Footnotes

• This painting appears to be part of a well-documented series of trades and occupations by Kehar Singh (1820-1882), currently housed in the collection of the Government Museum and Art Gallery, Chandigarh (see B. N. Goswamy, Piety and Splendour: Sikh Heritage in Art, 2000, plates 178 and 179). Kehar Singh's artistic career led him to the Lahore Court but when Sikh rule was replaced by the British in the middle of the 19th century, he became influenced by European watercolour and oil paintings, as well as photography. In his series of painted sketches done around 1875, Kehar Singh portrayed men and women occupied in different trades and professions in great detail, even naming many of them as part of his accompanying notes, which were inscribed on the works in both Persian and gurmukhi, as they are here.
  
  The exact subjects of the scene in this painting are not known, although clearly the man seated on a carpet with a shield slung on his back and turban adorned with a plume, is a nobleman. Curiously, the sword placed between the men closely resembles a jewelled shamshir presented to General Van Cortland by his employer Maharaja Ranjit Singh, now in the collection of the Victoria Memorial Hall, Calcutta.