This paper attempts to trace the genealogy of the kind of feminine images that have become the stock-type for today's 'calendar' pictures to the intervention of the first mass-produced lithographs and oleographs in India's popular art market in the late 19th century. Both the images and hte discourses that invest them with their particular values are seen to have their origins in some critical breaks in techniques, perception and thought in colonial India. The study focuses on the specific historical conjuncture of the late 19th century, when the disjunction with 'tradition' and the encounter with 'modernity' assumed a sharp edge in all cultural representations, and the precursors of modern 'bazaar' images emerged as a dominant and standardised mass-art form.