Page 247 - Art and Crafts of Bangladesh

244 ART AND CRAFTS

Bibi Bilas, Kali Prasanna Sinha’s brilliant Hutam Penchar
Naksha and similar satirical works.’ As an exact continuation
2
of this tradition, the practice of caricature drawing in Kolkata
started in the 19th century (fig. 5.1). Small drawings were done
which centered around the neat lines in the tradition of Bengali
folk art and European compositions. The rich Bengali Babus or
the Englishmen of Kolkata used to commission and collect
these works. Although obscenity was the main subject of these
drawings, one could find the sarcasm and humor about the lives
of Bengali gentlemen living in Kolkata. The drunken condition
of Bengali Babus in the brothel, Bengali Babus becoming
laughing stocks by trying hard to join the Englishmen for meals,
on the other hand, Englishmen getting harassed by trying to
participate in various native programs- sometimes these sort of
issues were depicted in these drawings. These were not cartoons
in the exact sense, but one can identify this period as the prelude
to the practice of cartoons in Bengal. The pata painting of
Kalighat belongs to this category (fig.5.2). Fish eating by the
Vaishnava, quarrel between the two wives of a man, the man
beaten up by the wife or the mistress- the pata-paintings done
on these subjects were mainly bought by the foreigners.
Bengalis preferred to hang pata paintings of the divinities.
Delhi Sketch Book was the first magazine to publish the cartoon in the Indian
subcontinent. That happened before the Sepoy Mutiny (The First Independence
Movement of India). After that, Indian Punch was published from Delhi in 1859. In
the same year, Indian Charivari was published in Kolkata in November. These
magazines published cartoons etched on copper plates.
The first cartoon was published in the Amritabazar Patrika, famed for its cartoons on
28 February 1872. Prannath Datta
published a magazine named Basantak
in 1874 which printed cartoons in
wood block. Girindrakumar Datta did
cartoons for this magazine (fig. 5.3).
The blacksmiths and goldsmiths of
Chitpore would make cartoons in
wood engraving and supply to
fig. 5.2 (top) Kalighat magazines and papers. There were no
pata
signatures under the pictures. Such
fig. 5.3 (bottom) caricature-drawings were also
Girindrakumar Datta, published in the almanacs. During the
Society for the later part of the 19th century, the
Prevention of Obscenity, humor and sarcasm of prints of Bat-
Basantak tala became extremely popular.