Add Or 2409

Portrait miniature of Henry Lawrence, half-length, full face, with beard. He wears a black coat, blue waist-coat with watch-chain, white shirt and black neck-cloth. c.1847.

Water-colour on ivory; 4.25 by 3.25 ins. Mounted in velvet-lined leather case.

Purchased from Mrs R. Vandeleur, great-niece of Sir Herbert Edwardes, 26 October 1954.

Note: Henry Lawrence (1806-57) went to India in the Bengal Artillery in 1823. Served in First Burma War 1826; invalided home 1827-29; Revenue Survey North Western Provinces 1833-38; First Afghan War 1840; Assistant to Agent of Governor-General, Kabul 1842; Resident in Nepal 1843-46; First Sikh War, Agent to Governor-General and Resident at Lahore 1847; leave and K.C.B. 1848; Siege of Multan and battle of Chilianwala 1849; President of Board of Administration of Punjab 1849-53; Agent toGovernor-General in Rajputana 1854-57; Agent to Governor-General in Oudh 1857. Killed at Lucknow during the Mutiny.

The present miniature came from the collection of Sir Herbert Edwardes who may have received it from Henry Lawrence when they were together at Lahore in 1847. We can infer that it was made in India at about that time since on arrival in England on leave in 1848 Lawrence had already shaved his beard. In her journal for March 1848, when Lawrence arrived home from the Punjab, Honoria Lawrence wrote, ‘He looked very worn and weary, the lines in his dear face deeper than ever, and his cheeks looked thinner for want of the beard he had worn for nine years’ (see Mss Eur F85, H.L.Misc.). Although Lawrence grew his beard again after returning to India, the miniature could hardly have been painted then since an engraving was made from it in 1850 for Sir Herbert Edwardes, ‘A Year on the Punjab frontier, 1848-49’ (London, 1851), i, frontispiece. This engraving is lettered: ‘S. Freeman pt. From an original miniature by a native artist.’ The star of the K.C.B. which Lawrence was given in 1848 does not appear in the miniature but has been added in the engraving.

The National Portrait Gallery possesses a similar miniature, though not as minutely finished as the present portrait. The Gallery received a letter in 1887 from a Mr A. Constable, resident in Lucknow, who said that when in Delhi, a miniature painter, Ismail Khan, told him that his grandfather, Ghulam Khan, had painted Sir Henry Lawrence in 1853 and subsequently painted replicas. It is possible that another miniature was painted in that year, but it is equally possible that Ismail Khan was vague about the date, and that the miniatures in the India Office Library and the National Portrait Gallery may both have been made at an earlier date, i.e. c.1847. Although Ghulam Khan’s full name was not cited, it is likely that it was Ghulam Husain Khan, son of Ghulam Murtaza Khan, who was active in Delhi from about 1830 to 1860. For an account of Ghulam Husain Khan (c.1790-1868), see Archer (1955), 69-71.