An old tradition tied to the Jagannath temple at Puri; still practised · Odisha (Puri and Raghurajpur) and West Bengal
Pattachitra
Painting on prepared cloth from Odisha and Bengal. In Odisha, icons and stories of Jagannath for the pilgrims of Puri; in Bengal, long scrolls unrolled while the painter sings.
How to recognise it
- Cotton cloth coated with chalk and tamarind or guar gum, rubbed to a leathery finish
- Bold, clean, angular line
- No landscape or perspective; events set close together
- Red grounds with flower and leaf decoration, and a decorated border
- Natural colours, including conch-shell white and lamp black
Patta means cloth and chitra means picture. In Odisha the tradition centres on Jagannath and the Vaishnava faith, and its painters are the chitrakars. Themes are Jagannath, Balabhadra and Subhadra, Radha and Krishna, the ten avatars of Vishnu after the Gita Govinda, and the Ramayana and Mahabharata. The paintings were made for ritual use and as souvenirs for pilgrims to Puri. They are also said to have stood in for worship on the days when the temple images are kept from view after their ritual bath.
The family is the studio. Women prepare the glue and the cloth, fill in colour and apply the final lacquer; the master, usually a man, draws the first line and finishes the work. The cloth is coated with chalk and gum, rubbed with two stones and dried, then painted in vegetable, earth and stone colours. White is made from powdered conch shell, black from lamp soot or burnt coconut shell. The best work comes from Puri and especially Raghurajpur, a crafts village of chitrakar families that is also the birthplace of the master painter Jagannath Mahapatra.
In Bengal, the patuas paint long scrolls of myths, religious stories, folk tales and social subjects, and sing a song for each as they unroll it; the singing is called Patua Sangeet. The Kalighat painters of Calcutta came out of this tradition.
What to look for
The line, which should be confident and clean, and the decorated border that every painting carries. Odisha work is a set of tightly packed scenes on red; Bengal scrolls are narrative, made to be unrolled frame by frame.