Duleep Singh Bust Sold For £1.5 M
Bonhams Sells Bust Of Last ruler Of The Punjab, Owner Of Koh-i-Noor
Crowning a week of extraordinary auctions in Indian and Islamic art, the marble bust of Maharajah Duleep Singh sold in London for 43 times its estimated value.
The 74 cm high white marble portrait bust of Maharajah Duleep Singh by Victorian sculptor John Gibson RA has exceeded all expectations by fetching £1.7 million (£1.5 million plus premium and tax) at auction in London on April 19, 2007. The 150 year-old sculpture had originally been expected to fetch between £25,000 to £35,000.
This dramatic sale by Bonhams rounded out an extraordinary week that also saw staggering sums change hands for Islamic art at Sotheby’s and Christie’s.
Interest From Sikh Community
Huge interest from India and Britain drove the price of Bonhams Islamic & Indian Art sale, Lot 385 to extraordinary heights in intense bidding until an anonymous UK-based private collector prevailed.
Although Duleep Singh was a minor figure to the British in British colonial history, he continues to hold deep historical and cultural significance for Indians and the Sikh diaspora. He was also the owner of the famed Koh-i-Noor diamond.
Excitement and debate had been mounting in the weeks leading up to the auction, with the Punjab Heritage and Education Foundation (PHEF) and even the religious Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC) making appeals to Sikhs and Sikh organizations worldwide, and the Indian government, to purchase the bust and repatriate it. Some suggestions to place the bust in a gurdwara sparked a religious debate on idolatry which became moot as bidding whipped past the half-million pound mark.
From Maharajah To English Country Squire & Failed Revolutionary
Maharajah Duleep Singh (b. 1838 - d. October 1893), son of the legendary Lion of the Punjab, Maharajah Ranjit Singh, and his last wife, Maharani Jindan Kaur, had been the last ruler of the Sikhs. He had ascended to the throne as a child and deposed when only 11 years-old following The Second Anglo-Sikh War and the annexation of the Punjab.
Exiled to England with the Koh-i-Noor, Maharajah Duleep Singh went on shooting parties with royalty and became an object of fascination for the queen. In fact, Queen Victoria described the Maharajah as being “extremely handsome and speaks English perfectly, and has a pretty, graceful and dignified manner…I always feel so much for these poor deposed Indian princes.” Apparently the Queen failed to see the irony of her last comment seeing that it was the British East India Company that had done the deposing in the first place and the Queen herself who kept the Koh-i-Noor. The diamond is currently part of the Queen Mother’s crown jewels.
Although the Maharajah settled down as a womanizing country squire on a Norfolk estate at Elvedon, he became increasingly unsettled. His newfound political interest led him to abandon his family in 1886 and seek to lead an invasion of British India. However, his plans failed when he unwittingly became a pawn in a British Secret Service plot to discredit a Russian newspaper magnate.
He died, penniless, in Paris and is buried in the churchyard in Elvedon where his grave attracts Sikh visitors to this day.
Statue’s Provenance
Maharajah Duleep Singh sat for Gibson (b. 1790 – d. 1866) in 1859 while on a trip to Rome, and the sculpture portrays a youthful Maharajah in full Sikh regalia – in a turban, bearded and wearing a rich choker of pearls. Queen Victoria requested a cast from the sculptor although the original remained the Maharajah’s personal possession until his death in 1893.
Prince Frederick Duleep Singh, his son, then owned it until the prince’s own death in 1926. The bust then passed into the possession of the Maharajah’s daughters until Princess Bamba, the last survivor, died in 1957.
The bust is believed to have left Norfolk in the 1970s and was last sold at a Sotheby’s Victorian Paintings and Sculpture sale on June 12, 1985 for £4,200. The current seller, a titled lady, bought it from a St. James dealer.
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