Page 16 - Art and Crafts of Bangladesh

PAINTING 13

on hand made paper can also be found. It may be mentioned that paper was being
made in Bengal from the 16th century. These paintings used vegetable and mineral
colors mixed with Arabic gum. Under the influence of the Vaishnava religious belief, fig. 1.4 (top) Wooden
the legends of Krishna and Rama manifested themselves as the main themes of these book cover, 17th
paintings. These devotional and narrative paintings were done with the use of heavy, century, Birbhum
rounded lines. The figures on bright colors were in most cases set on a bright red
background (fig.1.5). fig. 1.5 (bottom) Scroll
painting (pata), 19th
These wooden book cover paintings displayed the degenerate form of Pala painting. century
These paintings simultaneously present the minute detailing of miniatures and the
expansiveness of wall paintings. In the style of the wooden book covers of Bengal of
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries shadows of western Indian Rajasthani painting
is particularly visible. 16 Done in the medium of tempera, following the method of
memory painting, this wooden book cover using bright flat colors have a two
dimensional character, and is related with Bengal’s indigenous painting tradition.
It may be contextually observed that in the National Museum of Bangladesh there are
preserved 33 wooden book cover paintings of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
These have been collected from Shariatpur, Faridpur, Habiganj and Dhaka. Although
Chaitanyalila, Krishnalila and stories of the Ramayana are represented in these,
however, the illustration of stories from the Mahabharata done in 19 book covers is
rarely seen anywhere else. Painted mainly in bright colors the formal style of the
painting of the wooden book covers followed the oblique line-based drawing of the
mediaeval Indian style. But the local artists of these paintings mainly executed them
in the style peculiar to the tradition of the popular art of Bengal.