Dalip Singh (1838-1893)
Maharaja of the Punjab (1843-49)

By a Punjab artist, circa 1845

Gouache on paper with gold

247 by 147 mm. including borders

The boy ruler of the Punjab is seated on a cushion covered with carpets, while his attendant waves a chowrie, under an awning. The maharaja wears a choker of pearls, a necklace of huge uncut emeralds and hooped earrings with three further such emeralds, and a sarpech or turban ornament studded again with huge emeralds. For exactly the same jewels worn by Maharaja Dalip Singh in a contemporary portrait of Dalip Singh in the British Library, see Stronge, fig. 19.

Dalip Singh was born in 1838, the youngest son of Maharaja Ranjit Singh (d. 1839) who had established a Sikh empire over most of what is now Pakistan as well as Kashmir, the Punjab and Punjab Hills. He came to the throne of Lahore after his uncle Maharaja Sher Singh and his son and heir Pratap Singh had been brutally murdered in 1843. He was guided from 1843 first by his father’s favourite Hira Singh, and then, after his murder at the end of 1844, for a brief period by the eldest of the Dogra brothers Gulab Singh. The attendant holding the chowrie and cloth of royalty may from his appearance possibly be one of the younger relatives of the three Dogra brothers (Gulab, Dhyan and Suchet Singh).

The artist has modified the stiff Sikh style derived from Kangra artists in favour of a looser and more naturalistic style. Clothes are more naturalistically draped, especially on the standing figure, while the delicate treatment of eyes, faces and hair is especially successful. This newer style was first introduced into Punjab painting with successive foreign artistic visitors such as Godfrey Vigne (1837), Emily Eden(1838), and the Austrian painter August Schoefft (1841). A contemporaneous painting of Gulab Singh with his two elder sons in this new style is in the Victoria & Albert Museum (Archer 1966, fig.55).

Provenance

French private collection

References

Eden, Emily, Portraits of the Princes and People of India, London, 1844
Eden, Emily, ‘Up the Country’: Letters written to her Sister from the Upper Provinces of India, ed. E. J. Thompson, London, 1930
Archer, W.G., Painting of the Sikhs, London, 1966; Archer, M., Company Drawings in the India Office Library, London, 1972
Aijazuddin, F. S., Pahari Paintings and Sikh Portraits in the Lahore Museum, London, 1977
Stronge, S., ed., The Arts of the Sikh Kingdoms, V & A., London, 1999