Risaldar Jagat Singh and Risaldar Man Singh, 1916. Oil on board by Philip de László (1869-1937).
The unfinished portrait, valued at £650,000, depicts the cavalry officers Risaldar Jagat Singh and Risaldar Man Singh. The pair were junior troop commanders in the British Indian Army’s Expeditionary Force who served at the Battle of the Somme and are presumed to have died in action.
The soldiers sat for the artist in London two months before being sent to France and the painting appears to have been created for de László’s own collection.
It remained in his studio until he died in 1937, passing to Patrick de László and was later sold in 1975 to a private collector.
The decision to temporarily block the picture from export was made by the Arts and Heritage minister Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay as the painting is extremely rare in depicting active Indian participants in the First World War.
The minister’s decision follows the advice of the Reviewing Committee on the Export of Works of Art and Objects of Cultural Interest.
Sensitive portrait
Committee member Peter Barber said: “Philip de László was one of Britain’s most distinguished society portrait painters of the early 20th century. But this sensitive portrait, all the more powerful because it is unfinished, offers an exceptionally rare glimpse not of maharajahs or generals but of two ‘ordinary’ middle-ranking Sikh soldiers about to depart for the horrors of the Battle of the Somme.
“The enormous contribution made by them and millions of other Indians to Britain’s war effort between 1914 and 1918 has until recently been largely overlooked and the life stories of de László’s sitters remain to be uncovered. Yet numerous descendants of Indian soldiers now live in Britain, rendering the portrait ‘British’ at several, increasingly significant, levels.
“De László could well have seen parallels between the position of these outsiders loyally serving their imperial master and his own as a humbly-born Hungarian Jew.
“Within months of creating this portrait he was to be interned for over a year as a suspected foreign agent and to suffer a nervous breakdown after having been, sadistically, refused permission to paint.”
A British institution must raise £650,000 (plus VAT of £130,000 which can be reclaimed by an eligible party) and must make a serious expression of interest by July 13.
