Calcutta Art Studio has the remarkable distinction of pioneering lithography in Bengal an is the oldest operational printing press in India

In the initial stages (circa 1890) the press was actually a studio where people would come to have their portraits painted and then printed as oleographs. This meant that after the painting was done, the drawing would be reproduced as etched grooves on a special kind of limestone. The grooves would be filled with coloured inks according to the painting. Then it would be run on the press to produce the oleographs in multiple numbers - a technology that was high-skilled and very labour intensive.

Famous personalities visited Calcutta Art Studio to get their portraits printed: theatre actors, politicians, zamindars, and even great men like Swami Vivekananda and Shri Ramkrishna Paramangsha. Calcutta Art Studio printed pictures of eminent characters like Dwarakanath Tagore, Keshab Sen, Raja Ram Mohan Roy and Bankimchandra to name only a few. The studio developed its own distinctive art style and associated itself with Indian Nationalism (Swadeshi) through its artwork. There would be orders too for scenes from the epics particularly Ramayana and Mahabharata as well as gods and goddesses.