| SLIDE 80: Sobha Singh’s single-minded commitment made many of his pictures ideals of the ideals they represented, such as this one of Guru Tegh Bahadur in meditation … |
| SLIDE 81: or of Guru Govind Singh, the princely warrior. |
| SLIDE 82: Rather like with the features of Jesus Christ that were standardised by Renaissance artists into a WASP Gentile, the likenesses of the Gurus became immutable. |
| SLIDE 83: Even when they were subjected to a flower shower of adulation on a modern website. |
| SLIDE 84: For many, the Punjab incarnate was Ranjit Singh. His valour, his innate modesty and his simplicity were caught by Sobha Singh in this unusual painting of him. |
| SLIDE 85: Major events in his life such as his famous meeting at Rupar with Lord William Bentinck in 1831 continued to be remembered and extolled, as was the Meeting of the Cloth of Gold in Tudor England. |
| SLIDE 86: The Maharaja with children – many of whom were the orphaned sons of Sikh sardars who had died in battle …. |
| SLIDE 87: … and the son who has been recently commemorated at Elveden, a symbol of Punjabiyat revived. |
| SLIDE 88: At another more rustic level, Punjabi folk themes became another aspect of Punjabiyat. The devotion of Sohini who would swim across the river to meet her land-locked lover Mahiwal… |
| SLIDE 89: Or the lovely Heer suddenly encountering her lover Ranjha, who on being thwarted from marrying her, had become a yogi begging for food. |
| SLIDE 90: A Punjabi Heer who also died young was the Sikh painter Amrita Sher-gil, whose works carry a strong undertone of Punjabiyat. |
| SLIDE 91: Especially in her village scenes, simplified here to its essentials as life within a village community necessarily is. |
| SLIDE 92 & 93: Punjabiyat by a modern painter of unusual sensitivity Aparna Caur. Two images of Guru Nanak, both from the Kapany collection, showing the Guru floating within the primeval waters of Infinity. |
| SLIDE 94: And another, a poster of which she gave me when we met in Patiala recently. The image of Guru Nanak in a sea of blue echoes the words from the Granth Sahib itself: ‘Nanak has found that Lord, through the Guru, who feeds all his Creation on sea and on land.’ |
| SLIDE 95: Let me end a sublime image of Guru Nanak-ji by Sobha Singh, and a quotation from The Offers of Instruction to the Book of Common Prayer, written first in 1549 while Guru Nanak was still alive. In it, the word Sacrament is explained. It is defined as the ‘outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace.’ |
| Could there be a better definition of the function of Symbolism in Sikh Portraiture and Painting? |
