A portrait of battle-hardened Maharaja Ranjit Singh and an iconic painting of the Golden Temple are among the countless paintings of the Sikhs done by Western artists in the colonial period, and a select collection of them will be on view here from Saturday.
"Sikhs: An Occidental Romance" will present 80 museum archival replicas of paintings by western artists from the 19th and 20th centuries. It is organised by non-profit Hubris Foundation.
The works are by artists such as French painter Alfred De Dreux, English poet-artist Emily Eden, Austrian painter Rudolf Swoboda, American artist Edwin Lord Weeks, Russian artist Alexis Soltykoff, and Hungarian painter August Schoefft.
The exhibition also displays incredible works of art that depict the Anglo-Sikh Wars in the 1840s; Viscount Hardinge, the Governor-General of India (1844-48); Lahore, the capital of the Sikh empire and Sikh religious hub, Amritsar, and the Jallianwala Bagh massacre.
Some are from the Princess Bamba Collection.
The exhibition will be open for public viewing from April 13-18 at the All India Fine Arts and Crafts Society (AIFACS) here.