Enrica Medugno
Senior Sale Coordinator
Lot 301
S. G. Thakur Singh (India, 1890/99-1976) Indian Street Scene
22 May 2025, 11:00 BST
London, New Bond StreetSold for £3,200 inc. premium
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Oliver White
Head of Department
S. G. Thakur Singh (India, 1890/99-1976)
Indian Street Scene
Indian Street Scene
oil on canvas laid down on board, signed and dated '20 or '26 lower right
35.5 x 50.5 cm.
35.5 x 50.5 cm.
Footnotes
Provenance
Bonhams, Islamic and Indian Art 11th June 2020, lot 247.
Sardar Ganda Thakur Singh, an apprentice of the Lahore painter Mohammed Alam (1870-1940), began as a theatrical painter in Bombay and Calcutta. In 1917, at the age of eighteen, he was awarded a prize in an exhibition in Simla, and his painting After the Bath won 2nd Prize at the British Empire Exhibition in London in 1924. While he frequently painted female subjects with hints of eroticism, often conveyed through clinging drapery, he was also known for his landscapes. He was a founder member of the Punjab Fine Art Society in Calcutta, the Indian Academy of Fine Arts in Amritsar, and the Thakar Singh School of Arts. In 1953 he was nominated as a member of the Punjab Legislative Council. The Russian and Hungarian governments invited him to exhibit his work in Moscow, Leningrad and Budapest in 1959 (he had travelled extensively in the Soviet Union). He died in 1976. For a brief survey of his life and work, see M. Hasan, Painting in the Punjab Plains, Lahore 1998, p. 165.
For other works by Thakur Singh sold in these rooms, see Bonhams, Islamic and Indian Art, 30th April 2019, lot 216; a landscape view of Madras beach, on canvas, online sale, 4th June 2019, lot 86; and online sale, 19th November 2019, lot 201 (an oil sketch for the same subject).