Duleep Singh’s album fetches £22,000 in UK

London, October 1 

A collection of rare photographs of the last Maharaja of the Sikh Empire Duleep Singh went under the hammer in Britain for a whopping £22,000, 22 times higher than the expected price.

One of the albums, having 240 photos four of which are of Singh's, opens with his original picture which was taken while he was a guest of Queen Victoria at Obsorne House 1854.

It is believed that the photographer was the Queen's husband Prince Albert, a close friend of the Indian royal. C and T Auctioneers had put up the "Personal Photograph Albums of Sir John Spencer Login (1809-1863) and the Login Family" for sale at a guide price between 200 and 400 pounds.

"It was very much a surprise. We had expected the bid may go up to 1,000 pounds but in the end it was nearly 22 times.

The album was bought by a collector who knew exactly what he was buying and acquired it for a number of previously unpublished photographs of the maharaja and others," Glen Chapman of C and T Auctioneers told PTI.

The collector, believed to be of Indian descent, went head to head with another buyer at the auction in England's Kent. "It was a lot about pride and auction fever. Neither wanted to back down, which was good for us," added Chapman.

The set of four Victorian era albums have a total of 240 photographs, including the one of Duleep Singh from Osborne House, Queen Victoria's royal residence.

There is only one other known print of that which still hangs at Osborne House in the Isle of Wight, an island in the English Channel. Some images were taken at Castle Menzies, which the Login family had leased for Maharajah Duleep Singh, and one of the photos in the album shows him with the Login family at the castle. — PTI