The Chief minister (wazir) of the Sikh Kingdom, Raja Lal Singh, holding a Hawk, with the city of Lahore seen behind him, by the Austrian painter at the Lahore Court, Augustus Theodor Schoefft

Lahore, circa 1841

Footnotes

Provenance
Raja Lal Singh.
The Lahore Treasury.
Perhaps Maharajah Duleep Singh, and his family, from circa 1863.
Christie's, Indian Art Online: Painting the Maharaja, 18th-25th May 2017, lot 23.
Private UK Collection.

'...he was for a while almost absolute in the Punjab'.

Raja Lal Singh (d. 1866) was Wazir of the Sikh Empire and commander of the Sikh Khalsa Army during the First Anglo-Sikh War. He started life as a shopkeeper in the Jehlum District, and entered the service of the Sikh government in 1832, working as a writer in the treasury. He was patronised by the Wazirs Dhian Singh Dogra and Hira Singh Dogra. Hira gave Lal military commands, granted him the title of Rajah and numerous Jagirs at Rohtas and also appointed him tutor to Maharajah Duleep Singh. When Maharani Jind Kaur turned against Hira Singh, Lal supported the Maharani and her brother Jawahar Singh at a pivotal moment. He went on to win the Maharani's confidence and became her closest advisor and was appointed to the Council of Regency. In February 1845, he was sent to Jammu at the head of an army to negotiate with Gulab Singh. When Jawahar Singh, who had since been appointed Wazir, was assassinated by the Khalsa Army on 21 September 1845, Lal Singh was made Wazir of the Sikh Empire in his place.

During the First Anglo-Sikh War of 1845-1846, Lal Singh took personal command of the Khalsa, but alongside Tej Singh and under instruction from Maharani Jind Kaur, was secretly working with the British, sending information to and receiving orders from Captain Peter Nicholson, an officer stationed at Ferozepur. According to Alexander Gardner, who was in Lahore at this time, the Maharani, Lal, and Tej wanted to use the war as an opportunity to neutralise the growing threat of the Khalsa, who were becoming rebellious.

In the aftermath of the First Anglo-Sikh War, Lal Singh was confirmed as Wazir of the State of Lahore under Henry Lawrence. However, he fell from grace when it was discovered that he had ordered the Governor of Kashmir to thwart Gulab Singh's attempts to occupy the Vale of Kashmir, which had been granted him by the British under the Treaty of Amritsar. The British turned on Lal and he was tried by a Court of Inquiry and found guilty. He was stripped of his lands, titles and property (perhaps including this portrait) and exiled to Agra with a pension of 12,000 rupees a year. He was interviewed there by the journalist John Lang, who found that he had no complaints about his situation and had taken up archaeology and surgery as hobbies.

Hardinge cited a brief biographical sketch by a writer in the Calcutta Review:
A Brahmin of Rhotas, between the Indus and the Jhelum, Lal Singh early came, as an adventurer, to the capital to try his fortune. He brought with him, as stock in trade, an athletic person, of unusual height, even among the Sikhs, an open merry countenance, with rather a sensual expression, a bold manly bearing, great ambition, and no scruples. His first footing within the precincts of the court was in the humble capacity of assistant in the Toshak-khana or Treasury of Regalia, and a mule's load of the royal chattels was the first charge of the future Minister. Raja Dhian Singh afterwards selected him as a fit instrument to be set up in opposition to Misr Beni Ram, the head of the Toshak-khana, and he gave him a separate treasury of his own. [His closeness to Rani Jindan] has raised the object of it to the Wizarut, and all but regal power in the Punjab. Misr Lal Singh now began to have some weight in the scale of parties. He intrigued alternately with and against the Jamu Rajahs (Gulab Singh being the uncle of Hira Singh), and no sooner did his bias become consistently hostile, than his intimacy with the Rani was made an excuse for removing him from the Toshak-khana, to the control of which he had succeeded on the death of Beni Ram.
Hardinge himself adds: 'The later history of Lal Singh is well known [...] as Prime Minister and favourite of the Rani, he was for a while almost absolute in the Punjab. His power survived the defeats of the Sikh army on the banks of the Sutlej, and it was not until his intrigue with the Governor of Kashmir, in direct contravention of the Treaty of Umretsir, was discovered, that he was deposed from his authority. The late treaties made in consequence of that event are before the public. Lal Singh is now an exile in the territory of British India.' (C. S. Hardinge, Recollections of India, London, 1847, cited in W. G. Archer, Paintings of the Sikhs, London 1966, pp. 181-182).

A number of European visitors to Lal Singh in his exile left character sketches - all of them seemed to be charmed by him. The account of John Lang, the Australian journalist, of his visit in the early 1850s, appeared in Charles Dickens' journal, Household Words, in 1858:

This fallen chieftain - a tall and powerfully-built man - was no other than the renowned Rajah Lall Singh, who commanded the Seik cavalry at Ferozeshah, and who was subsequently Prime Minister at Lahore [...] Notwithstanding his previous character - that of a sensualist and faithless intriguer; one, indeed, who had not been constant even to his own villainies - I could not help liking his conversation, which was humorously enlivened with imitations of English officers with whom he had come in contact, and was entertaining to the last degree.

After 1852, and until his death in 1866, Lal Singh moved to Dehra Dun (and Mussoorie in the summer), and another writer, the American Bayard Taylor, portrayed him after meeting him in 1853:
Loll Singh [sic] means 'Red Lion' and the name well suited his stout, muscular figure, heavy beard and ruddy face. He was richly dressed in a garment of figured silk, with a Cashmere shawl around his waist, and a turban of silk and gold. Rings of gold wire, upon which pearls were strung, hung from his ears to his shoulders. His eye was large, dark and lustrous, and his smile gave an agreeable expression to a face that would otherwise have been stern and gloomy (both quoted in Davinder Toor, In Pursuit of Empire: Treasures from the Toor Collection of Sikh Art, London 2018, p. 178).

Toor (pp. 178-179) also publishes a fascinating photograph of Lal Singh, taken in around 1855-60, in which he stands four-square, dressed in silks and shawls, looking sternly at the camera, next to a table, on which rests a tulwar.

August Theodor Schoefft (1809-1888)
The son of a local portrait painter, August Theodor Schoefft was born in Budapest to German parents who had migrated to Hungary. After formal art training in Vienna he set out to travel while supporting himself with various commissions. Schoefft eventually made his way to India via Turkey, arriving at Bombay in 1838. Once in India he advertised his skills as an artist in local newspapers which led to a number of profitable commissions including painting the portrait of the last Mughal Emperor, Bahadur Shah Zafar II at Agra. A notice in the Calcutta Review (13th June 1840) said:
M. Schoefft who has resided amongst us for some months and acquired considerable reputation as an artist is, we understand on the point of quitting Calcutta on a journey to Lahore. On his way thither, M. Schoefft proposes to halt at Moorshedabad, Monghyr, Patna, Dinapore, Benares, Allahabad, Lucknow, Cawnpore, Agra, Delhi, Meerut, Kurnaul etc and will we believe be happy to be employed by the residents at the several stations in every way in which his talents can be made available. It should be stated that M. Schoefft is not merely a portrait painter. He has much skills in painting historical subjects, landscapes, costumes, etc. works astonishing quickness and is we think more reasonable in his charges than any artist who has proceeded him.

Schoefft arrived in Lahore in November 1841, during the reign of Maharaja Sher Singh. He became the guest there of Dr Martin Honigberger, who lived in Lahore from 1835 to 1850, and who was personal physician to Maharajahs Ranjit, Kharak, Sher and Duleep Singh. Schoefft spent more than a year in Sikh territories, painting various scenes and portraits of prominent Members of the Sikh Court, including the present portrait. Although many of these have now been lost, Schoefft made copies of a few for his own reference. Prince Alexis Soltykoff (who himself produced many striking images of the Sikhs) visited Lahore in March 1842 and tells of finding Schoefft's paintings in the palace treasury: 'Five or Six portraits in oils without frames, the work of Schoefft, the German painter who has returned to British India. There was also a portrait of the King covered with jewels and holding in his hand a schimitar strait and very broad at the point and a portrait of the chief minister, Raja Dhian Singh, a good-looking man, on horseback and wearing that suit of armour which I have already described. The King who admires the armour wished to be painted in it also.' (The Punjab a Hundred Years Ago as described by V. Jacquemont (1831) & A. Soltykoff (1842), ed. H. L. O. Garrett, Lahore 1935). This refers to the famous portrait of Sher Singh, in which he sits dripping with jewels and holding the sword, as Soltykoff describes - of which three versions existed: one is now in Bamba Collection, Lahore, and one in the Toor Collection (Toor, op. cit., pp. 138-141).

Sketching in Amritsar at the request of Sher Singh, in preparation for a painting of the Golden Temple, Schoefft had a narrow escape from being assaulted, and perhaps murdered, by a group of Akalis (who were notorious amongst European visitors for their violent behaviour). Even though he was a confirmed heavy smoker, Schoefft sensibly refrained from doing it anywhere near the Temple. However, it seems that some Akalis mistook the pencil he held in his mouth for a cigarette or cigar, and attacked him. He escaped only by slipping out of his jacket, and also throwing his watch to the mob. 'With his trousers flapping around his ankles (his braces had been cut through by a sword blow), the misunderstood artist managed to shake off his pursuers and take sanctuary in a nearby house. The police eventually dispersed the "robber pack" (as described by [Honigberger], and a battered and bruised Schoefft returned home in disguise under an armed escort' (Toor, p. 149).

While at Lahore Schoefft also studied and copied existing portraits by various artists of some of the principal characters of the Royal Court who had died before his arrival including Maharaja Ranjit Singh, Maharaj Kharak Singh and Raja Nau Nihal Singh and other past members of the court.
Schoefft successfully combined reality with imagination to create scenes that he had never witnessed, but which were based on elements of real scenes that he had sketched along with his imagination of events. Thus Schoefft laid the foundation work for his two most famous historical paintings of The Court of Lahore and Ranjit Singh at Darbar Sahib - almost 'widescreen' portrayals of the subjects, with a cast of thousands.
Schoefft left the Punjab in 1842 and travelled back to Europe via Afghanistan, Persia, and Egypt, spending some time in St. Petersburg, before eventually arriving home, to Vienna. Schoefft then spent several years working on these large paintings using his notes, preliminary sketches, copies of other artist's portraits - and his imagination. Once completed, these monumental works as well as some other paintings depicting the Sikh Empire were exhibited by Schoefft to the public at the Vienna Salon of 1855, to great critical acclaim.
At the time of their unveiling to the public, Schoefft's paintings now represented scenes of a Sikh Kingdom which no longer existed. Maharaja Sher Singh was now dead, the Sikh Empire had been annexed and its last ruler, Maharaja Duleep Singh, was in exile and captivity in Britain.

Our portrait, however, can perhaps be grouped together with those works painted from the life, in situ in Lahore. It also captures Lal Singh at the beginning of his rise to power. Alternatively, it might have been worked up from a study done from the life, at the time acme of Lal Singh's power, in around 1845-48.

Schoefft's painting of Maharaja Ranjit Singh at Darbar Sahib ended up in the collection of Maharaja Duleep Singh in England, along with some of his other paintings including the famous Court of Lahore. On Duleep Singh's death these paintings became the property of his daughter Princess Bamba Jindan. Princess Bamba eventually left England and moved to Lahore marrying a British doctor and when she died in 1957 she bequeathed her property including Schoefft's paintings to her secretary Pir Karim Baksh Supra. Supra in turn then sold Schoefft's paintings to the Government of Pakistan in 1959 and they are now housed as part of the Princess Bamba Collection at the Lahore Fort Museum in Pakistan.

In discussing the provenance of the portrait of Sher Singh in his collection, Davinder Toor suggests that it might have hung in the Norfolk home of Prince Frederick Duleep Singh, second son of Maharajah Duleep Singh. He notes that it is possible that it may have come into the family in 1863, when a number of works were acquired by Duleep Singh; or bought in 1871, when Schoefft returned from the USA; or conceivably when Schoefft has to sell his works in 1874 because of bankruptcy. Our painting may well have followed a similar route.

For another painting by Schoefft, in which capacity for imagination is well displayed, depicting a Sikh warrior about to be assaulted and murdered by 'Thuggee' bandits, see Christie's, The Ismail Merchant Collection, South Kensington, 7th Oct 2009, lot 144; and Davinder Singh Toor, pp. 148-151.