Jadupatua Paintings

Jadupatua paintings are scroll paintings that are executed initially on cloth and later on paper. These paintings belong to the region of Murshidabad, Birbhum, Bankura, Hooghly, Burdwan, and Midnapore districts of West Bengal and Santal Parganas of Bihar. The scroll painters are called as Jadupatuas or Duari Patuas, which literally meant magical painters. These artists or painters belong to the community of potters, barbers, blacksmiths, sweetmeat makers. These artists traveled from village to village and gave their performances for which they were paid in cash or kind.

Scrolls
Scrolls though appeared in minor idioms, they embodied common attitudes to form and style. All scrolls depicted figures in a single flat plane and showed a mild indifference to naturalism. The stories are depicted in a series of simple clear-cut images in panels divided by horizontal bands. Simple diagrammatic forms depict trees, flowers or rocks. The figures are depicted usually in a standard corrugated line linking forehead, nose, lips and chin and eyes were vastly enlarged.

Themes of the Paintings
Most unique theme painted by the Jadupatua artists, is the funeral theme. If any member of the village dies these artist visit their house and analyze the resource of the family and on that basis they paint the pictures of the deceased person which shows him wandering in the other world without a sight and they could restore the vision in return of the payment. Once they received the payment, the Jadupatuas would perform the 'Chakshudana' i.e. restoration of the eyes by filling in the iris of the eyes on the painting.

The Santals also followed a tradition where the charred bones of the dead were immersed in river Damodar. Most of the Santals found it a difficult preposition so they often requested the Jadupatuas to go to Damodar and make a symbolic immersion by consigning the drawing in the water. In return, the Jadupatuas received fees for it.

Other themes apart from the funeral theme are:

The story of the creation of the Santals as preserved in Santal tradition

• Bahajatras – the festival of Santal
• Santhals dancing in the mass meeting
• Santhal clans personification
• Human riding on a tiger or leopard
• The adventures of Krishna with the milkmaid

Methods
Scroll were made by waste papers. Paper sheets are either glued together or sewn together to make the scrolls. In order to protect the paper from damaging, piece of old cloth or calico was sewn to the end of the scroll. The two ends of the cloth were sewn round pieces of bamboo, one of which acted as a roller around which the scroll could be wound. Finally a string was attached to one end to secure the wound-up scroll. Some scrolls were short and consisted of only two or three panels; others could contain fourteen or more. In the present collection one scroll has been kept intact and the remainder cut into sections and were separately mounted.

The brushes of the painters are made up of goat hair. Earlier the paintings were done with natural colors made from vegetable matter or minerals. Colors popularly used are black, red, reddish brown, blue and yellow.