A print is an original work of art created and printed by hand by an artist or a professional printing assistant from a ‘matrix’—a plate, block of stone, wood or stencil. The image is created on the matrix and the artist takes a limited number of impressions or prints off it. Printmaking arrived in India in the 16th century when visiting European Jesuits brought the first printing presses to Goa. It flourished as an industry under colonial British rule, and the growth of the vernacular printing industry spawned several indigenous schools of printmaking located in the bazaars of urban centres like Calcutta, Poona, Bombay, Mysore and Lahore.
This resource pack explores printmaking from its inception as a tool of the colonial enterprise to its rapid success in the printing industry in the 18th century, and the entry of the Indian bazaar print in the hands of the artisan as well as the art school-trained artist through artworks from the DAG collection.
LOOKING CLOSELY
Browse through a curated collection of images and artworks from the DAG collection that offer a glimpse into printmaking in India and the artists who worked with the medium.
SUGGESTED AUDIENCE
Learners in middle school and above
SUGGESTED USE
Introducing printmaking in India by mapping familiar artworks and prints by well-known Bengal artists, and other methods of printmaking following the history curriculum in middle and high schools.
Nayak and Nayika sitting beside a table wood engraving
19th century
LOOKING FURTHER
A researched round-up of primary and secondary sources from across the web.
SUGGESTED AUDIENCE
Middle school to high school learners and above
SUGGESTED USE
Exploring further resources, viz documentaries, articles, tangible evidence of the events, and literature to delve deeper into different aspects of the larger topic; roadmap to exploring the topic beyond textbooks; providing inspiration and information to build inquistivity for projects.
Graphic Art of the Bengal School
Critical Collective
Delve into how printmaking came into being in India and read about some of the practices that the earliest artists experimenting with this form worked with, like lithography, etching and dry point.
LITHOGRAPHY (1940 - 1949)
British Pathe
Delve into the process of lithography, through the eyes of a child reading a picture book that has been printed using lithographs. Look closely at how the stones are etched and how the sheets are placed on the stone for the print.
Does this make you rethink how your books have been printed and circulated?
The Printed Picture: Four Centuries of Indian Print-Making
Delhi Art Gallery
Explore more about four decades of Indian printmaking through this landmark DAG exhibition. This exhibition charts printmaking’s eventful journey in India from its inception as a tool of the colonial enterprise to its rapid success in the printing industry in the 18th century, and the entry of the Indian bazaar print in the hands of the artisan as well as the art school-trained artist.
How was it made? Block printing William Morris Wallpaper
Victoria and Albert Museum
Observe a recreation of how William Morris worked with blockprinting to create his elaborate prints in the 19th century, around the same time woodblock printmaking was really flourishing in India.
Try and underatand the process of applying layers of colours and how the print appears on paper.
Chittaprosad Bhattacharya was a Bengal artist known for his stark pen and ink sketches on the Bengal famine of 1943-44. In his later practice, he was particularly invested in children’s stories – they had also featured in his earlier famine sketches – and in this print, he seems to humorously depict a group of tigers trying in vain to get on to a tree to get hold of the two children on top – possibly referring to a trope quite familiar in Bengal short stories like ‘Thakumar Jhuli’ and ‘Tuntunir boi’.
MEDIUM
Linocut
1 / 7
‘Sahaj Path’ was first published in 1930 as a collaborative initiative by Rabindranath Tagore and Nandalal Bose – its first volume focusing on alphabet lessons, illustrated with short and simple rhyming sentences. The printed images accompanying the rhymes are linocuts, fashioned to reveal the minimal contours of the figures. The older books were made with clear lines, so slightly older students could fill them with colours, and spoke about everyday life in Bengal.
YEAR
1930 (reprinted in 1998)
MEDIUM
Offset print on paper
2 / 7
From 1769, travelling European artists began arriving on Indian shores and started using new technologies like lithography to produce prints of the landscapes they painted. These images became some of the earliest documentation of the colonies and because they were prints, it was possible for them to be circulated far and wide. Many of these artists subscribed to the cult of ‘picturesque’, then in vogue in Europe and much of their clientele were curious about the East and the ‘exotic East’ was emerging.
The first notable landscape artist to arrive in India was William Hodges in 1780. For the next three years he travelled the length and breadth of the country and produced a large number of sketches which he printed using techniques like metal engraving and etching. Between 1785-88 he published a series of forty-eight aquatints titled Select Views in India. Hodges’ landscapes, unlike the uncle and nephew duo Thomas and William Daniell, were less realistic in nature, carrying an air of shock and unrest created by the stark contrast of light and shade.
YEAR
MEDIUM
Handtinted metal engraving
3 / 7
Techniques of producing coloured prints led to a further demand for printed pictures. Artists like Raja Ravi Varma were trained in the European academic style of painting. He tapped into the popular demand for printed pictures of gods and goddesses and sought to reform the garishly coloured prints emerging from contemporary studios by developing a more refined, naturalistic iconography of religious and mythological scenes. Ravi Verma’s contribution was so enduring that figurations he created for myths and epics continue to inform our popular imagination of gods and goddesses today.
YEAR
MEDIUM
Oleograph
4 / 7
A highly controversial lithograph, Bharat Bhiksha (India begging) represented the British notion of their civilising race’s beneficence to a subservient nation like India. The image brings together three figures, symbolically standing in for three generations, positioned according to age. The old lady hands over the responsibility of the child to a youthful, resplendently attired woman. Politically, the old woman, as well as the child, represent India and the youthful woman is Britain, her youth signalling how British patronage over an ancient, exhausted country would provide for a bountiful future.
MEDIUM
Lithograph on paper
5 / 7
The Ramayana is one of the two major Sanskrit epics from ancient India. The embedded narrative of the epic has lent itself to myriad (visual) interpretations and reimaginations for centuries. This pat—traditional artworks from eastern India known for their intricate details and depictions of myths and legends—shows Hanuman, the monkey-god and devotee of Rama, the epic’s divine protagonist, in a warring embrace with Ravana, the epic’s ten-headed demon who was also the ruler of what is now Sri Lanka. Ravana is described in literature as being twenty-armed, but it is uncertain whether this change was intentional or a mistake at the hands of the engraver.
YEAR
MEDIUM
Hand-tinted woodcut on paper
6 / 7
The 19th century woodcut prints of Calcutta were popularly called Bat-tala prints, which were produced in the Black Town area of the city and were usually purchased by the layman who thronged the suburbs. Bat-tala means ‘under the banyan tree’ due to the area of north Calcutta where this indigenous school of printmaking developed. By the late 19th century, Bat-tala prints were being made by art school graduates trained in British academic art traditions. They started featuring still, doll-like figures with exaggerated facial features and physical gestures – reminiscent of the Bengal terracotta or wooden dolls, but they are dressed in the North Indian ghaghra seen in Rajasthani miniatures rather than the sari worn in Bengal – this attire would be richly adorned with architectural details in the background, much like he miniature tradition.
The babu or ‘nayak’, as seen here is wearing English pump shoes – both him and the ‘nayika’ are sitting on European furniture – him strumming an Indian stringed instrument and her, smoking a hookah. It is very akin to the picture of a European couple, in the exact same setting but with a liquor bottle and glass in the hands of the gentleman and a violin in the hands of the lady.
