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The 2012 calendar |
Few business enterprises started by Bengalis in late 19th century and early 20th century have survived today. Calcutta Art Studio, born in 1878, is an honourable exception. It was launched by Annada Prasad Bagchi and four of his “best” students, of whom Nabo Coomar Biswas, whose descendants now look after the business, was one. It is basically a printing press now but the current proprietors, the Biswas family, are proud of their tradition. The studio is still remembered for the role it played in popularising lithographs. It produced and marketed lithographs — both chromo and monochrome — of Hindu deities and contemporary public figures. The owners trained in the prevailing academic style derived from Europe left their stamp on contemporary art practices.
The artists of the studio sketched and painted in oils and watercolours the likenesses of public figures and sittings were held on the studio premises. There was a special “glass room” set aside for this purpose. Apart from “live” subjects, photographs, too, were used for portraits. The artists produced portraits of great personalities of those days, who were at the forefront of the Bengal Renaissance. Each lithograph was finely detailed and cost more than the run-of-the-mills prints. Yet they became immensely popular among the masses.
For the second year running the studio has produced calendars using the images of some of the prints in its collection. The personalities whose images have been reproduced are Raja Rammohun Roy, Raja Radhakant Deb of Sovabazar, Dwarkanath Tagore, Michael Madhusudan Dutt, Bankim Chattopadhyay, Surendra Nath Banerji, and Swami Vivekananda, who came to the studio to be sketched.
Green sadhu
He rides a Merc, enjoys the patronage of celebs, shuttles between Holland and the Himalayas and lives in five caves. He attends international meets and plants saplings at the conference grounds. Spiritual guru Soham Baba was in Durban recently to speak about pollution at the international climate conference.
He has been in the Masai Mara jungle with cannibals. He has been in troubled Bosnia. He was there in Ceausescu’s Romania. In Durban he had a serious message to deliver.
“I live in five caves in the Himalayas. I see how the glaciers are melting. Unless we raise our voice against climate change, the world will not survive,” said Soham Baba passionately, speaking at sprawling International Convention Centre in Durban.
He had word of praise for Mamata Banerjee. “Ganga, specially the stretch around Calcutta, is polluted. Bengal’s new chief minister is quite proactive on the environmental front,” he said.
(Contributed by Soumitra Das and Jayanta Basu) |
