Overall: 35cm (14in) x 27.2cm (10.6in)
Watercolour on paper. Full length uniform study of an Sikh Officer of the Queen’s Own Corps of Guides (Infantry), Punjab Frontier Force in full dress, comprising khaki or drab kurta with red facings, and loosely tied turban. Signed CPC lower right. Framed and glazed.
The military artist Chater Paul Chater (1878-1949) was born in Calcutta, India to a prominent Armenian merchant family. He is said to have left India the age of 20 to study mining engineering in England. He later worked for his uncle the Hong Kong businessman Sir Paul Catchick Chater Kt, CMG (1846-1926). During extensive travels in the East, Chater Paul Chater (CPC) met his wife to be Aileen Balthazar who was also from a prominent merchant family. They were married in London at St Mary Abbott’s, Kensington in 1908 with his Hong Kong born and Oxford educated rugger-bugger cousin J.P. Jordan as best man. Contrary to the commonly held perception that CPC was a self-taught artist, he described himself as an ‘art student’ on the 1911 census return, while staying in London with Jordan. CPC and Jordan both served in the First World War, the latter with considerable distinction.
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CPC’s military experience is said to encompass a spell in the multi-national Shanghai Volunteers. In 1915-16 he held a temporary commission in the Cameronians (Scottish Rifles) and served in Gallipoli and the Balkans. After the war he settled in Nice, Côte d'Azur where he first started to paint the uniforms of the old Indian Army. Highly affable, CPC is said to have given a large number of these works away to anyone who expressed an interest. He returned to London permanently in 1931, living on the dividends of his eastern investments. He took up residence in Cromwell Road and became a habitué of the Pembroke Arms in Earls Court, where he founded a private drinking circle known as ‘The Mice’. Members sported a club tie decorated with pink mice waving butterfly nets, supposedly envisioned after a heavy night of boozing. His watercolours belie any such signs of the DTs, and are noted for their fine detail and accuracy of uniform, and the bearing and likenesses of the martial types depicted.
Contrary to the claim CPC never painted from life, it has been said that he worked with ‘live models from such Indian Soldiers who were on duty at Buckingham Palace or among those who appeared for any Investiture Ceremony. Occasionally, a pose was adopted from an earlier painting but every detail was cross-checked and verified. Above all, the face was a genuine creation of CPC and the figure had none of the woodenness of so much of similar work.’ In the early 1970s a cache of his watercolours were discovered and were published to acclaim in Michael Glover’s ‘An Assemblage of Indian Army Soldiers & Uniforms, from the original paintings by the late Chater Paul Chater’ (1974), with the originals being contemporaneously exhibited at the National Army Museum, Chelsea.
Sources:
‘Indian soldiers in regimental uniforms: portrait of the artist and his creations'
article by Lt Gen Baljit Singh, AVSM, VSM, 8 May 2018 Salute.co.in, accessed 8.4.2026.
CPC’s Medal Rolls Index Cards, 1914-1920