Shantanu and Ganga

Album of popular prints mounted on cloth pages. Colour lithograph, lettered, inscribed and numbered 19. Santanu, a king of Hastinapura in the Mahabharata, saw a beautiful woman on the banks of the river Ganga and asked her to marry him. Santanu and Ganga are the parents of Bhishma, one of the five Pandava brothers instrumental in the Mahabharata war.

The Chore Bagan studio produced popular prints for the mass market comparable to those being created at the larger Calcutta Art Studio. Lithography was gaining momentum as a medium for picture production in the 1870s, and the Chore Bagan studio, located in Bhoobun Bannerjee’s Lane, Calcutta, was active in the 1880s and 1890s.