Baby Krishna Asking for Butter from Yashoda, from a Kalighat album

The painting depicts the Hindu deity Krishna as a child, shown in the act of asking his foster mother Yashoda for butter, a beloved narrative from the early life of Krishna in Vaishnava tradition. The scene belongs to a popular cycle of "butter thief" (Makhan Chor) stories in which the mischievous infant raids pots of butter and curds, an episode used to evoke Krishna's playful, endearing nature and his divine charm.

Produced in Kolkata in 1896 as part of a Kalighat album, the work adapts this devotional subject into the bold, simplified visual language associated with Kalighat painting, a nineteenth-century Bengali folk style that often treated religious themes in an accessible, everyday manner. The subject reflects the widespread popularity of Krishna imagery in late-nineteenth-century Bengal, where domestic devotional narratives circulated widely through inexpensive painted albums intended for a broad audience.