Stylogenyin the style of Kalighat Pat & Battala Bazaar Prints

Traditions & vernacular · 1830–1930 · South Asia

Kalighat Pat & Battala Bazaar Prints

Also known as Kalighat painting, Kalighat pat, Battala woodcuts, Calcutta bazaar painting

The bazaar art of nineteenth-century Calcutta: watercolours sold to pilgrims by patua painters at the Kalighat temple, and the cheap woodcuts and metal engravings that Battala presses printed for chapbooks and almanacs. A single plaque-like figure stands on unpainted paper, drawn with one loaded, sweeping brushstroke that both outlines and shades it. Deities share the repertoire with satire of the Westernised babu, domestic scandal and street life.

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A sample layout drawn from the style’s design choices, until its AI image is made.

Use it with care

Many sheets depict Hindu deities that are still worshipped (Kali, Durga, Lakshmi, Krishna), and some were painted for Muslim patrons (Duldul, Imam Husain's horse), so do not distort, crop or place these figures in mocking or disposable contexts. The patua (chitrakar) families of Bengal still practise the art; commission or credit living painters rather than tracing museum images, and name the artist where known.

01

How it works

  • Draw each contour in one loaded, sweeping brushstroke whose wet edge also shades the form, so the outline models the body instead of merely enclosing it.
  • Isolate one figure or a pair on unpainted paper and leave the ground empty, so the sheet reads like a plaque.
  • Lay a few transparent flat washes, then add solid black for hair and garment borders and silver for jewellery.
  • Mix gods with topical satire: the foppish babu with his hookah, the henpecked husband, the cat wearing sectarian marks.
  • Reproduce cheaply: recut the image as a woodcut or metal engraving for chapbooks and almanacs and splash colour on by hand in broad strokes.

The bazaar around the Kali temple at Kalighat and the Battala printing district of north Calcutta (Kolkata), Bengal, worked by patua scroll painters who had moved to the city and by local engravers

02

Its design choices

From Stylogeny’s vocabulary of design choices: defining choices make the style, characteristic ones are usual, occasional ones turn up now and then.

Layout & composition
Space & hierarchy
Typography
Colour
Form & shape
Surface & texture
Ornament
Imagery
Medium & production
Tone & intent
Avoids
Naturalistic depiction, Horror vacui, Illusion of depth, Gloss & highlights, Abundant decoration, Full bleed, Straight photography

Palette

  • #efe6d0
  • #1b1916
  • #c73e2b
  • #e0a92e
  • #3f6b8f
  • #b7b7b2

Typefaces

  • Bengali captions cut into Battala woodblocks

  • Bengali letterpress text of Battala chapbooks and almanacs

    panjika

  • Brush-written Bengali inscriptions on painted pats

Known for

  • Victoria and Albert Museum Kalighat collection

    about 645 works, 1830s–1930s, including John Lockwood Kipling's 233 works, given in 1917

  • Nibaran Chandra Ghosh (attrib.), Woman putting a rose in her hair

    about 1900, V&A

  • Kanai Lal Ghosh, Cat with a fish

    1920s, V&A

  • W. G. Archer, Bazaar Paintings of Calcutta

    1953

  • Ashit Paul (ed.), Woodcut Prints of Nineteenth Century Calcutta

    Seagull Books, 1983

  • Anwar Chitrakar, The Policeman's Bribe (2010, V&A), a contemporary patua working in the idiom

03

Make something in this style

Say what you need, and Stylogeny’s image studio draws it from Kalighat Pat & Battala Bazaar Prints’s design choices and checks it against them. It takes about a minute, and you get a link to share.

Rule out a choice, read the prompt, or blend in another style: take this brief to Mix styles.

04

Where it comes from, and what it’s close to

Before it

The style it grew out of, and the styles it borrowed from.

Nothing earlier is recorded: in the atlas it is a starting point.

This styleKalighat Pat & Battala Bazaar Prints1830–1930 · South Asia

After it

The styles that grew out of it.

No later style in the atlas grew out of it yet.

Alike in its design choices

Styles that make many of the same choices, related or not, besides those above.

05

Real works

Artefacts in museums, libraries and archives that show the style, linked at their source.

06

Sources

  1. Victoria and Albert Museum, 'Kalighat painting' (https://www.vam.ac.uk/articles/kalighat-painting)
  2. Banglapedia, 'Kalighat Painting' (https://en.banglapedia.org/index.php/Kalighat_Painting)
  3. Wikipedia, 'Battala Woodcut Prints' (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battala_Woodcut_Prints)
  4. Ashit Paul (ed.), Woodcut Prints of Nineteenth Century Calcutta (Seagull Books, 1983)

How Stylogeny researches and checks a style: where the facts come from.