"The paintings of the workshops around the great Kali temple of Calcutta and from elsewhere in Bengal brilliantly combine economy of means with maximised expression, to suit a mass market in competition with printed devotional pictures. They seem to prefigure the art of Matisse, Modigliani and Leger. They are generally placed within the range of about 1850 to 1920, but the only internal evidence for dating is reference to a crime of passion which hit the headlines in 1873. It may be possible, however, to provide a more precise scheme of development."