Penny Watercolors

London's Victoria & Albert Museum was staging one of the oddest special exhibitions in its history. Amidst the elaborate splendor of Indian carpets and inlaid furniture last week were close to 100 watercolors that had once sold for a penny and under. They dated from 1830 to 1930, and all came from the environs of a temple to Kali, wife of the Hindu god Shiva, in Calcutta.

The name of the temple was Kalighat, and the art that developed and died in its shadow has therefore been known (to the few specialists who ever heard of it) as "Kalighat painting." Kalighat pictures covered an extraordinary range of subject matter, from divinities to profanities. They were made to sell as souvenirs to pilgrims at the temple steps. The art first came into being when British colonists brought cheap paper and the technique of painting with transparent watercolor to Calcutta. It died when machine-printed cards and chromos undercut sales.

Until recently few connoisseurs paid much attention to Kalighat painting (though Rudyard Kipling's father did buy 15 examples, which the son later presented without comment to the Victoria & Albert Museum). Fifty years ago anyone with half an eye, a few dollars and an old portfolio might have amassed a comprehensive collection of the art; today Kalighat pictures are hard to find.

What makes Kalighat art particularly appealing to moderns are its bold rhythms, clear colors and great economy of line. Actually, these qualities were dictated by necessity--the pictures had to be simple because they had to be done fast in order to make a profit. But, by coincidence, Kalighat painters advanced a long way on the road that School of Paris art was later to travel. They reduced limbs to the appearance of bent tubes, as has Fernand Leger, and delineated whole figures with two or three winding contours, as in some drawings by Picasso. The Kalighat Cat with Prawn (see cut) would seem perfectly at home in an exhibition of paintings by Henri Matisse himself.

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