Patna Kalam revival: How Bihar is bringing back the lost art that captured everyday India

Picture watercolours connected imported paper, successful delicate brushwork connected pale, bare backgrounds, and the stark representation of 2 men in dhotis working successful a distillery. Or a woman, dressed successful blue-and-yellow ghaghra and dupatta, dancing successful a palace hallway portion the musicians play. These artworks are portion of an 18th-century Indian coating contented known as Patna Kalam. 

It was a pre-photographic ocular documentation of the regular lives of mean people, featuring rootlike sellers, blacksmiths and servants fetching groceries, among others. Last December, Patna Kalam paintings were portion of an accumulation astatine the Bihar Museum Biennale 2025, wherever it witnessed a renewed interest. Which begs the question: wherefore is an creation built to seizure regular beingness present surviving lone down glass?

Hidden distant successful retention successful creation colleges, oregon confined to backstage collections and the archives of the British Museum and the Victoria & Albert Museum, London, the astir lost Patna Kalam was reintroduced via the Patna Kalam: Ek Virasat exhibition held astatine Patna Museum betwixt December 2025 and February 2026, and a workshop for keen students. Art enthusiasts hold that if not for specified involvement from the State government, they would person had to question extracurricular India to spot this creation tradition. Apart from the Patna Museum paintings, the accumulation featured works lent by Sanjay Kumar, a Dhanbad nonmigratory and descendant of the famous Patna Kalam painter Hulas Lal.

The determination creation benignant “employed the method of the Company School of Painting, with chiseled characteristics intrinsic to Patna metropolis — its people, civilization and day-to-day life,” says INTACH’s (Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage) Patna section convenor Bhairav Lal Das. In it, Mughal miniature item blended with European naturalism. Art teacher Dinesh Kumar elaborates that Patna Kalam is bereft of immoderate ornamentation; there’s nary play of airy and shadow, oregon immoderate background. Think of a purdah-nasheen woman peeking from her palanquin’s reddish curtains, painted successful gouache connected mica (also called sunmica or abrak). Or a roadside baniya (grocer) sitting and weighing seeds oregon pulses.

Happy with the effect and pleasantly amazed by the involvement in the workshop, Bihar Museum’s manager wide Anjani Kumar Singh present hopes to find bully creation trainers to impart method skills and assistance make contemporary Patna Kalam.

At Patna University’s College of Arts and Crafts, store participants were glued to administrative serviceman Chanchal Kumar’s Patna Kalam, a notation photobook of paintings. Ironically, the archetypal paintings remained locked successful trunks successful the aforesaid premises, inaccessible to the public. Last July, Aditya Jalan, great-grandson of businessman and creation connoisseur Dewan Bahadur Radha Krishna Jalan, opened Planet Patna, a backstage depository with a ample postulation of Company Paintings, including Patna Kalam.

“My great-grandfather was passionate astir objects of humanities significance; helium adjacent purchased Napoleon’s furniture connected a travel to Europe successful 1935,” says Aditya, adding that his father, Bal Manohar, exchanged colonial-era stamps for the Patna Kalam paintings. The depository astatine different tract is unfastened to each — with an introduction interest of ₹100 — dissimilar the locked depository astatine his home, which is 1 of Patna’s iconic landmarks for creation lovers, the century-old Quila house, amended known arsenic the Jalan House.

Patna Kalam vs. Tikuli

Back successful April, Bihar Museum displayed Hidden Treasures of Tikuli Art. Like Patna Kalam, the 800-year-old Tikuli coating tradition, too, originated successful Patna. This accepted craft, which gets its sanction from the tikuli or bindis women wear, is seen successful location décor, coasters, and trays, and is known for its agleam colours, good detailing, and usage of enamel overgarment connected hard surfaces. Revived successful the mid-20th century, Tikuli survives to this day, unlike Patna Kalam, which was mislaid aft Independence. “Patna Kalam has the power of Mughal art, Rajasthani miniature coating and European style, while Tikuli art is influenced by Patna Kalam, Rajasthani miniature coating and Mithila painting,” says Tikuli creator Ashok Kumar Biswas, who was awarded the Padma Shri successful 2024.

Sporadically, radical person attempted to document Patna Kalam. For instance, Padma Shri awardee Shyam Sharma, erstwhile main of Patna’s College of Arts and Crafts, has authored the book Patna Kalam (2011, Lalit Kala Academy).

Sanjay Kumar, who comes from an illustrious enactment of Patna Kalam artists, says, “My gramps Shyam Bihari Lal pursued Patna Kalam paintings till his end.” Several paintings of his ancestral household are astatine the Metropolitan and Victoria & Albert Museum successful London, and astatine the Patna Museum.

Hope successful modern stories?

Ashok Kumar Sinha, lawman manager of Bihar Museum, hails Patna Kalam as Bihar’s heritage. He says, “We person plans connected dedicating a assemblage to exhibit Patna Kalam paintings permanently there. Just arsenic we took Sita’s exhibition, Vaidehi Sita, successful 2024, to respective Indian states and abroad, we whitethorn bash thing akin for the Patna Kalam paintings, which galore radical are not alert of.”

Jitendra Mohan, a Fine Arts prof who conducts Patna Kalam workshops, recalls a puerility that featured the practice creation and wishes that much clip were invested successful it. “I unrecorded successful Patna city, where Patna Kalam originated, and I grew up seeing it successful my neighbourhood, visiting the houses of acclaimed artists Mahadeo Lal and Ishwari Prasad Verma, and museums similar Jalan House,” says Mohan, who observed successful the workshops that the “fresh artists” (young students) performed amended than, say, the Madhubani people artists, successful drafting quality figures, with due measurement and colour strategy that is required for Patna Kalam paintings.

Besides the Bihar Museum, INTACH has organised 9 workshops on Patna Kalam since 2023, crossed antithetic venues, truthful consciousness is spreading. Student Anurag Kumar Verma wants to prosecute Fine Arts and support practising Patna Kalam. Patna-based arts and civilization enthusiast Rachana Priyadarshini, who participated successful the INTACH workshops, says, “From copying to incorporating modern elements, to drafting freehand, and observing architecture and people, we are connected the close path.”

Patna, today, is acold much chaotic; thoroughfare paintings are not imaginable for they necessitate bid and abstraction for nuanced art. Aditya Kumar Singh, an designer and portion of the Urban Sketchers planetary artists assemblage successful Patna, says that sketching a modern gathering takes him half-an-hour portion a Patna Kalam painting takes 3 days to marque with afloat dedication. Singh is doubtful astir its sustenance, but Lal Das says that INTACH volition supply incentives for budding artists and physique a bully slope of Patna Kalam paintings done workshops to beforehand and merchantability them.

Meanwhile, block-printing textile decorator Sunita Prakash, done her institution Bandhani, has trained women to overgarment accepted arts, including Patna Kalam, on fabric, held exhibitions, and has sold pieces.

The writer searches for affirmative stories crossed the country.