Kapur Singh and the company painters of Amritsar
Amritsar artists who painted trades, castes and festivals for British buyers after 1849.
After the British annexation, painters in Amritsar and Lahore who had worked for the Sikh court turned to a new market: British officers and travellers who wanted pictures to take home. They painted sets showing the trades and castes of the Punjab, the dyer, the potter, the Nihang, the Akali, the Kashmiri shawl weaver, as well as festivals and portraits.
Kapur Singh of Amritsar was among the finest of them; his crisp, detailed pictures of the 1860s and 1870s are prized for their accuracy as well as their beauty. Kehar Singh, active in Lahore, painted similar sets.
These 'Company' pictures are now an invaluable record of how people in the Punjab dressed, worked and worshipped in the generation after the fall of the Sikh Empire.
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