With its strong repository of art from eighteenth and nineteenth century Bengal, DAG presents its landmark exhibition titled The Babu & The Bazaar featuring oil paintings, Kalighat pats, reverse paintings on glass, and early printmaking.
The expansive exhibition features watercolour paintings known as Kalighat pats—both religious and secular in their subjects—placed against incomparable works across the genres of commissioned oil paintings, mass-produced prints, and a selection of reverse-glass paintings from Canton (present-day Guangzhou). Curated by historian and scholar Aditi Nath Sarkar, The Babu & The Bazaar attempts to unravel parts of Calcutta’s history, culture, class biases, and gendered hierarchies through featuring artworks that are all over one hundred years old and registered as historical artefacts that are non-exportable.