Parvati with her son Ganesha, Kalighat, Calcutta, c.1880,

watercolour on paper, laid on card, inscribed in Tamil below. Provenance: Sotheby's London, 6th November 1976; Private Collection, Germany. Kalighat paintings were produced by local artists on cheap paper for sale to pigrims at the Kalighat temple, Calcutta. They were first appreciated by Europeans in 1917 when Rudyard Kipling presented the Victoria and Albert Museum with a set collected by his father, Lockwood Kipling. their graphic quality, fluent lines and bold colours have since strongly influenced contemporary art in India and also the west. They depicted a wide variety of themes, religious and secular, even contemporary events.