Add Or 5575

Maharaja Sher Singh of the Punjab (reg. 1841-43) and his son Partap Singh (1831-43) riding on elephants with royal umbrellas, in a procession with his court and retainers. In the background is the Guru Granth Saheb being carried on an elephant with an attendant waving a flywhisk, and the Maharaja’s English carriage and a cannon.

By a Punjab artist, Lahore, c.1850.

Opaque watercolour, heightened with gold and silver; 665 by 745 mm.

Exhibited: ‘The Arts of the Sikh Kingdoms’ (ex-catalogue) Toronto and San Francisco, 1999-2000.

Purchased 2004.

A comparable painting is in the Sheesh Mahal Museum at Patiala (S. Stronge, ‘Arts of the Sikh Kingdoms’, London, 1999, pl. 200).

Note: Sher Singh is unmistakeable, but the identity of the companion young bearded prince is slightly problematical. Sher Singh’s beloved son Partab Singh was only 12 at his death in 1843. The portrait does in fact resemble in its young beard and type of clothes others portraits done around 1840 of Raja Hira Singh son of Dhyan Singh, the young companion of Ranjit Singh (e.g. ‘Ranjit Singh honouring Devi’, National Museum of India, 72.313, Stronge 1999, pl. 124; and a drawing in the Lahore Museum published in F.S. Aijazuddin, ‘Pahari Paintings and Sikh Portraits in the Lahore Museum’, 1977, Sikh 6). Both Sher Singh and this young prince wear orange garments printed with gold sprigs, similar to Hira Singh’s portrait in the National Museum painting, and to the garments of the Sikh Council in the painting marking the Treaty of Bhairowal of 1846 (British Museum, published Stronge 1999, pl. 18). Hira Singh, however, was not a Sikh prince nor a favourite with Sher Singh during his brief reign. So if it cannot be Hira Singh, it must be meant to be the prince Partap Singh, which in turn must mean, since the figure is too old, that the painting was executed some time after the latter’s death. Various visitors to the Sikh court commented favourably on the charming young Partap Singh (e.g. W.G. Osborne, Emily Eden), and there is a portrait of him in Eden’s ‘Portraits of the Princes and People of India,’1844, pl. 19). Identifiable figures in the howdah of the third elephant are the generals Sham Singh Atariwala and Tej Singh Bahadur, and in that of the fourth, Raja Dhian Singh, Sher Singh’s supporter and Wazir. Sher Singh and his son Partap Singh as well as Dhian Singh were murdered by the Sindhanwalias on 15 September 1843, when Dalip Singh was placed on the throne.

Processional scenes of the 19th century often include the various conveyances used by or given to the ruler. The carriage here is perhaps that presented with four mares by the British Government to Ranjit Singh by Captain Alexander Burnes in Lahore on 18 July 1831 along with a letter from King William IV (Lala Sohan Lal Suri, ‘Umdat ut-Tawarikh’, tr. V.S. Suri, Delhi, 1961, pp. 63-65). The cannon is possibly one of the two presented to Ranjit Singh by Lord William Cavendish Bentinck at their meeting in Rupar on 31 October 1831, each drawn by six horses (Suri, pp. 100-01), although there is no mention of cannon in the official list of gifts submitted to London which contains only guns and pistols, besides the usual pieces of cloth. Two howitzers were similarly presented by Lord Auckland on 30 November 1838 (‘ibid.’, p. 567). The artillerymen servicing the cannon all wear the blue uniforms seen in the ‘Arts of the Sikh Kingdoms’, fig. 165, and confirmed in prints after H. Martens of the battles of the 1st Sikh War of 1846, except that in the latter the blue turban is taller and turned almost into a shako. Other troops wear the red jackets with blue trousers and turbans of the Sikh infantry. The horsemen protecting the Guru Granth Saheb wear blue jackets and turbans and white trousers, with a yellow scarf round their waists. Sher Singh’s personal guard in the main body of the painting wear crimson and red.

The Guru Granth Saheb is conveyed in a howdah on an elephant in the back right of the picture, with a man with a flywhisk, unlike the comparable scene in the Patiala picture where it is in a canopied umaree and proceeds the Maharaja.

The Patiala picture is extremely sensitively rendered throughout in a late Mughal style, filtered perhaps through Pahari influence, with the most careful attention paid to the modelling of individual features. Our picture is similarly sensitively rendered with regard to the main figures, the elephants and their trappings, and the adjacent horsemen, although the modelling is much harder, but less so in the more outlying portions. The undifferentiated green landscape and the areas round the carriage, cannon etc. in the background suggest even the hand of a different artist.