On July 6, 1924, visitors to the British Empire Exhibition at Wembley, London, were mesmerised by the quick sculpting skills of an unassuming man who could mould miniature figures out of clay seemingly within seconds. Sitting in a small corner at the Bengal Court of the India pavilion, the man drew the attention of the Duke of Connaught — a son of Queen Victoria, and brother of King George V, then the Emperor of India — who was visiting the exhibition with other members of the Royal family and dazzled him by sculpting the Duke’s likeness in clay in less than five minutes. The next morning, the news made headlines on The Daily Telegraph which reported: “Lightning Sculptor: A Genius from Bengal Exhibits His Skill at Wembley”.
His name was Gopeswar Paul. He was the only Indian clay sculptor invited to take part in the exhibition. Born in the early 1890s to a family of idol-makers in Ghurni — a village near Krishnanagar in the Nadia district — Gopeswar was honoured with a gold medal and many other recognitions at the exhibition. The Royal family and the organisers issued him with a certificate and offered to arrange for his travel and accommodation so he could show his work in cities across Europe. However, Paul chose to remain in London instead, where he studied the details of stone carvings, paintings, and sculptures of human figures in the classical European styles at the museums, and observed the forms and movements of the many exotic animals at the London Zoo with meticulous attention.
After spending several months in London, he travelled to Italy where he formally studied the craft of sculpting with marble and stone. When he finally returned to India, his knowledge and understanding of sculpting was matchless among his peers. Upon his return, he bought a plot of land in Kumartuli — Kolkata’s clay-crafts neighbourhood — and opened a modern studio at the site. Modelled after the European studios he had visited in Italy and equipped with all possible facilities of the era, the studio became the base of his pursuit for attaining anatomical perfection in his figure-work. Meanwhile, he continued to receive commissions to make busts and statues for many rich and royal families in India and Europe.
The trend of ‘Sarbojonin’ or Community Durga Pujas had started in Kolkata in 1918, and the number of such community pujas had grown exponentially in the following decades. By the 1930s, community pujas were the dominant form of Durga Puja in the city. During this period, the idols worshipped in these pujas followed one of two styles: Kangshanarayani and Bishnupuri. Although distinct from each other, both styles featured vibrant, colourful, arched backdrops known as ‘Chalchitra’. All the idols — the Goddess Durga herself; her sons Ganesh and Kartik; her daughters Lakshmi and Sarswati; her mount, the mighty lion; and her nemesis, the buffalo-headed Mahishasura — were placed in one cluster in front of the same backdrop.
An idol-maker unlike any other, Paul moved away from these traditional one-cluster styles of idol-making when he was commissioned by organisers of Kumartuli Sarbojonin, one of the oldest community Durga Pujas in Kolkata, to make a Durga idol in 1932 or ’33. Charging 3,000 Rupees for the project — an unimaginable sum at the time — Paul broke all conventions of idol-making and created a new form that would soon become the norm.
Rather than positioning all figures in a single cluster in front of the same backdrop, Paul’s design divided them into five parts — each featuring one deity with their own backdrop. Additionally, he departed from the traditional ‘sabeki’ visage of the Goddess Durga, with large, oversized eyes and bright yellow "basonti" complexion, and sculpted her face to resemble that of an ordinary human being. He also gave the idols of Lakshmi and Saraswati noticeably younger and more playful appearances, making it obvious that they were supposed to be the daughters of Durga.
Gopeswar Paul died in 1944, in his mid-60s, but he left behind his studio and an unmatched body of work. During his career, he sculpted several notable idols and statues — like the Kali idol in New Delhi Kalibari; the statue of Ramakrishna in Belur Math; and the statue of 19th century Bengali industrialist R.N. Mukherjee in the garden of Victoria Memorial Hall — which cemented his legacy as a fully-evolved and erudite artist who transformed how Indians imagined gods and goddesses. His studio — named G. Paul & Sons: Modellers and Sculptors — at 40A Kashi Mitra Ghat Street is now a museum run by members of the Paul family.
You can visit the studio — declared a Grade 1 heritage building by Kolkata Metropolitan Corporation — here.
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