🧾 DETAILS
Artist: Unknown Patua artist (Bengal)
Year: Unknown Patua artist (Bengal)
Medium: Pigment on paper (scroll painting fragment)
Dimensions: Not specified
Category: Patua / Bengal scroll painting
Room: Origins / Narrative Systems
🧠 DESCRIPTION
This work presents a narrative scene from the Patua scroll painting tradition of Bengal. The composition is structured in stacked registers, with multiple episodes unfolding within a single vertical frame.
Figures are rendered in a stylized and repetitive manner, framed by a decorative border. The scenes depict a central guru figure accompanied by disciples and surrounding narrative episodes, including a circular vignette showing a figure submerged in water.
🔍 SIGNIFICANCE
- Representative example of Bengal Patua narrative scroll tradition
- Demonstrates early forms of sequential storytelling within a single image
- Combines image and narrative structure in a proto-comic format
- Reflects the social and moral function of Patua painting as a storytelling medium
- Provides a key link between ritual narrative and later visual storytelling systems
✍️ INTERPRETATION
The image constructs a sequential narrative within a single surface, where different moments coexist rather than unfold linearly. The repetition of figures and gestures creates a rhythm that guides the viewer through the story.
Rather than isolating a single event, the work presents a moral or didactic narrative, where actions and consequences are visually linked. The circular scene suggests judgment or transformation, reinforcing the ethical dimension typical of Patua storytelling.
🧩 POSITION IN THE COLLECTION
This work plays a unique role within Room 1.
It functions as:
- A bridge between ritual image and narrative sequence
- An early example of structured storytelling through images
- A precursor to later developments in comics and manga (Room 3)
This work tells a story—but also shows how stories are structured.
📚 PROVENANCE
Collected as part of the publication:
Patuas and Patua Art in Bengal
David McCutchion & Suhrid K. Bhowmik
Firma KLM, 1999
Original scroll collected by David McCutchion (1960s).
This work was included as part of the book’s distributed Patua paintings.
McCutchion’s collection later formed part of the holdings of the Herbert Art Gallery & Museum, Coventry.