The clock tower Hogg Market

Ramendranath Chakravorty was trained in etching, aquatint and drypoint from the famous printmaker Muirhead Bone, known for his work as a war artist in both the First and the Second World Wars. In 1943, he became the Principal at the Government School of Art, Calcutta and introduced graphic art into the curriculum of the school.Chakravorty’s prints display a confluence of artistic traditions—from the Santiniketan School, especially the woodcut prints of Nandalal Bose, and European idioms like pointillism and Impressionism. In this etching, the artist imagines the usually busy and crowded Hogg Market or New Market in Calcutta as a quiet, depopulated space. The date ‘1934’ tells us that this was sketched just four years after the southern flank of the market was extended to install the clock tower, shipped all the way from Huddersfield, a large market town in West Yorkshire, England.