Overall: 14.5cm (8in) x 12.5cm (5.in)
Gouache on ivory. Half length portrait of a flank company officer of the 26th Foot wearing scarlet coatee with white facings, gold lace introduced in 1831, light company wings with silver bugle horn insignia, regimentally specific shoulder belt plate and whistle. Contained in period glazed gilt metal frame. Signed lower right signed, using the honorific title awarded to him by the Mughal Emperor Akbar II (1760-1837) 'Raja Jivan Ram' lower right.
Jiwan Ram, son of Bafalji, lived in Delhi in the 1820s and was the first Indian artist to break away from court patronage. Competing with professional rivals William Melville and George Beechey, Jiwan Ram accepted commissions for portraits from British Army and East India Company officers in upper India after the Bhurtpore War of 1826, and generally expected his sitters to travel to him in either Delhi or Meerut. At the latter place he came into the orbit of the Begum Samru, for whom he (together with Melville and Beechey) painted a large number of portraits of her European entourage in oils for her palace at Sardhana (Meerut) in the 1830s. By 1831 Jiwan Ram was sufficiently well known to accompany the Governor General of India, Lord William Bentinck to the Ropar Meeting with Maharaja Ranjit Singh of the Sikh Empire, where he was tasked with making a faithful depiction of the crucial ally. In 1834 Jiwan Ram made a preparatory portrait of the Mughal emperor Akbar II (1760-1837) who awarded him the honorific title of Raja. (British Library, Add.Or.3167). Aside from the present miniature only two portraits, both dated to 1834 (Bodleian Library, University of Oxford, LP643 &; LP645), are known to bear the signature with title, ‘Raja Jiwan Ram’.
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The present portrait can thus be dated to the 1834. It bears many of the characteristics associated with the artist, such as the use of gouache or body colour instead of watercolour traditionally used in miniature portraiture. Other features consistent with Jiwan Ram’s other known portraits include the sitter’s left hand being small in comparison to the head with by the artist. The 26th Regiment of Foot (Cameronians) arrived in India in 1828 and served in Meerut on garrison duties from 1831 until 1836. While the identity the sitter is unknown, it is clear the regiment and the artist co-existed at Meerut until the former were relieved by the 3rd Buffs in 1836. As J.P. Losty, in his essay ‘Raja Jivan Ram: A Professional Indian Portrait Painter of the Early Nineteenth Century’, points out, promotion to captain was often commemorated with the commissioning of a portrait. In the case of the Cameronians, there were five officers promoted to the rank during the regiment’s Meerut posting - Captains Paterson, Piggott, Young, Mylius and Shum.
In 1838 Jiwan Ram’s merits caught the attention of Emily Eden (1879-1869) the sister of George, Lord Auckland, the Governor General of India. Writing on the 13 February 1838 from Meerut, she commented ‘there is a native here, Juan Kam [Jiwan Ram], who draws beautifully sometimes, and sometimes utterly fails, but his picture of William [Lieut The Hon William Osborne, ADC, 26th Foot] is quite perfect. Nobody can suggest an alteration, and as a work of art it is a very pretty possession. It was so admired that Fanny [Emily's sister] got a sketch of G [Lord Auckland] on cardboard, which is also an excellent likeness.’ (Eden, E. (1866) ‘Up the Country', p. 94). To the regret of Losty and others the portrait of Osborne is recorded as lost.
JP Losty’s essay concludes, Jiwan Ram ‘was of sufficient social standing not to have needed to pursue this career, but did so presumably because of his love of art. Such attitudes embracing the best of what Europe had to offer typified early nineteenth-century Delhi society. Yet attitudes changed and entrenched positions hardened, so that after the uprising of 1857 Jivan Ram’s work was forgotten, even among Indians who later lauded Raja Ravi Varma for pursuing the same course of adapting the European realistic tradition to Indian portraiture.’
Ivory Submission reference: XAZBAELD