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Common men, uncommon portraits

On occasions of this kind (formal meetings with visitors), it is customary for the Indian nobles to bring the artist attached to the court to take the portraits of those present; the painter of (Maharaja) Shere Singh was therefore incessantly occupied in sketching with a black lead pencil those likenesses which were afterwards to be copied in water colours, in order that they adorn the walls of the royal palace, and some of these were admirably executed.

Common men, uncommon portraits

(From left) Portrait of a Pandit; uninscribed; A portrait inscribed with the name: “Deep Singh”; An uninscribed portrait, possibly of a performer. Patiala, mid-19th century. All images come from the same private collection



B.N. Goswamy

On occasions of this kind (formal meetings with visitors), it is customary for the Indian nobles to bring the artist attached to the court to take the portraits of those present; the painter of (Maharaja) Shere Singh was therefore incessantly occupied in sketching with a black lead pencil those likenesses which were afterwards to be copied in water colours, in order that they adorn the walls of the royal palace, and some of these were admirably executed. I was among the honoured few and the artist was very particular in making a faithful representation of my uniform, my hat and feathers.

— Leopold von Orlich

German visitor to the court of 

Maharaja Sher Singh at Lahore, 1843

Of great interest as this brief notice of painting in the Punjab is, what I am writing here is neither about artists working for a royal patron in Lahore, nor about high-ranking visitors, nor even about portraits that might have been meant for royal walls. It is about an obscure group of portraits of people of no rank, none whatever; people who might never even have been anywhere close to a royal court. Even as paintings they are virtually unknown,despite my having written about the likes of these before for a ‘learned journal’. But they are works of extraordinary warmth and sensitivity: compelling in their quality.

When I chanced upon them years ago at Patiala, these portraits, as a group, were in private hands, owned by a gentleman who claimed to have descended from a family of artists that used to work at Patiala, having migrated to that kingly town from the Alwar-Jaipur region of Rajasthan. They were lying in an unkempt pile of sheets of varying sizes, stacked in utter disarray: sad reminders of a collection. Some of them were stuck to each other; others were water-stained or bore traces of mildew; nearly all of them were frayed at the edges. The pile contained a miscellany of images: some copies of figures taken from European fashion magazines; some designs for elaborately carved furniture; some sketches from a Ragamala series and studies of animals. However, what caught my eye — and I photographed — were some leaves bearing small portrait studies, sometimes two or three on a page, with an occasional scrawled inscription in a corner, identifying the figure/s. They varied from very small heads, seen from a distance as it were, to full faces seen, intently, from close; some of them featured carefully observed details of dresses worn, others paid little or no attention to apparel and concentrated only upon the faces. There were no signatures; nothing indicated who had painted them. What struck me instantly, however, was, on the one hand, the intensity with which everything had been observed, and, on the other, that these were renderings of common men, no royalty or nobility figuring in the group at all. I could not easily think of anything of this order that I had seen in any collection, elsewhere.

There were, obviously, questions these portraits posed. They could possibly not have been commissioned works, the figures being those of people of evidently few or no means. Were these, then, ‘exercises’ by painters who wanted to keep their hands in trim even as they kept working for patrons of high rank on different subjects? Or was it that interest in the men whose portraits these were came from the intrinsic nature of the artists themselves, or the closeness they might naturally have felt to the people who they mingled with, knew from the inside, as it were? There are no easy answers to these questions. And, in the absence of these, one turns naturally to the works themselves. For, as I have said before, they are compelling.

On a small sheet of paper there is thus this image of a seated man, identified by an inscription as “Deep Singh”. There is no indication of who Deep Singh was or what he did: perhaps he lived in the house next to that of the painter. There is no colour in the sketch. The painter renders him simply, the upper part of his body bare, the lower clad in a dhoti. Deep Singh sits, hands clasped and resting in the lap, body inclined slightly forward. The turbaned head is singularly well rendered: broad forehead, deep-set, slightly tired, eyes, small ears, lips firmly pressed together, neatly tied beard with a parting at the chin. It is a thoughtful face that we see: serious but not grave, kind in some ways, informed by an awareness of the world he is part of. Even in a state of near undress, there is a great measure of dignity that the figure is invested with. Suddenly, one feels that, with warmth, one has moved close to the man.

There is a portrait of Deda Mal ‘bania’, with his long curly hair peeping out at the back of the head under the turban: outwardly unkempt but with a sharp mind, as one can judge from the look of great shrewdness in the eyes. On the other hand, close to it, there is the portrait of an unidentified young man, barely out of his teens and seemingly as yet unaware of the world. His coarse, rustic apparel apart, something about his face is touchingly simple. There is no lack of intelligence in the face, just a tremulous lack of experience. The look in the eyes, however, remains steady and the expression calm. The unnamed Pandit, whom we see in another portrait, is someone the painter might have met at the temple every day, and sought counsel from. The man is gently viewed. In his face there are all the familiar signs of advancing age, of course, but also of gravity, and wisdom. One cannot, at the same time, escape the feeling that the man is, at this moment, somewhat troubled, for shades of anxiety, uncertainty, hover over the face.

This is the way it goes in this extraordinary but neglected group of portraits: farmers, devotees, performers, small-time craftsmen, boys at the threshold of youth, men who have grown old dealing with the world. There is no fancy finishing in them, no frills of any kind. But in them there is warmth and honesty and remarkable penetration of character. Contemplating them is, at least for me, like moving into a zone where one can sense a whiff of fresh air brush past one’s cheeks, feel honest grit between the toes, smell the fragrance of the earth.

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