighat mementoes and representations of deities. This demand would in turn create financial openings for artists, both local as wells as from the various districts of Bengal. So in a sense, British rule helped the popularisation of a relegious centre that proved conducive to the growth of the Kalighat style.	Lakhsmi & Saraswati 1889
Balaram 1889	The protagonists of the Kalighat style like Nilmani Das, Balaram Das, Gopal Das, Kalicharan Ghosh and Nibaran Ghosh were not ordinary patuas : they were sophisticated master artists who evolved a distinct style rooted in the Indian tradition. Among the chief characteristics of this style are the mastery over the execution of the line and the capacity of effecting a sense of roundedness by shading. One of the reasons for the continuity of the common features was the long periods of activities of some of the masters -- one of them is known to have lived for more than eighty five years and active in the early twenties of this century. Artistry of the Kalighat idiom can no longer be created by living artists, though at least one of them tries to maintain the tradition by taking recourse to a form of mannerism of not much creative value.
Though the Kalighat is not a living one, the objects of art produced by it are noticeable in different collections. They give us glimpses of contemporary people's religious affiliations and social taste. Dealing with popular themes and produced by artists for the poor as well as the rich, these pictures represent what can be called a branch of people's art. At the same time it is a sophisticated art of great merit. In the boldness of conception and execution and "in modelling capacity of the line", the Kalighat pictures can have a distinct place in the development of indigenous style of painting in India. They have charmed many art lovers in India and beyond. They have influenced the thoughts and actions of some modern masters including Jamini Ray. A quality picture from Kalighat is an artist's inspiration and a collector's delight.	Yashoda 1982

 The original patas are in the collection of the Indian Museum, Calcutta