Before the Camera: How Patna Qalam Captured Everyday India
Once carried to Britain as souvenirs, Patna Qalam paintings captured daily 18th-century life in India with rare tenderness. An recent exhibition in Patna revived this art tradition on home ground
In popular imagination, the landscape of Indian miniature paintings is largely occupied by the Mughal, Pala, Pahari, and Jain schools, with a wide range of sub-genres within each category, reflecting their places of origin. But across the board, miniatures were storytelling devices—a lot like single-panel graphic novels—that emerged as illustrations for manuscripts.
Among the more forgotten of these traditions is the 18th-century Patna Qalam—a school of miniature painting that marries both Mughal and Company styles (a British style of painting that came into being around the time of the East India Company)—and boasted a long roster of British patrons back in the day. In the absence of photography, these paintings acted as stand-ins for pictures taken of everyday life in India that colonizers carried back to Britain as souvenirs.
In an attempt to revive and preserve what remains of this nearly extinct form, the Patna Museum hosted Patna Qalam: Ek Virasat, an exhibition showcasing 130 paintings until 31 January 2026. “The Patna Museum underwent a lot of infrastructural work, renovations and expansions, which allowed us enough space to host this exhibition. We have around 400 such Qalam paintings in the custody of the Museum, which have been majorly restored with the help of the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts,” says Dr Ravi Shankar Gupta, curator, Bihar Museum.
In popular imagination, the landscape of Indian miniature paintings is largely occupied by the Mughal, Pala, Pahari, and Jain schools, with a wide range of sub-genres within each category, reflecting their places of origin. But across the board, miniatures were storytelling devices—a lot like single-panel graphic novels—that emerged as illustrations for manuscripts.
Among the more forgotten of these traditions is the 18th-century Patna Qalam—a school of miniature painting that marries both Mughal and Company styles (a British style of painting that came into being around the time of the East India Company)—and boasted a long roster of British patrons back in the day. In the absence of photography, these paintings acted as stand-ins for pictures taken of everyday life in India that colonizers carried back to Britain as souvenirs.
In an attempt to revive and preserve what remains of this nearly extinct form, the Patna Museum hosted Patna Qalam: Ek Virasat, an exhibition showcasing 130 paintings until 31 January 2026. “The Patna Museum underwent a lot of infrastructural work, renovations and expansions, which allowed us enough space to host this exhibition. We have around 400 such Qalam paintings in the custody of the Museum, which have been majorly restored with the help of the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts,” says Dr Ravi Shankar Gupta, curator, Bihar Museum.
Under his supervision, the existing artworks, along with some additions from private collectors, were divided by theme, and a proposal for this exhibition was made. “We suggested that this become the last show in the Bihar Museum Biennale that commenced in August,” Gupta says.
During the reign of Mughal emperor Jahangir in the 17th century, the arts are said to have flourished. “In the royal court, different artists would sometimes paint different parts of a single painting, and Jahangir would credit each one of them separately,” Gupta says. However, they fell out of favour by the time Aurangzeb ascended the throne, owing to which artists migrated out of the dying empire to other parts of the country. Some settled in the erstwhile province of undivided Bengal.
“Like in Odisha and Murshidabad,” Gupta says, “The ones who settled in Murshidabad (modern-day Bengal) were inching towards Patna, which was a bustling commercial hub at the time. They began practising their art in a district that dealt in trades such as gunpowder, indigo and nitrate among others, so there was a great deal to capture.”
Scenes of opulence from the royal courts slowly began to give way to portraits of the everydayness of a riverine city. Barbers by the ghats, bullock carts trundling down the road, humble parasol-makers—everyone found a place on the ivory, mica, and wasli-paper canvases of Patna Qalam. It became a window into the soul of a city that would go on to become a seat of commercial and political might in the decades to come.
Its fine brush strokes and sparkling colours were offset by plainer backgrounds—unlike its Mughal counterparts—to keep the focus on the subjects. The form also borrows the Company style’s penchant for using watercolours, without going through a stage of pencil drawing. The Qalam artists went in straight with their paintbrushes.
In later years, however, Qalam adapted and evolved in both technique and theme. “There were monuments drawn, and some elaborate backgrounds emerged too—featuring more flora. In fact, in later decades, they would first outline, and then fill it with paint, unlike before,” Gupta adds.
Through this ongoing endeavour—the first of its scale to be held on home turf—the scholar hopes that such prolific documentation of their past finally receives the attention that has long evaded it.
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