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Figure
Unknown - Enlarge image
Figure
- Place of origin:
Delhi, India (probably, made)
- Date:
ca. 1830 (made)
- Artist/Maker:
Unknown (production)
- Materials and Techniques:
Carved ivory, with traces of gold and pigment
- Museum number:
IS.60-1998
- Gallery location:
In Storage
Although the name of the first Sikh maharaja of the Panjab, Ranjit Singh (1780–1839), was very well known in northern India during his reign, few outside the Panjab would have known what he looked like. Lacking any portrait miniature from which to copy a likeness, the carver of this ivory statuette (who was probably working in Delhi, a major centre of the craft), gave the maharaja the majestic appearance and jewellery of a Mughal emperor. In reality Ranjit Singh was renowned for his simple dress and plain features, bearing the ravages of childhood smallpox, which had permanently scarred his skin. It also left him blind in one eye, a detail that the carver has incorporated. The statuette is similar to a ‘portrait’ of the maharaja in an illustrated copy of the ‘Tazkirat ul-’umara’ (‘Historical notices of princely families [of Rajasthan and the Punjab’]) by Colonel James Skinner of about 1830, suggesting that the carver used this as his model.
