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Portrait of Raja Ugar Sen of Suket (1838-76) with courtiers and attendants seated in a palace. Ugar Sen is smoking a hookah, while four seated men appear to be engaged in discussion. The Raja and one of those seated wear Sikh costume, with a loose flowing turban. Behind the Raja, a hawk sits on the edge of an arcaded balcony through which the green valley below is seen. Some of the details of the painting are unfinished.

By a Pahari/Suket artist, 1845-50.

Inscribed above the raja: ‘2 pattra’ ?

Opaque water-colour; 252 by 393 mm; laid down on an album page with splashed gold 380 by 503 mm.

Published: ; A. Topsfield, ‘Paintings from the Rajput Courts’, Indar Pasricha Fine Arts, London, 1986, no. 28.

Purchased 2002.

For another portrait of Ugar Sen seated with three courtiers, see Sotheby's London 9 October 1978, lot 337.

Note: Raja Ugar Sen, son of Bikram Sen, ruled Suket from 1838 to 1876. He was a scholar of Sanskrit, and was fond of music. Because Ugar Sen was perpetually at odds with his son and heir, Rudar Sen, he shifted his court first to the neighbouring state of Mandi, and later to Bilaspur. This was a time of increasing Sikh influence in the hills, fomented in Suket by the Raja’s cousin Mian Narendra Singh, whose daughter was married to Sher Singh of the Punjab (1841-43). In 1840 the Sikhs invaded Suket, but were eventually expelled in 1846 in the First Anglo-Sikh war, and Suket thereafter accepted British rule. For a similar portrait of Ugar Sen in the same palace setting, see Sotheby’s 9 October 1978, lot 337.

Bibliography: F.S. Aijazuddin, ‘Pahari Paintings and Sikh Portraits in the Lahore Museum,’ 1977, pp. 76-77, Suket no. 5; and W.G. Archer, ‘Indian Paintings from the Punjab Hills’, 1973, pp. 420-24.