An album of fifty figural paintings circa 1870s-1890s, Northern India

comprising fifty portraits of the people of India, including Sikh rulers' Maharajah Sher Singh and Maharajah Runjeet Singh and his consort, Maharanee Jind Kaur, tradespeople, sepoys, entertainers, and religious figures, all with English identifying inscriptions in pen in lower margins, twenty-five sheets of watermarked paper, margin rules in gold, red and blue, opaque pigments on paper heightened with gold, in a contemporary binding, English identifying inscriptions in pen in lower margins, margin rules in gold, red and blue, opaque pigments on paper heightened with gold, in a contemporary binding, image 15 x 26.5cm; album 20 x 32cm, Purchased in Portobello Road Market, London, circa 1999. Comprising in order:, A dhobee and his wife; Maharani Jind Kaur; A nauch girl and her musicians; A man wrestling with a bear; Two carpenters at work; A sepoy drummer and a native rifleman; Two sepoys of the native infantry; A woman churning butter; with a cow and calf; Maharajah Runjeet Singh and Maharajah Sher Singh; A Persian(?) wheel for saving water; Two butchers dressing a goat; Rangrez (cloth dyeing) Two Chuniyas; A snake charmer and his attendant; A moochee and his wife making shoes; A watercarrier with an ox; Two huntsmen and their greyhounds; Hakeem attending a sick man; An acrobat and a drummer; A distiller; An oil presser; A water dispenser; Two fakirs; An archer and carrier; Two armourers; An acrobat and a drummer; Two nobles seated; Coppersmiths at work; An Akali and his wife; Women carrying produce; An Akali and his wife and child; A man and his wife with a loaded mule; Two musical fakirs; Two fakirs cutting ritual; A bunia cotton dealer; A vegetable seller; A sonar and goldsmith; Weavers; Cotton carders; Furniture Makers; Wazir Akbar Khan and Amir Dost Mohammed Khan of Kabul; Fakirs with rattles; Men spinning cotton; A barber; An entertainer with monkeys and goat; Toolaha couple; Couple preparing dabka(?); A woman serving fruit; An entertainer; A woman spinning cotton. For similar albums, almost all with a standard of sixty paintings, see: Royal Ontario Museum, accession number 2006.71.1.52; Bonhams: ‘Islamic and Indian Art Online’ 12 June 2025, lot 263; 'Islamic and Indian Art', 30 April 2019, lot 212; 26 October 2020, lot 268; 30 March 2021, lot 124; 25 October 2021, lot 334 and ‘India in Art’, 7 June 2023, lot 54. The present album belongs to the later 19th-century pictorial tradition associated with the Punjab and Lahore Schools, whose main aim was to record the visual culture and history of the Sikh kingdom. It includes portraits of Maharaja Ranjit Singh (1780-1839), founder of the Sikh Empire, who consolidated the Sikh misls and established Lahore as the capital of a powerful Sikh state; Maharaja Sher Singh (1807-1843), his son and successor; and Maharani Jind Kaur (1817-1863), his youngest wife and the mother of Maharaja Duleep Singh (1838-1893). Jind Kaur served as regent for her young son, Duleep Singh, during the final years of the Sikh monarchy. Following Ranjit Singh's death and the British annexation of Punjab in 1849, portraits of this kind acquired a new significance, becoming emblems of the former Sikh kingdom, and continued to be reproduced long after as a visual representation of Sikh history. The portraits of Sikh rulers are presented alongside depictions of anonymous tradespeople, sepoys, entertainers and religious figures, reflecting the typical 19th-century ethnographic and topographical interest in recording and commemorating the people, institutions and history of Punjab. Mildred Archer notes that handwritten inscriptions on such albums suggest their popularity and circulation among a British audience. A specific album in the British Library bears the inscription, 'All the sahibs take it to show in England' (Archer, 'Company Drawings in the India Office Library', London, 1972, p. 209). A notable collector of such material was Maharaja Duleep Singh's guardian, Sir John Login. In his letters, Login describes how 'the little Maharaja' collected drawings and paintings by 'his best painters', noting that they represented 'domestic life in the Punjab, and various trades and professions', as well as 'authentic likenesses of great chiefs and men of note'. In 1977, Jean-Marie Lafont reported the rediscovery in France of two collections of paintings made in Lahore between 1825 and 1845 by painter Imam Bakhsh Lahori for French officers in the service of Maharaja Ranjit Singh. One of these comprised a series of miniature paintings illustrating the Memoirs of General Claude-Auguste Court, including portraits of prominent figures of the Sikh kingdom. The figures and compositions bear similarities to those in the present lot, particularly in their presentation against a blank background - a few only with cast shadows grounding the figures in space. Of relevance are figures 8.10 and 8.6, depicting a female spinner and a weaver at work, alongside representations of Sikh and Gurkha soldiers of the Fauj-i-Khas, whose attire and compositional arrangement appear to be closely comparable to the present lot. (Jean-Marie Lafont, 'Arts and Culture in the Punjab Kingdom and the Sikh States', within 'Sikh Art from the Kapany Collection', ed. Paul Michael Taylor and Sonia Dhami, Roli Books/The Sikh Foundation International, New Delhi, 2021, pp.146-150). Rather than functioning solely as courtly or devotional imagery, albums of this type served as portable visual records of Sikh history and contemporary Punjabi society. Their combination of historical portraits with ethnographic and occupational subjects reflects the continuing Lahore tradition of portraiture and documentary observation, while also responding to the collecting interests of the colonial period. misls, Fauj-i-Khas, Condition Report, Condition Report, This lot does not have a condition report, if you would like further information, please click the 'Request A Condition Report’ button below. Request A Condition Report, Request A Condition Report

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