Paintings with painted backdrops

Four graduates of the colonial H.H.Locke's School of Art, form the Calcutta Art Studio. Indian images play their stories out in very western pastoral backgrounds in some of these images. The direction of gaze of the idols shifts sometimes, the gaze suggests a contained world, rather than a staring out of the frame. The great popularity of theatre and staged devotionals in those days affected the way these images looked. The 'painted backdrops', so popular in theatre, became part of many of these paintings.