DAG’s The Babu & the Bazaar at Kolkata showcases the journey of the 19th and early 20th century Pats and oil on canvas

Upon entering the display gallery at the Alipore Museum, you are bound to be transported to an era depicted through Early Bengal’s own artistic genius. An era where both mythological instances and popular Bengali Babu’s and their visits to the markets have been captured in oil on canvas and pats that erupt with Calcutta history, culture, class biases, gender hierarchies, and more. The Babu & The Bazaar, as the exhibition is called, has been curated by the DAG and inaugurated at Alipore Museum. The vast collection of canvas interconnects Kalighat pats, oil paintings, mass-produced prints, and reverse glass paintings from Guangzhou.

Here's why The Babu & the Bazaar should be your next art exhibition stop 

The artworks are a splendid mix of local artists of the time and travelling ones who had come to the city during the early decades of colonisation. Interestingly, most of these artists showed a common stance by either painting in watercolours or oils and were part of the printing press. In most of the social drawings, men and women have been portrayed as living lavish lives through just their looks.

Elaborate gold and red sarees to crowns, earrings, anklets, and necklaces on women, and men donning dhoti-kurtas in what seems to be a race to better their rivals. Even the mistresses have good taste in stringed instruments, flowers, paan and more. The mythological paintings, mostly commissioned by the Gujarati and Marwari communities who had settled in Calcutta to do business, depict Yashoda in traditional Gujarati costumes in vibrant colours. The section of reverse-glass paintings from another country only places the emphasis on the importance the pats had gained- that they were successful in inspiring other art forms beyond boundaries.

The paintings at The Babu & the Bazaar are sentinel to the fact that the city, its people and the silent observers who put brush on canvas in the early 19th century were all standing on the cusp of tradition and modernity. Local traditions and Western culture inter-mingled to the extent that many Indian elites commissioned their deities to be painted in western methodology including oil pigment on cloth canvas or art prints. The Babu & the Bazaar makes for an apt title because it talks about the men of erstwhile Calcutta not only the locals but also the traders, merchants, artists, businessmen who settled in the city to do business in the bazaar (market). It also perfectly defines a section of the paintings which depict the amorous relationships between babus and their mistresses in the shadowy lanes of the city, dark but vibrant in colours and stance. 

The Babu & The Bazaar is on display till January 3, 2026

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