Tramlines: A Twelve-Painting Oil Series on Kolkata's Tram Heritage with Jury Display and Artist Statement

Tramlines is a BFA final display project: a thematic series of twelve oil paintings that follows Kolkata's trams through one working day — from the first car leaving the shed before sunrise to the night shed where the fleet is serviced. Kolkata runs the oldest operating tram network in Asia and the only one left in India. Its green-and-cream cars, wooden seats and crossing bell have survived while the network itself has been curtailed route by route, which makes painting it now an act of documented witness rather than nostalgia.

The series is built like a research-led studio project, not a set of postcard views. It begins with reading the network's history — the horse-drawn origins, the Calcutta Tramways Company era, the merger into the West Bengal Transport Corporation — and with on-site documentation: riding the working routes with a sketchbook, photographing from inside the tram, and visiting the Smaranika tram museum and a depot with institutional permission. Field sketches and small oil studies then feed twelve canvases governed by strict serial rules: a shared palette anchored on the oxide green of the tram body, passenger eye-level, and a trace of the tram — track, wire, car or bell — in every frame.

The project closes with the standard display deliverables: colour-checked documentation of all twelve works, a catalogue with plate details, a written artist statement, a display plan and the final jury display with viva.

Kolkata's tram network is shrinking in public view. Routes have been curtailed and withdrawn over the years until only a small handful remain, and every reduction removes a working piece of the city's oldest public transport. The knowledge held by depots, conductors and night-shift fitters — and the daily scene of the tram in traffic — is almost absent from visual records, because popular images treat the tram as nostalgia rather than as a living system still carrying passengers.

For a painting student, the problem is: how can a research-led series of oil paintings record the working tram network while it still runs — its cars, sheds, staff and passengers — with the seriousness of documentation and the language of paint, and hold together as one twelve-work body rather than a set of separate cityscapes? The project answers with a day-long narrative structure, strict serial rules and professional documentation, so the series stands both as evidence and as painting, and can be defended before a jury on both counts.

Abstract

Tramlines is a series of twelve oil paintings documenting Kolkata's tram network as it works today — cars, depots, tracks, wires, staff and passengers — arranged as the arc of a single operating day. The project combines archival research, on-site drawing and photography, systematic colour studies and a disciplined serial technique, and closes with documentation, catalogue, artist statement, display plan and jury display.

Introduction

Kolkata's trams began as horse-drawn cars in 1873 and were electrified in the early twentieth century under the Calcutta Tramways Company; the network is now run by the West Bengal Transport Corporation and is the only urban tram system still operating in India — and the oldest working one in Asia. Over recent decades the network has been curtailed route by route, and each cut removes not just a service but a shared public scene: the bell at the crossing, the conductor's ticket punch, the lit shed at dawn. As a painting student who commutes across the city, I see the tram as the one public space where Kolkata still moves at the speed of conversation.

Existing practice and the gap

• The tram appears mostly in nostalgia imagery — calendar prints, heritage postcards, sepia photographs of a vanished past — or as a backdrop in cityscapes.
• Student projects often paint a single picturesque car without documenting the working system: the depot, the maintenance shed, the staff, the timetable.
• Such images mourn a museum object; they rarely record a living network in what may be its last working years.
• Limitation: almost nothing at student scale treats the tram as a serial, research-led subject — a body of work with rules, evidence and documentation behind every canvas.

Proposed work

• A twelve-painting narrative: one operating day, from the first car out of the shed to the night shed, with interiors, passengers and depot work in between.
• A research base: network history read from books and archives, the Smaranika tram museum, depot access through the institution's permission letter, and travel-and-sketch sessions on the working routes.
• Serial discipline: a fixed palette anchored on the oxide green of the tram body, passenger eye-level throughout, a tram trace in every painting, and two larger bookend canvases opening and closing the day.
• Professional documentation: colour-checked photography, a catalogue with plate details, artist statement and display plan.

Feasibility

• Practical: the working termini and depots (Esplanade, Tollygunge, Gariahat, Nonapukur, Rajabagan, Belgachhia) are reachable by ordinary transport; sketching needs a small kit.
• Material: oil on pre-primed canvas with a limited palette fits a student budget, and oil's drying time suits a twenty-week schedule worked in batches of four.
• Access: the depot visit is requested through a formal permission letter from the college; travel documentation uses only public routes and fare-paying journeys.
• Time: twenty weeks with fortnightly critiques; batch production keeps the studio load even and leaves room for rework.

In scope

• Twelve finished oil paintings: ten at 61 × 91 cm and two bookend works at 91 × 122 cm, on pre-primed canvas.
• Research and process evidence: sketchbook, field photographs, tonal and colour studies, research notes, palette and layering tests.
• Documentation set: colour-checked photographs of every work, a catalogue with plate details, artist statement, labels and a display plan.
• Final display with jury viva and the process portfolio.

Out of scope

• Printmaking, sculpture, installation or video components.
• Painting from archive photographs alone — every canvas grows from on-site studies and observation.
• Individual portraiture of staff — people appear as passengers and workers within scenes, with no private individual identified.
• Sale, pricing or editioning of works, and any repainting or restoration of actual tram cars.

The project follows a practice-based studio method: research, access and fieldwork, studies, batch painting with critiques, documentation and display, across twenty weeks.

Critique and testing: each batch is reviewed against the series rules before the next begins; a canvas that breaks the rules is reworked, not replaced. Safety: odourless mineral spirits only, cross-ventilation in the studio, rags stored in a closed metal tin, and drying times recorded for every layer.

For a painting series the "architecture" is the pipeline from research to hung display, and the serial rules that hold twelve canvases together. The first diagram shows the studio pipeline as it appears in the process portfolio; the second shows the path every single canvas follows inside the studio.

flowchart TD
  A["Research: network history, museum visit, painters of the city"] --> B["Access: institutional permission letter for depot visit"]
  B --> C["Fieldwork: travel-and-sketch on working routes, photographs from the tram"]
  C --> D["Study bank: tonal studies, small oil studies, palette tests"]
  D --> E{"Series rules agreed at critique?"}
  E -- "No — revise palette and compositions" --> D
  E -- "Yes" --> F["Batch 1: four canvases"]
  F --> G["Mid-series critique"]
  G --> H["Batch 2: four canvases"]
  H --> I["Batch 3: four canvases"]
  I --> J["Documentation: colour-checked photographs, catalogue, statement"]
  J --> K["Framing, labels, display plan"]
  K --> L["Final display and jury viva"]

flowchart LR
  C1["Compositional thumbnail from sketchbook"] --> C2["Cartoon and underdrawing on canvas"]
  C2 --> C3["Underpainting: tonal block-in"]
  C3 --> C4["Colour passes, fat over lean"]
  C4 --> C5["Glazes and accents: oxide green body, lamp notes"]
  C5 --> C6["Drying rest, final varnish decision"]
  C6 --> C7["Colour-checked photograph for catalogue"]

Series rules: one shared palette — the oxide green and cream of the tram body mixed to a fixed recipe, wet-asphalt greys, and a warm lamp note for interiors; eye-level kept at a seated passenger's height; and a tram trace (track, wire, car, bell or shed) present in every frame so the set reads as one body of work.

• A companion series on Kolkata's heritage ferry crossings, using the same serial rules.
• An etching or linocut portfolio developed from the tram sketchbook.
• A small display of studies beside the museum car at Smaranika, with the museum's agreement.
• A printed artist-book edition of the twelve plates with the statement and field notes.
• Short hand-held video studies of tram interiors to accompany a future display.
• A residency or postgraduate application built on the catalogue, statement and documentation set.